( CNN ) -- It all sounds eerily familiar . A new iPhone . Massive sales . Then , an apparent glitch that , while it does n't affect everyone , is prevalent enough to irk customers and catch the eyes of tech journalists everywhere . Poor battery life on the iPhone 4S , released on October 14 to great fanfare and record sales , has been the new model 's Achilles ' heel in the minds of many users . While complaints about the perceived problem have n't reached the fevered pitch that last year 's iPhone 4 release saw about its so-called `` death grip '' problem , they do n't seem to be going away . There were , of course , the expected number of early-adopter quibbles with the phone : from troubles with new carrier Sprint , to a sometimes slow-moving camera , to limits on the voice-activated Siri `` personal assistant '' outside the United States . But as most of those gripes either got sorted or users got used to the limitations , complaints about the phone 's battery life have persisted . A post on the Apple support forums , begun on October 15 to discuss battery problems , was still active Tuesday -- two weeks and 185 pages worth of comments later . `` I purchased what I thought was a top-of-the-line product only to be terribly disappointed , '' one user wrote Tuesday . `` This is my first iPhone and may well be my last . '' Battery life was a frequent complaint about the iPhone 3GS , but concerns about the phone 's short battery life seemed to have been addressed on the next-generation iPhone 4 . According to Apple 's official specs , the iPhone 4S should have enough juice in the battery for up to eight hours of talk time , six hours of Internet surfing , 10 hours of video viewing and 200 hours on standby . ( All activities on a 3G connection -- 2G and wireless have different figures ) . All of those numbers are within an hour or so of the iPhone 4 , except for one . The older phone 's specifications promise 300 hours of standby power : a full 50 % more than the 4S . Users complaining on the Apple forum and elsewhere say that their phones are n't lasting anywhere near even that reduced length of time . Various independent tests of the new phone have suggested that some phones have problems with poor battery life , while others do n't . The general consensus among tech-inclined owners is that the problem may not lie with the battery itself , but with the way the phone utilizes Apple 's latest mobile operating system , iOS 5 . Specifically , the theory goes , its location-based services are a power drain . If the phone is constantly trying to pinpoint where it is , it will suck power even when the user is n't actively doing something with the phone . ( For a comparison , think about how quickly your battery drains when you forget to turn off Wi-Fi searches while you 're driving . ) The new phone also has a more powerful processor -- the same one that 's in the iPad 2 . That could cut battery life , even though Apple CEO Tim Cook specifically said that it would n't during the iPhone 4S unveiling event last month . Apparently , reading from the well-worn Apple playbook , the company has not commented publicly about the battery complaints . Messages and e-mails to Apple seeking comment on these complaints were not returned . It 's unclear whether the company acknowledges there 's a battery problem ( although there have been reports that Apple is contacting iPhone 4S users to try to get to the bottom of it ) . And while it 's too early for direct comparisons , the extended silence looks remarkably like the public-relations two-step that was Apple 's handling of the iPhone 4 's antenna issues . ( As you may recall , Consumer Reports and others said the iPhone 4 had antenna problems that caused it to drop calls . People dubbed the situation `` Antennagate . '' ) First , the company refused to publicly acknowledge the issue . Then , there was a software patch apparently aimed at fixing it ( although Apple never explicitly said so ) . There would eventually be a news conference in which then-CEO Steve Jobs spent most of the time denying there was any real problem , then announcing that the company would give away free bumpers -- minimalist iPhone cases -- to prevent dropped calls . But before that , there were the private e-mails and public statements saying , in essence , that users were holding their phones wrong . Then , weeks after the free-bumper news conference , Jobs and others doubled back , saying that there was never really much of a problem and discontinuing the freebie program . As Apple 's silence persists ( the company has said in the past that it spends time researching potential problems before addressing them publicly ) , users and observers are complaining and speculating in the vacuum . And that 's not always pretty . `` It hits you when you least expect it . It slips away under a mask of dormant inactivity . And it can ruin your entire day , '' TechCrunch 's Jordan Crook wrote Tuesday . `` It 's your iPhone 4S battery life , and it sucks . ''
Complaints about iPhone 4S battery life mount . Some iPhone owners say their batteries drain much faster than advertised . Apple has not publicly acknowledged the concerns . Comments on a post on Apple 's support forums go for 185 pages .