iPhone 5 battery inquiry

MacBH928 · Dec 23, 2012

I recently switched from blackberry bold to my first iphone which is 5.
I find the battery life is completely unacceptable. The phone drained around 25% just by being on stand by over night.

During the day it will last about 9hrs after a full charge then it will just die. During those 9 hours I have not played any games or did any browsing nor talking or text. Mostly I just open twitter to check new tweets/instagram from time to time . I have the brightness on around 25% of the bar.

I do have iclouds enabled for : Contacts, Safari,, find my iphone, Calendar, reminders, although I do not use the calendar or the reminders(at least not yet).

I am running latest software update 6.0.2 I believe.

Is this the expected battery life of an iphone or am I doing something wrong?

I have an iPad with iClouds on for Safari and the battery couldnt be any better. It will last days of daily use. But the ipad is Wifi only.

Would love to hear any feedback

spyguy10709 · Dec 23, 2012

kingmohd84 said:
I recently switched from blackberry bold to my first iphone which is 5.
I find the battery life is completely unacceptable. The phone drained around 25% just by being on stand by over night.

During the day it will last about 9hrs after a full charge then it will just die. During those 9 hours I have not played any games or did any browsing nor talking or text. Mostly I just open twitter to check new tweets/instagram from time to time . I have the brightness on around 25% of the bar.

I do have iclouds enabled for : Contacts, Safari,, find my iphone, Calendar, reminders, although I do not use the calendar or the reminders(at least not yet).

I am running latest software update 6.0.2 I believe.

Is this the expected battery life of an iphone or am I doing something wrong?

I have an iPad with iClouds on for Safari and the battery couldnt be any better. It will last days of daily use. But the ipad is Wifi only.

Would love to hear any feedback

That's strange...

plug your phone into itunes and restore it. Not from backup, clean. Set it up as a new phone.

That should probably solve your issues....

Not too sure why it was draining so fast.

(Also if you have a very poor signal strength it can hurt battery life, but not drain it that fast)

JPNFRK7 · Dec 23, 2012

kingmohd84 said:
I recently switched from blackberry bold to my first iphone which is 5.
I find the battery life is completely unacceptable. The phone drained around 25% just by being on stand by over night.

During the day it will last about 9hrs after a full charge then it will just die. During those 9 hours I have not played any games or did any browsing nor talking or text. Mostly I just open twitter to check new tweets/instagram from time to time . I have the brightness on around 25% of the bar.

I do have iclouds enabled for : Contacts, Safari,, find my iphone, Calendar, reminders, although I do not use the calendar or the reminders(at least not yet).

I am running latest software update 6.0.2 I believe.

Is this the expected battery life of an iphone or am I doing something wrong?

I have an iPad with iClouds on for Safari and the battery couldnt be any better. It will last days of daily use. But the ipad is Wifi only.

Would love to hear any feedback

Check your location services settings. If apps are trying to get your location all the time that could be causing problems for you.

MacBH928 · Dec 24, 2012

Thanks for your replies .

I do not think that restoring my iphone as a new phone will help, as my iphone is only few days old and I restored/registered it as a new phone on itunes when I first got it.

I had location services on for few apps that I do not use such as Maps , google maps, Siri, And the weather.

I closed them all except for Siri.
Any way, if i have to switch off iclouds and location services thats like taking away iphone features away, which feels like i over paid for less features. Not getting the full experience.

Would love to hear more feedback

tann · Dec 24, 2012

My phone drains about 2% an hour overnight which is really ridiculous! I received 2 emails and 4 texts during that time so I don't know why it drained so much!

Wifi was on (v good signal), 3g and data were on (again 4/5 bars) lte off (in the UK).

MacBH928 · Dec 24, 2012

I have been out of home for about an hour and i just lost 20%. Looks like something is really wrong .

Hopefully its a firmware issue. Would like to hear if others faced similar issues

smooth · Dec 24, 2012

I just got my iPhone 5 a week ago. I had to charge it every night (compared to every night to every other night with my 2.5 year old iPhone 4). I looked on here and someone suggested to backup the phone and do a restore. I did that yesterday evening. So after about 16 hours with my usual usage and about 2 hours of iHeartRadio I am at 71%. That seems a little more normal, although not necessarily better than my iPhone 4 - but at least it doesn't seem worse.

tann · Dec 24, 2012

smooth said:
I just got my iPhone 5 a week ago. I had to charge it every night (compared to every night to every other night with my 2.5 year old iPhone 4). I looked on here and someone suggested to backup the phone and do a restore. I did that yesterday evening. So after about 16 hours with my usual usage and about 2 hours of iHeartRadio I am at 71%. That seems a little more normal, although not necessarily better than my iPhone 4 - but at least it doesn't seem worse.

Restore as new? Or what?

smooth · Dec 24, 2012

tann said:
Restore as new? Or what?

I restored from a back-up.

tann · Dec 24, 2012

smooth said:
I restored from a back-up.

May try this to see if it helps with my standby.

At the moment I can get more usage/standby out of mine than my 4S but it's still irritating on standby if I leave it overnight doing nothing.

smooth · Dec 24, 2012

tann said:
May try this to see if it helps with my standby.

At the moment I can get more usage/standby out of mine than my 4S but it's still irritating on standby if I leave it overnight doing nothing.

I was charging it every night the first week so I didn't really track the standby usages. It dropped 4% in about 8 hours last night.

tann · Dec 24, 2012

smooth said:
I was charging it every night the first week so I didn't really track the standby usages. It dropped 4% in about 8 hours last night.

That's good, mine with wifi/3g and data on (on do not disturb) uses about 1-2% an hour (about 10% for 7-10hours).

MacBH928 · Dec 24, 2012

Obviously this way the phone will not survive a full day out with light use (twitter, text, calls)

What would be a good solution?
My friend got some sort of a gadget that can hold about 3 full iphone charges that he can charge his 4s from when he is on the go.

Not sure if this is a convenient solution

darky90 · Dec 24, 2012

My friend had this issue too. He drained and charged it full a few times and it seems to be handling a bit better. Still not as good as my 4s though...

mikefly · Dec 24, 2012

I've had my phone for exactly 2 weeks. Battery life has been reasonable, until today.. While reading this post (on my laptop), battery has dropped 1%.

Took two photos an hour ago - dropped 2 percent.

Had to charge after 8 hours of light usage before going out to dinner. Used over 50% charge in the past 3-4 hours.

This is a little annoying.

MT

smooth · Dec 25, 2012

I also did a hard reset yesterday and charged it overnight. It's been off the charger for about 7 hours and is still at 100% with just minimal usage. That seems more normal for a brand new phone.

Chuchichan · Dec 25, 2012

If you just got it, I would return it and ask for a replacement. Even without Apple Care they should probably help you.

mikefly · Dec 25, 2012

I did the restore last night, and reimported everything back into the phone.
Today, the battery lasted through the day, and still has some juice left.

So, the suggestion posted above worked for me.

I did notice that usage time yesterday (settings.general.usage) was equal to the entire time the phone had been on.. so *something* was on and draining battery.

This seems to be solved, hope it sticks.

Nam Pla · Dec 25, 2012

From complaints I read here and other sites, battery life seems to vary quite a bit from phone to phone and user to user. Seems it should be far more consistent. I have no idea why they're not.

My old 4s was pretty bad when I first got it, then someone told me to drain it pretty low and then charge full a few times. Apparently 'new' batteries need to be 'seasoned' somewhat. This helped noticeably on that phone.

The latest 4s I've gotten was a brand new replacement for problems with my older one (not battery related), and from day one the battery has been amazingly good compared to my other 4s. I'm still trying to drain it when possible then charge full just to make sure.

Seems battery drain problems have long been a part of iPhone. Battery QC or component compatibility issues maybe? I (finally) got lucky this time.

MacBH928 · Dec 26, 2012

Yesterday my phone died almost after 5 hrs of constant use. Not sure if this is good or not, but I will try the restore method now.

As for draining the battery and recharging it, that happens daily since the phone loses charge so quickly

MacBH928 · Dec 26, 2012

I reseted my iphone and did not restore,
I sync-ed it as a new phone.

I lost about 10% in the first hour compared to 20% before the process yesterday so thats like my battery life doubled. so that helped a lot.

I will never understand how compters work

Nam Pla · Dec 26, 2012

kingmohd84 said:
I reseted my iphone and did not restore,
I sync-ed it as a new phone.

I lost about 10% in the first hour compared to 20% before the process yesterday so thats like my battery life doubled. so that helped a lot.

I will never understand how compters work

10% per hour doesn't sound good, better maybe but not good. Like others have said, go through all the settings and tweak and/or shut off all the notifications, push messages and alerts, and location services that you just don't need. That should help some.

Also I saw somewhere, another thread maybe, that shutting down iCloud for Safari saves battery life too. And there's a setting that automatically sets or adjusts your time/date. Set it manually and shut that off.

I always go through everything in the 'Settings' menu and disable whatever I just don't really need or use. There's some things that you don't realize are there and using battery, and the only way to know is to scour through every setting. If there's no change, go back to Apple and let them fix it or give you a new phone.

Good luck.

buddybd · Dec 26, 2012

Well what exactly were you doing when the battery drops?

If it's on standby and drops 10%, then you need to get yourself a replacement. I didn't touch my settings for these things and charge doesn't drop as fast as yours.

MacBH928 · Dec 27, 2012

i can not replace it, our telecommuincations companies rips us off.

it has to be physically damaged from the box.

Just wondering, what is expected charge lose with average use per hour

Nam Pla · Dec 27, 2012

kingmohd84 said:
i can not replace it, our telecommuincations companies rips us off.

it has to be physically damaged from the box.

Just wondering, what is expected charge lose with average use per hour

I'm not the best example because I really don't use the phone that much. But after my last full charge, I have 2 hrs 34 mins of usage, 1 day and 5 hrs of stand-by, and no calls during that time (past 2 days or so). That includes maybe an hour of music listening, and some browsing time reading news, checking email, and that kind of stuff. I'm now showing 61% battery after that last full charge.

You bought your phone from your phone service provider? Can't you still take it to Apple if it's still under warranty and you feel it's defective?

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