Turn Off Time-Zone Sensing To Improve iPhone Battery Life?

Monday October 31, 2011 1:45 pm PDT by Jordan Golson

Switching off automatic time-zone sensing in iOS 5 can improve iPhone battery life significantly, according to iDownloadBlog. The site claims that a bug in iOS 5's GM release causes the GPS-enabled location tracking connected to the automated time-zone function to run constantly. This unnecessary use of the GPS circuitry may drain the battery exceptionally quickly.

To fix the alleged bug and avoid the battery drain, head to the Settings app in iOS 5 and tap Location Services and then scroll to "System Services" at the bottom of that window. Then switch off "Setting Time Zone".

It's not an official bug yet, though Apple is reportedly working on iOS 5's battery life issues. Anecdotal evidence suggests flipping this switch may significantly improve battery life.

Top Rated Comments

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Macopotamus

Posted: 7 months ago

Doesn't work, despite every tech website on the face of the earth claiming it does.

What DOES work is turning off just about every feature that is new to iOS 5. It's obviously just a bug that Apple will fix ASAP because the betas didn't drain like this.

Rating: 12 Positives / 1 Negatives

Tronic

Posted: 7 months ago

Tried it last week and haven't seen it make a difference

Rating: 9 Positives / 0 Negatives

slicecom

Posted: 7 months ago

iMessage too, anything else?

Turn on airplane mode. ;)

Rating: 8 Positives / 1 Negatives

room237

Posted: 7 months ago

I tried something this morning that seemed to help tremendously, i turned off the compass calibration. Havent gone below 90% all day.

What does this feature do? Don't we calibrate the compass by waving the phone around like a madman?

Rating: 6 Positives / 0 Negatives

bushido

Posted: 7 months ago

i always love those suggestions:

turn off 3G
turn off wifi
turn off location service
turn off push nots
turn off weather

what u have left is a phone without any usefulness

here's an idea, turn off the phone. it saves u battery life :p

Rating: 8 Positives / 3 Negatives

Matthew Yohe

Posted: 7 months ago

Yeah... I think this is magical thinking.

Just because the arrow is purple, doesn't mean "GPS IS ON RIGHT NOW AND I'M DRAINING ALL YOUR POWER! MUHAHAHA!" It simply means the service "Setting Time Zone" it's doing something with your location.

Furthermore, just because your location is "being used", this doesn't mean that your phone has to do any power hungry operation to obtain your location. It likely just looks at the cell environment that you're currently in which doesn't require constant transmissions to cell towers! I assume it's looking at the most recent cached tower information (within a reasonable time frame) and uses that.

Rating: 7 Positives / 2 Negatives

xii

Posted: 7 months ago

Three simple words. Does not work.

Rating: 5 Positives / 2 Negatives

shawnstring

Posted: 7 months ago

I tried something this morning that seemed to help tremendously, i turned off the compass calibration. Havent gone below 90% all day.

Rating: 3 Positives / 0 Negatives

seanwes

Posted: 7 months ago

I turned this off on my iPhone 4S yesterday, and now I have 81% at almost 5pm in the day after not having charged since last night. I think it helped me.

Rating: 2 Positives / 0 Negatives

room237

Posted: 7 months ago

I think it might have helped my battery life a little. But something is still draining it. iOS5 sucks on battery life.

Either way, why would someone want to keep this feature on? How often do you cross a time zone?

Rating: 4 Positives / 2 Negatives

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