Apple confirms iPhone battery issue

Apple confirmed Wednesday its latest iOS 5 mobile operating system was causing a battery problem identified by iPhone 4S customers and that a fix was coming. "A small number of customers have reported lower than expected battery life on iOS 5 devices," Apple said in a statement released on technology news site AllThingsD. "We have found a few bugs that are affecting battery life and we will release a software update to address those in a few weeks." Complaints about the battery life of Apple's latest iPhone 4S smartphone have been piling up on the Internet recently. On Apple's official support forums, some iPhone 4S owners said their handsets' battery drained more than 10 percent every hour, even when in standby mode with some advanced features like Siri and location services completely deactivated. Last Friday, British newspaper the Guardian first reported that Apple engineers had contacted some iPhone 4S owners and installed a diagnosis file on their devices to send more details back to the company's headquarters in Cupertino, California. On Wednesday afternoon, Apple seeded a beta version of iOS 5 on its developer site, fixing a handful of bugs for the first time since the system was released on Oct. 12. According to technology news site Apple Insider, the new version contains improvements and updates including fixes for bugs affecting battery life.