Apple issued its first iOS 5 update to the public yesterday — an update which was released to fix “bugs affecting battery life” under the latest firmware, amongst other issues. Following the update, however, users have reported that their battery life has seen no improvement, and that iOS 5.0.1 comes with more bugs of its own.
Paul Hontz of The Startup Foundry reports that the latest release introduces a new problem to the iPhone 4S which causes the device to forget your contact names when you receive calls and text messages.
Hontz has the contacts in his address book, but his iPhone shows their contact number rather than their name when they call or text. Hontz conducted a quick survey on Twitter, according to a The Next Web report, and discovered he’s not the only one with the problem.
Additionally, many users are reporting the update does not fix battery life issues at all on the fifth-generation iPhone. 9to5Mac found the support forums on Apple’s website are full of reports from disgruntled iOS 5 users who say the update has done nothing to improve their battery life. Some users who commented on the report also said they now have battery life issues where there were none before.
With so many complaints, it’s likely Apple will release yet another iOS 5 update to address these issues before long. It certainly won’t want the issue to become another “antennagate.”
What has iOS 5.0.1 been like for you?
[via The Next Web]
Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.
198 responses to “iOS 5.0.1 Won’t Fix Your Battery Life, But It Will Forget Your Contacts”
On iPhone 4, 5*****
The battery life of my iPhone 4 is way better with the update.
Me thinks this update did nothing more than patch a loophole for potential jailbreaking….
iOS 5.0.1 hasn’t changed anything on my iPhone 4S. The battery hasn’t improved at all. It drains by 20% overnight when it’s not in use.
I upgraded my iPhone4 to iOS 5.0.1 “on the air” and it solved a problem I seldom had with iCloud contacts Not syncing from iPhone to other devices. No other issues here.
No problems after installing on iPhone 3GS;but have had battery problems since updating to iOS 5 and 5.01 doesn’t seem to have fixed them
Updated my 4S and now have no problems with the battery drain or life.
Not only has it not improved my battery life and lost the names associated with all of my incoming calls from contacts but now I am having data connectivity issues, had to restore the phone 3 times to get it working and as someone who just moved from a blackberry and paid $850.00 for the iPhone 4s, I am not at all impressed.
Battery life actually seems worse since update.
No contacts problems after installing 5.01 on my iPhone 4. All is well it appears.
They did not fix the constantly active “Setting Time Zone” under localization settings.
That is weird. It should only be active when travelling (changing frequently between antennas) or turning on the phone?!
No problems installing OTA, contacts are fine and battery life does seem improved on my 16gb 4S
Why wife’s 4s had the issue where her contacts’ names were not showing up when she would get texts from them. Oddly enough, this was last week before 5.0.1, so it might be something else altogether. They had to completely reset her phone.
No contact issues here. Battery life improvement yet to be determined (4S).
My battery life *is* greatly improved (believe me, I’ve done serious testing, and had Apple install a logging profile). I have no issues with contacts after the update. I would suggest the title of this article is a little sensationalist.
After the update my battery life was worse, I had to do a restore on both my iPad 2 and my iPhone 4, during the restore on my iPad , iTunes hung and could not reach the iTunes server, so I had to reboot my Mac to solve the problem.
seems to be working been using for 1 1/2 hours from 100 to 94. not too bad.
no problems so far, even with the described issues in the article. The phone has gone from 91% to 76% in 10hrs (mixed standby and actual use)
I wonder if it is a hardware issue? Perhaps some runs of the phone are faulty while others are not?
The battery life of my iPhone 4 seems improved since the update, but could be placebo.
No contact issue.
On my iPhone 4 I have seen an improvement. Before the update, I’d lose 1% battery just turning the device on. Today I have had it on for 30 minutes and just lost my first percent. My contacts are working as well. Sorry to hear about the 4S issues.
Works fine for me! No such mentioned problem and battery life is good.
seems better to me so far…prior to update i was losing juice fast (with location services, siri ‘raise to talk’ off). did the update last night and turned all services on. in 2.5 hours of mild usage i have gone from 100% to 85%.
no issues so far, and battery life has improved.
Sharon, I feel the same way…I came from the original droid on Verizon to the iphone4s and while I did not have any battery issues, I was pretty disappointed last night when I had to restore my phone twice to get my contacts working properly again after the update.
Smooth move Apple.
Did not hurt my contact list.
My contacts are gonex any one know how to get them back?
I installed the upgrade this morning (in Armenia) and didn’t use my iPhone (4S) for a single thing and by afternoon I was down to 56% battery left. I feel that I’m living the same iPhone life as before but the battery used to last when I didn’t use the iPhone.
I’ve lost only 2% throughout the night after the update! No other problems here.
I have seen battery life improved on my 4s with the update. No contact issues have surfaced. My wife’s 4s is a different story – she still has battery issues and has had contact issues since before the update. The only difference between the two devices – mine is a Black 4s and her’s is a White 4s – other than that they are identical down to the apps that are installed.
Battery definitely seems better!!
At first blush, no issues – battery level didn’t budge overnight (although it was modest before) and no sign yet of an issue with contacts. A friend approached me a month ago about battery use on his 4 – he was a new user and had everything turned on all the time. One (or more) of his apps was continuously calling for data. We shut down what he didn’t need and now he has acceptable battery performance. Chris Breen’s article on how to manage your battery is very worthwhile for people seeing significant drain under ‘normal’ use.
I updated last night and my battery life is crazy improved! Nothing happened to my contacts either. I used to listen to a 45 minute streamed podcast on my way to work and my
battery would be at 87% before. Now, I checked and it’s at 97%!!! I am so, super impressed.
For those who say it persists, I don’t understand – at all.
IOS 5.0.1 and no problema!!! Bettery Life good and no problem
I played about 30 minutes of Infinity Blade and listened to 30 min of stored music on my iPhone 4 this morning, where it would be at 70% ish after that it is now 93%.
I would say much improved
I’ve installed the update myself and have noticed some battery longevity, overnight at least. Time will tell today to see how the phone reacts after a full day of use. Before the update, my phone would be down to around 45% after a day at work, so I’m anxious to see what the number winds up being today. To those who still see terrible battery life, maybe you should check your settings and turn off all non-essential services. I’ve known a few people complaining that their battery life was terrible and upon looking at their devices, I found that they had everything under the sun turned on.
I would be interested to know what peoples settings are that are only losing a small % of battery life now. I was at 100% last night at 7pm and this morning at 7am was down to 50% after update
I updated to iOS 5.0.1 and immediately lost all of my contact names within my call log and text message list. I fixed this problem by calling *228 (verizon) I reprogrammed the phone. This worked but when I recieve an iMessage the contact still shows up as a number not the contact name. This only happens in the notification center. My battery is still horrible. It is has gone down 17% in the last 40mins
Didn’t have battery problems even before the update.
After installing the update myself around 8pm and the phone being charged at 100% I awoke at 5:30am to find my battery at 97%.
I have seen huge battery life improvement when turning off the location services when not in use.
The contact issue is with verizon iPhone’s and has nothing to do with the iOS 5.0.1 update. Users who have this issue simply have to dial *228 and press 1 to update their carrier settings. With in a few minutes the issue will be resolved.
Everything on.
I’ve experienced that much battery loss, but it was related to the carrier and not the iPhone.
Every night my phone only drops 2-3% as well. For those having issues, make sure that settings–location services–system services–setting time zone, location based iAds, and diagnostics & Usage is turned off.
Also, while you’re at it, turn off location services on the apps you do not need it for. Otherwise, it’s just an unnecessary drain for things you don’t use. That’s all I did! Everything else is still on.
I had the contact problem but on iOS 5. When I send a new text, it would autocomplete the recipient since it was in my address book. However, Once I send my text message, it would revert to a phone number. There were no duplicates. I tried erasing and readding the entry and also syncing but to no avail. I rebooted and it worked.
Its been fine for me
I’ve made a habit of NOT updating right away since iOS4. Glad I still do that. Lol i just av to deal w a badge on my Settings icon. Don’t know if i like that wireless update feature. It at least shudnt chk automatically.
No problems before 5.0.1 and no problems after. I would start suspecting apps not cooperating with iOS 5. Also, Bluetooth was enabled by default after updating to iOS 5. Try a hard reset–hold down both the Home button and the Power button until you see the Apple logo.
Oh, and turn off battery percentage indicator and stop watching it. :)
My battery life has gotten worse since the update!! I’m already at 54% life remaining since I took off the charger two hours ago!! The battery life was Better before the update!!
Thats so inconvenient. No one shud av to b doing workarounds for something that shud b working in d first place. Especially on an iphone. Otherwise, whats d point of spending $ on an iphone. By something cheaper.
my ipod 4G white battery life is good no problem
Battery is night and day BETTER for me after updating, restarting, and fully charging once. And while I have no issues with lost contacts, dont people back up their contacts anyway? A simple restore to backup will bring back contacts….
Given that about an hour after it was released, the jailbreak came out. Nope it didn’t. Or at least not all of them.
Despite reports, many folks are seeing an improvement with their battery. They are also some seeing less app crashing etc.
You are either seeing no change because your issue was not with whatever they identified as the most common issue or while it fixed THAT issue it uncovered another one you hadn’t noticed because perhaps it wasn’t happening that much. or such.
given that a huge chunk of the folks saying they are having trouble have been able to ‘fix’ it by either restoring, resetting all settings or just tweaking settings, it is software based for the fair majority. Otherwise they wouldn’t be seeing huge improvements with such methods
I didn’t have a problem before but now I have haven’t really used my phone today and yet my battery is nearly dead sort it out apple !!!
on that last question. Antennagate was caused not by an actual issue with the phone (in a major design sense) but by bloggers like Killian and the rest of the CoM company hyping up an issue for a small cut of users in crappy ATT service areas as a major flaw.
So if you don’t want ‘another Antennagate’ nix the sensationalist headlines like the one on this article.
Every iPhone and iOS version has had a few issues for a small group of folks. Just like all movie devices from all companies, all computers and computer software. It’s the nature of the game. Apple’s ‘issues’ have never been proven to be more than perhaps 5% and they respond as quickly as they can even if it takes 10 tries to sort out all the possibles. That’s better than many companies. I went through 9 Xboxes due to a known issue that affected over 3/4 of the units and the build was never changed. They replaced my defective unit with an identical unit they knew was most likely also going to fail 8 times. And that was in less than a year. When number 10 hit I demanded a refund and walked away from Xbox.
I disagree. Why do you need to have every bell and whistle turned on? I only turned off app location services that I never need! So you think it’s Apple’s fault that some apps are a battery drain? If I use Trillian for example, that thing SUCKS my battery hard compared to every other app I have. Why is it Apple’s fault if some apps just need to take huge chunks of battery because of the way they are programmed? Take 5 seconds and bloody make a few swipes with your finger and ta-da FANTASTIC battery life. But if you don’t want to bother – suffer. I don’t understand people sometimes.
I agree!
Contacts are still there, however, when anyone calls or texts it only shows their numbers, not the names I have them under.
6 hrs since i took it from charger : 42 min. call time , 1h 2min. web browsing , 34 min. playing music, 15min. playing ninja fruit….. and my battery 86 %.
I’m having the exact opposite experience. Since 5.0.1, my battery has become nigh immortal, and my contacts are fine.
As Apple fans have extremely high standards of perfection, this issue will not go unnoticed. It is unacceptable to have a new generation phone under performing compared to its earlier sibling.
Battery right before going to bed was 85%, 8 hours later this morning, it was at 64%. The phone drains without even being used! A nice number would have been 75%-80%. Oh well.
Did you enter your contact data and settings manually or did you allow Verizon to plug your phone in at the store to move your data from the old phone? Maybe some corruption from the transfer?
Contacts are synced in iCloud. Does it really matter if 5.0.1 forgets them?
Not much improvement. iPad 2 battery goes even faster! In my case, not sure about your case!
everything manual.
Coming up on 3 hours of standby, battery at 97%. 1% per hour during standby. Certainly not the 200 hours of standby that Apple claims, but at least 4 times better than 5.0. I haven’t checked the contact issue yet.
iPod Touch 4G: About 2 hours use and 12 hours standby and I’m at roughly 80% battery… Before 5.0.1 I would’ve been down to about 50% so it’s an improvement, but I still think iOS 4.3 had better battery life…
My iphone 4 shuts down when unplugged from charger now after the I.0.5 update!!! Don’t know what happened to my contacts – it only works when plugged into the wall after the update!
I haven’t had any problem with the update that I know of. No contacts issue and the battery seems to be holding up well.
Try the fix stated below *228 option 1 from your verizon phone to fix contacts. I dont have verizon but maybe thatll fix ur problem.
In fact….there is Deffinitely an improvement in my iPhone 4S’s battery life.
+1
Did you read NoT read the post?
All you have to do is turn off location services. Kilian Bell is obviously not too smart I guess. This well documented fix has been around the web for weeks.Having a blogger with an iPhone is like having a two year old with a gun. Lol.
Actually Killian’s articles are horrible. It’s amazing how anyone can claim to be a writer/journalist these days (SCARCASTIC)
So, anyone, who buys iP 4S is a free software beta tester? Update, which results more problems than earlier version shouldn’t been called an update :-))
Guess you’re in the same category as killian, my friend. Dumb!
My Verizon 4s battery life got worse after the update. Every time I open up e-mail or any other app, the battery is 1 ~ 2 % down when there was no issues prior to 5.0.1 update.
Updated my iPhone 4, to 5.0.1 some 24 hours ago and battery performance is back to pre-iOS 5.0 update levels, at least where the iPhone 4 is concerned this update does appear to solve the issue!
Im having this problem, and *228 opt1 didn’t fix it… :/
This didn’t work for me! I did this and rebooted several times, and it still didn’t work
you can restore from your backup on itunes.
When you did the update to 5.1, itunes backed p your phone– so just restore it back to 5.0
STEVE!!! COME BACK PLEASE!!!
While this might be a carrier related issue it isn’t just Verizon. I have a phone of the Telecom network in New Zealand that after the 5.0.1 update has exactly the same issue.
Paul Hontz of The Startup Foundry didnt find the BUG it has been addressed way before 5.0.1 but APPLE failed to bring us a FIX, but now that Paul Hontz of The Startup Foundry has found it i am hoping that they will fix the problem.
you are just SUPER LUCKY
its not what they meant, forgetting contacts meaning it does not show up contact name when you type in the number (i.e. for numbers stored with country code)
its funny how with all these problems more than 4 million iphone 4S sold in 3 days heheheh
Same problem with my address book after the update… solved by Switching off and restarting my iphone.
My contact list is completely gone and, I now have a battery that won’t last 4 hours. I had no battery problem before the update.
I updated mine and can’t even receive messages period. It shows up then disappears all of the sudden?
iOS 5.0.1 update bricked mine. Restoring it and hating Apple right now.
I lost all my music & contacts. Most of my music was from CDs; I re-uploaded them to my desktop & now they are on the desktop iTunes but don’t transfer to my phone when I sync
I’m on AT&T & having the contact prob
Have some contacts. 70 out of 1000. restore doesn’t fix it.
Steve jobs, you left, they sleeping.
I lost Safari and iTunes store apps, haven’t been able to get them back..
iTunes only allows one-way transfer, from iTunes to iPhone, not the other way around. You will need some iPhone-to-mac transfer program to help you. You may have a look at this step-by-step guide on http://www.levesoft.com/
Best luck!
IOS 5.0.1 rendered the apple store’s hardware used to transfer contacts from a blackberry to a 4s obselete. apparently their cell phone gadgets used to flash phones is not compatible with an iphone if the firmware is updated to version IOS 5.0.1