Apple has finally acknowledged the battery drainage issues that is affecting iOS 5 users and is working on a fix.

On Wednesday the Cupertino firm pushed to developers a beta version of iOS 5.0.1 that will fix the battery problem as well as resolving other bugs and bringing back the multitasking gestures to iPad 1that otherwise needed a tweak to be activated.

The primary fixes in the developer build 9A402 are:

- Fixes bugs affecting battery life
- Adds Multitasking Gestures for original iPad
- Resolves bugs with Documents in the Cloud
- Improves voice recognition for Australian users using dictation
- Contains security improvements

While we wait for the stable iOS 5.0.1 release that according to Apple should be available in a few weeks, there are a few things you could do to improve the battery life of your device if you’re finding it particularly poor.

The main battery drain seems to be caused by the Location Services, therefore if you go to Settings > Location Services and disable all the services you don’t use, it will spare some battery. Then scroll to the bottom and tap on System Services and turn off the Setting Time Zone.