As expected, the iPhone 4S has a weaker battery life than the iPhone 4 terminal and I told you this right after the presentation conference of the new device. Apple then announces that the battery autonomy in standby and during the use of Wi-Fi networks is lower, but that the autonomy during phone calls using an EDGE network is better. The graph above shows us as clearly as possible how the new device is doing and you notice that in the case of browsing the Internet using a 3G network and in the case of video recording, the battery autonomy decreases the most.
If you spend much of your day near a Wi-Fi network and only rely upon the iPhone 4S for web browsing and phone calling, you won't notice a major difference—unless you're thinking of switching to Sprint, in which case we I'd be a little concerned. Similarly, if you use 3G data, plan to record or play videos, or want to listen to hours of audio during the day, you can expect greater battery drain from the iPhone 4S.
The tests were done by those from iLounge who claim that for navigation through a 3G network they obtained an autonomy of 5 hours and 53 minutes, less than that obtained on an iPhone 4 and in the case of navigation using Wi-Fi networks they obtained an autonomy of only 7 hours and 17 of minutes. The results presented previously are for the GSM version that works on the AT&T network and for the CDMA version that works on Verizon, we have the same autonomy for browsing via 3G, but we have an autonomy of 8 hours and 27 minutes for browsing via Wi-Fi.
The iLounge tests were influenced by the signal strength in the location where they were and their results can be very different for each individual user, everything depending on the signal strength for each operator/location. Leaving these aside, it is certain that the iPhone 4S has a weaker battery autonomy than the iPhone 4, but probably not many of you will notice this.
