iOS 5.0.1 Update Tested: Better Battery Life for iPhone 4S, But How Much?

Apple officially released OS 5.0.1 update today, fixing—among other things—battery life issues that were affecting the iPhone 4S. So how much more juice are you getting?

We downloaded the developer’s preview of 5.0.1 yesterday, and then ran the LAPTOP Battery Test (web surfing over Wi-Fi) on three iPhone 4S devices, one with 5.0.1 installed, and two running iOS 5. While our results were somewhat inconclusive, we did find that that the model running the latest 5.0.1 update ran longest.

A Sprint iPhone 4S running iOS 5 lasted 7:41, an AT&T iPhone 4S running iOS 5 lasted 8:41, and a Verizon iPhone 4S running iOS 5.0.1 lasted 9:07.  We conducted our tests with Locations Services turned on and Notifications turned off. We’re going to update all three phones to the latest OS and report back with additional results. The most curious result was the low runtime for the Sprint iPhone 4S, but we’ll have to retest to decide whether that’s just a fluke.

Other additions in iOS 5.0.1 include: Additional multitouch gestures for the original iPad; a bug fix for Documents in the Cloud; and improved voice recognition for Australian users.

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