back to article iPhone 4S owners love Siri, hate the battery life

Apple, do more with Siri but for feck's sake sort out the iPhone 4S' battery life. Those are the key messages for the company if feedback from a couple of hundred owners of its latest handset, collated by market watcher ChangeWave, is anything to go by. Siri is clearly the feature most punters like best, with 49 per cent of …

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  1. JeffyPooh
    Pint

    Everyone has their own priorities...

    Improved antenna system (I refused to buy an iPhone 4)

    Wifi Hotspot (coming from iPhone 3GS that lacked the feature).

    Improved camera. Two cameras.

    Battery life is fine. My use pattern has it at 75% by the time I get home at night,

    Siri? - useless.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @JeffyPooh

      I'm sure you have heard it a million times already, but if you are the sort of person who pops their iphone into a case/bumper/whatever - the antenna issue isn't an issue.

      If you don't use a case, then yes, maybe it could have been a problem.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Lots of people like the idea of Siri

    However they don't really use it.. I mean nobody wants to look even more of a dickhead than iPhone owners already look, by talking into Siri whilst walking down the street/sat in the park etc...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WTF is 'centricity'?

    And when are we going to get an 'anti-centric' icon?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What a pile of steaming s ite!

    The phone, not the story.

  5. Generic_Web_Guy
    Thumb Down

    Oh yeah?

    Doesn't understand a blimmin' word I say. Nor any of my friends and colleagues. And don't get me started on that Voiceover Man accent it's got over here.

    Nah, give me a proper FM radio receiver/transmitter over comedy fail Star Trek computing any day.

    1. Jim Coleman
      Happy

      FM Receiver

      I agree, an FM receiver is a great feature......of Windows Phone. :O)

      1. Vic

        > an FM receiver is a great feature......of Windows Phone.

        I've got an FM radio on my Android...

        Vic.

  6. Craigness
    WTF?

    8%

    8%? You think the headline is valid when only 8% of users (or is that 8% of the 40% who even noticed the battery) have a problem.

    It's interesting that so few care about screen resolution though. That's just about the last thing the fanboys have left to boast about, so it's a Very Big Deal if the Anonymous Cowards who spew out hatred at anyone with a better phone are to go by (and 4g support is just a gimmick to them).

    And by "so few", I mean nearly 3 times as many as hate the battery life. Maybe "iphone owners love their screen resolutions" would be a more appropriate headline.

    1. Ru

      If battery life is a problem, just charge your phone more frequently.

      Not that big of a deal.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @Ru Those of us who have the battery problem are seeing up to 45% battery usage per hour which means the phone needs charging every 2-3 hours. Doesn't make the phone very mobile. And I was told by a "genius" in the Apple store that this sort of battery usage can be expected as the dual core processor is too powerful for the battery ( it isn't ) . A lot of different solutions have been found and posted (here https://discussions.apple.com/message/16890227#16890227 ), for me it was wiping and reinstalling the phone 4 times. The fourth time sorted it. I'm thinking voodoo? And Siri? Everyone I know with it has played with it, said wow, thats clever, and then turned it off. It doesn't really have any practical value IMHO

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      battery life

      I am no real expert when it comes to Iphones. But I have a home computer system where i share my wireless internet connection with my neighbors. I have one person who has a Iphone 4. I let him use my wifi connection to use the internet. I noticed that I phone would renew its lease (I have it set at 24 hours in my router) ever 2 to 3 minutes whether he was actively using his iphone or not! I would get 20 pages in a few hours on my routers log of that Iphone renewing its lease on my network every couple of minutes or so. That would certainly use extra battery power. I am wondering if you guys could tell me whether this could be one reason for the iphone 4's short battery life?

    3. Goat Jam
      Holmes

      hmmm

      "It's interesting that so few care about screen resolution though. That's just about the last thing the fanboys have left to boast about"

      Hmm, maybe that could be taken as an indicator that it is not just "fanboys" who buy iphones?

      Not that I want to bust any of your dearly held prejudices or anything . . .

  7. Eddie Edwards
    WTF?

    "third-party apps appeal to only 13 per cent of them."

    That's the kind of figure that makes you think, "what were the questions, exactly?"

    1. Neil Charles
      FAIL

      Slapped wrist for the Reg

      I wondered about that 13% too, so I went looking for the original survey

      http://www.changewaveresearch.com/articles/2011/iphone4s_20111201.html

      The actual question was "What do you like best about your iPhone 4s?", with multiple responses allowed.

      So saying Siri is the feature that punters like best is ok.

      Saying third party apps and iCloud "Appeal" to only 13% and 19% respectively is not ok; it's misleading.

      If you ask me what I like best about my phone and give me an open choice, I'll probably pick the ability to make calls and that it fits in my pocket. It doesn't mean it's not stuffed to bursting with third party apps.

  8. Jim Coleman
    Thumb Down

    Siri

    What's amazing is that, for all iPhone users think of Siri, I have yet to see or hear a single one of them actually use it. Or perhaps they only use Siri in private, in which case, bit of a niche usage scenario there, bearing in mind we spent most of our time on public transport, in an office or generally in the company of others.

    I can see why talking to your phone would be embarrassing though, especially if you had to repeat yourself.

    1. Armando 123

      While driving

      My wife has a 4S and uses it thus. WAY safer and WAY more convenient, particularly when she has to drive to a not-good neighborhood. (She's in the real estate industry.)

    2. ThomH

      They could be using it secretly

      In that one of its modes is "raise to speak", i.e. you put the handset on your face and have a conversation with it exactly as though it were a real person, sometimes repeating yourself just like when you're talking to a real person.

      That said, probably people just aren't using it. I know I wouldn't.

    3. Darryl

      From what I've heard from iPhone users I know, most of them started it up, asked it a few questions, got a few chuckles over some of the humourous answers, then never looked at it again.

      It may develop into a totally new way of interacting with technology in the future, but for now at least, it's a gimmick.

  9. Eddie Edwards
    FAIL

    http://www.changewaveresearch.com/articles/2011/iphone4s_20111201.html

    "What do you like best about your iPhone 4S"

    Total of all responses: 222%.

    Shame the Reg missed out the next question on the survey. It's a corker:

    "Do you trust statistics compiled from incoherent surveys?"

    Yes: 80%

    No: 80%

    Not sure: 50%

  10. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Jim Coleman
      FAIL

      Facetime? Eh?

      Facetime was your reason to buy an iPhone 4S? Why the heck didn't you just use Tango and buy whatever phone you want? Tango isn't restricted to Wifi only, and it is cross-platform.

      Dear oh dear!

  11. I know better

    But..

    If you use the Siri feature where you can put the phone to your ear to activate Siri then what difference is it to taking a call?

  12. Alan Denman

    40% battery loss goes to only 11% importance - Anything goes then?

    If Apple can get away with removing the battery saving 2G setting one wonders what future sacrifices owners will be giving their blessing to.

    Similar audacious moves within the Android world have met with very short thrift.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Forgotten classic iPhone features

    Such as Visual Voicemail. To deal with my 15+ daily voicemails!

    Ftw!

  14. Patrick 8

    Again way off on reality

    It's more like battery life is just fine thank you on my phone which lasts longer than our groups previous generation phones.

    Siri is useless, at least until yelp launches this month? In Oz. until then it's just for the quick setting up of reminder alarms for me.

    What's totally foobar'd is Outlook calendar syncing. Granted its IOS 5 not the iPhone 4S but after trying all the Nokia handsets, Android handsets and Blackberry handsets in the office and seeing major fails syncing Outlook calendars out-of-the-box only to find the iPhones syncing flawlessly I end up with a new 4S and the IOS 5 syncing has foo bar'd the entire history of good syncing we experienced with iPhones.

    That's total Shiiite when your calendar is your number one business tool and you are on the move away from the desktop for most of the day.

  15. Sulphur Man

    Siri....

    ....is just FaceTime for Nobby No-Mates.

    Simple question, how many iPhone users think they get value for money from their purchase?

    Not knocking the phone, it's one of the best on the market, but it's far, far too expensive. Or for iPhone users, reassuringly expensive.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's not that iCloud needs marketing, it needs sorting out. You can only use one backup, by that I mean if you backup to your computer, thats your one backup. If you backup to the cloud, that is your one backup. The 2 are not interchangable. To make matters worse, you get 5Gb free, how many people have a 5Gb or less iPhone? So you either pay, don't backup your entire phone or stick to iTunes backup.

    Backdoor way of getting your customer to pay for storage!

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I really struggle to understand..

    how someone with an iPhone looks like a "dickhead"?? Putting aside the fact that pretty much every smartphone looks exactly the same these days making it nigh on impossible to tell one from another, I struggle to see why a phone made by one company makes you look more or less a dickhead? Its a phone, not pair of leather trousers or a top hat. Or are you implying that your phone of choice makes you somehow "cool" thereby making all others "dickheads"? I'd have though the person who judges others simply by the choice of tech product they buy is a "dickhead" by pretty much anyones definition, or perhaps a sad little boy who needs to get out more instead of trolling iPhone stories?

  18. Gil Grissum

    Hmmm

    Battery life has never been a problem for my 4S. Maybe I'm just one of the lucky ones.

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