HOWTO: iPhone 4 iOS5 Battery Drain

The recent upgrade to iOS 5 packed in many features making a giant step towards the future of iOS. One new feature of iOS is iCloud. iCloud is a cloud storage/computing service provided by Apple. With iCloud, you can store mail, contacts, calendars, reminders, bookmarks, notes, photos, and documents to the cloud and access them on any other iOS device. Now, if you only have one iOS device iCloud may not be beneficial. Sure, you will get more space (5GB of iCloud storage) to supplement your iOS device, but there is a downside.

iCloud periodically syncs local data on your iOS device to iCloud. This sync can happen over WiFi or 3G (hard to say). The periodically syncs will have a negative affect on your iOS device battery. I have personally noticed a huge difference in batter performance by turning off all iCloud services. If you would like to give it a try, do the following:

1. Go to Settings and select iCloud.
2. If you have an iCloud account and it is enabled, you will see the various services that can be synced to iCloud.
3. Turn off all iCloud services.
4. Disable iCloud backup.

Give it a try and see if it makes a difference for you. I know it did for me!

cheers,