"Enabling 3G" On My iPhone 5 Drains The Battery

This is true for every phone ever, 3G radios use more power than regular GPRS or EDGE. If you have poor 3G reception in your area it gets even worse.

If you're worried about it only enable 3G when you're using data.

Are you getting 3G with t-mobile? If not, it's simply wasting battery looking for 3G signal. The same would be true for any phones where there's no cellular connectivity (in the mountain, etc.), in which case it's better to turn it off.

beeinformed said:

Not yet. I am one block away from that blissful moment!

Click to expand...

Then keep it off. It's wasting battery searching for 3G signals.

Mine runs on 4G constantly since AT&T's so strong in my area. The last time I saw 3G was on my iP4S.

But this is the very use of a smartphone.


In my experience closing bluetooth helps reducing battery drain without crippling your device.

haruhiko said:

But this is the very use of a smartphone.


In my experience closing bluetooth helps reducing battery drain without crippling your device.

Click to expand...

Another battery hog is Passbook. I downloaded some passes which without my knowledge it's set to update location periodically. Every time I turned on the screen I saw a location arrow appeared then disappeared quickly and my battery was draining really quickly. I finally found out the culprit that's Passbook.

I disabled the location services for Passbook and my battery life has since returned to normal.

haruhiko said:

But this is the very use of a smartphone.


In my experience closing Bluetooth helps reducing battery drain without crippling your device.

Click to expand...

Bluetooth is the biggest battery killer for me. I use it daily in my car, so I leave it on all the time. I am on vacation and I don't have my car so I turned off my Bluetooth and my battery life is amazingly better. Not that my battery was bad while on Bluetooth, but the difference is noticeable.

great thread

Baggio said:

Bluetooth is the biggest battery killer for me. I use it daily in my car, so I leave it on all the time. I am on vacation and I don't have my car so I turned off my Bluetooth and my battery life is amazingly better. Not that my battery was bad while on Bluetooth, but the difference is noticeable.

Click to expand...

Even my big iPad, which has insanely great battery life, eats battery like crazy when it's connected to a bluetooth keyboard. LTE actually helps saving battery since everything finishes loading faster. The biggest culprits are location services and bluetooth.

beeinformed said:

Do you have more battery drainage using 4G on your iPhone 5?

Click to expand...

No interestingly enough, I keep very close track of my battery usage. Using my iPhone 5, in the same exact manner (heavy daily usage) I get very good battery life.

I make it a practice of not quoting run times, since they vary so significantly depending on a whole host of variables including usage.

But suffice to say that I don't turn down display brightness all the way, it's usually at about 40%, and I do use push notifications for my five email accounts which receive about 60 emails a day, etc. So it's not like I go to extreme measures to eek out every bit of battery life. I'm on the web a lot (wishing for a larger display) and use Evernote and other apps frequently.

I use my iPhone, as a smartphone, unlike my parents for example that only use a small number of all the phones features.