Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPhone 5 Battery Life May Be Impacted Greatly by Cellular Signal Strength
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Had same exact issue. Restarted my hone as new phone. Yes pain in ass to redo everything, but absolutely worth it. Battery is amazing. I'm at 12 hours of standby and 3.5 of usage and only at 55%
Mines fine. I unplugged from 7 in the morning till midnight with about 25 percent left to go back to charging. Just don't work out the phone. For example turn the brightness down, kill any unnecessary apps in the task manager, turn off any unwanted notifications, Turn off cellular data when you are in wifi. Now that is for just minimum usage. If your going to mess with the phone like 20 minutes straight and not do any of the stuff above than it will drain.
Bend the laws of nature?
The Android and windows phone makers bent the laws of nature by......adding larger batteries because LTE draws far more power!
Apple added a power hungry LTE radio, faster hardware, and a bigger screen. Same battery size.
Think people. Imo, apple should have put in a larger battery instead of useless thinness
I'm optimistic Apple will learn from their mistakes eventually. If not, I'll get a nexus phone. And yes, I'm in contract, but that doesn't really matter since I'm planning to buy the iP5S outright to keep my unlimited data.
For the record, I have an iPhone 4S and I get phenomenal battery life. Even back in October 2011 when I first got it.
You're using it wrong, stupid
the problem is that laptops and smart phones are meant to be plugged in to a power supply until you need to walk away from the cord. most people use a cell at home or in a car or at work so if you just plug it in then plug it in it will last most people a very long time. just because it can be run on the battery doesn't mean it should or needs to be used till its at 5%. this sucks now because of the 30 to 9 pin change but it will keep you from having a low battery.
and before anyone starts complaining about how that kills the battery i have had a 3g, 4, and 4s and never had any issues with lowered battery capacity when i would have it off the charger for a full day.
the problem is that laptops and smart phones are meant to be plugged in to a power supply until you need to walk away from the cord. most people use a cell at home or in a car or at work so if you just plug it in then plug it in it will last most people a very long time. just because it can be run on the battery doesn't mean it should or needs to be used till its at 5%. this sucks now because of the 30 to 9 pin change but it will keep you from having a low battery.
and before anyone starts complaining about how that kills the battery i have had a 3g, 4, and 4s and never had any issues with lowered battery capacity when i would have it off the charger for a full day.
The first day I had the i5, I had it in my pocket in an area where 3G gets 1-2 bars. The battery basically drained in a few hours. iPhone 4 didn't do that in the same location.
I turned off LTE and things vastly improved in the battery department. The phone wastes a lot of energy looking for LTE when it can't find it.
While LTE is fast at my house (20+), it's not as fast in many other areas around me, while the 3G+ ("4G") is fast enough. And at home, while LTE is fast, I'm on WiFi, so who cares?
I'm not exactly sure why anyone needs to leave LTE on all the time, frankly. 3G+/4G is plenty fast for loading web content, mail including attachments and pdfs, streaming music, etc. When you really want to consume bandwidth, like video streaming or uploading a days worth of photos or downloading tons of apps and songs and you aren't near WiFi, then you can turn on LTE and do it...
I turned off LTE and things vastly improved in the battery department. The phone wastes a lot of energy looking for LTE when it can't find it.
While LTE is fast at my house (20+), it's not as fast in many other areas around me, while the 3G+ ("4G") is fast enough. And at home, while LTE is fast, I'm on WiFi, so who cares?
I'm not exactly sure why anyone needs to leave LTE on all the time, frankly. 3G+/4G is plenty fast for loading web content, mail including attachments and pdfs, streaming music, etc. When you really want to consume bandwidth, like video streaming or uploading a days worth of photos or downloading tons of apps and songs and you aren't near WiFi, then you can turn on LTE and do it...
A few comments:
1) I never understand blogs that call themselves tech sites, but they don't spring for real scientific test equipment. At the same time, some people bash sites, like Consumer Reports, that DO have genuine cellular test setups that can deliver consistent results across all devices.
2) Remember, most people play a lot extra with new phones. I never take anyone's battery reviews seriously until after they've had the phone for at least a couple of weeks.
3) Apple's battery longevity specs came from fairly weak testing. E.g. for LTE browsing time, their test consists of reading a web page once every three minutes, and receiving one email per hour... from their own servers on their own dedicated cell site.
1) I never understand blogs that call themselves tech sites, but they don't spring for real scientific test equipment. At the same time, some people bash sites, like Consumer Reports, that DO have genuine cellular test setups that can deliver consistent results across all devices.
2) Remember, most people play a lot extra with new phones. I never take anyone's battery reviews seriously until after they've had the phone for at least a couple of weeks.
3) Apple's battery longevity specs came from fairly weak testing. E.g. for LTE browsing time, their test consists of reading a web page once every three minutes, and receiving one email per hour... from their own servers on their own dedicated cell site.
My iPhone 5's battery is significantly better than my old iPhone 4. On LTE, I get around 4 or 5 bars. I find it much harder to go through 1% of battery life on the 5 than the 4. If my iPhone 5 is asleep, it goes down slower than the 4. With that said, I made sure to go down to 0% on my i5 and then charge to 100% when I first got the phone.
It's not 'me', it's my phone. And again, I am not on LTE . If my city had LTE I would be using it.
In other news... Water is Wet, Sky is Blue.
Really though, my iPhone 5 gets maybe 4-5 hours TOPS with moderate usage.
i rarely see LTE coverage, i pop in and out of it ocasionally.. i wonder if disabling LTE would help the battery situation..
I also noticed, the device gets insanely warm
Really though, my iPhone 5 gets maybe 4-5 hours TOPS with moderate usage.
i rarely see LTE coverage, i pop in and out of it ocasionally.. i wonder if disabling LTE would help the battery situation..
I also noticed, the device gets insanely warm
I have never turned LTE off since I turned the phone on last Friday. And in my office building, the warehouse, where I spend 80% of my time, the company wifi signal is very weak, and constantly switches back and forth from 1 or 2 bars of wifi, to LTE. My battery has been great! Today, I got 7 hrs of usage, with 15hrs of standby. It finally shut off at 10:15. And today was the first day I let it totally drain before connecting it to the charger.
I am very satisfied with my battery life. It's slightly better then my 4S and the LTE speeds I'm getting are just totally amazing.
I am very satisfied with my battery life. It's slightly better then my 4S and the LTE speeds I'm getting are just totally amazing.
Actually this is wronger then anything, while Android phones have bigger batteries, the phones also have much bigger screens with inefficiently designed java apps that eat your battery on Android. Also there is much more rogue apps on Android that sap your battery then compared to iOS app store, it isnt a comparison really. My GS3 doesnt have great battery life, its not bad at all, but its not great even though it has a 2100 mah battery. Id say the battery on my GS3 only last about 10% longer then my 4S that i used to have.
I am most likely getting a i5 within the next month or so and i am sure i will be able to squeeze out a good amount of battery on that, probably around the same battery life as my GS3 right now which is fine with me
Nice, I feel like alot of people dont really know what to turn off in settings to extend their battery life. Like I tell my friends with iPhones how to have longer lasting battery and i will go through their settings to see what can be turned off etc, and I always find Bluetooth on, (even though they never use it, and they donteven realize) diagnostic tests sent to Apple, Location Services on( even when their not using GPS) and all this other crap and im just like "wow your battery should be much better now.
I also have a habit of restarting my phone daily to get the best signal and to just restart the machine so it stays running better.
----------
Either your doing something wrong or your phone is defective.
[/COLOR]
Either your doing something wrong or your phone is defective.[/QUOTE]
well, i was doing gps navigation and streaming music over bluetooth.. but i was plugged in for this.. with the phone sitting in my pocket and slight use at the doctors waiting room almost killed it..
but still.. i could almost watch the battery percentage drop in real time.
Either your doing something wrong or your phone is defective.[/QUOTE]
well, i was doing gps navigation and streaming music over bluetooth.. but i was plugged in for this.. with the phone sitting in my pocket and slight use at the doctors waiting room almost killed it..
but still.. i could almost watch the battery percentage drop in real time.
Why is having long battery life a bad thing? The RAZR MAXX isn't perfect, but it runs and runs and runs on a charge and I like that.
Yes, disable LTE. If you are in spotty LTE locations, it's not worth it. ATTs previous "4G" is still plenty fast for most uses, and your battery will last much longer. If you get to an area you know has LTE and you really need a lot of bandwidth, turn it on for that period and then turn it back off.
Also, don't play Gems with Friends. Even on an iPhone 5, the fastest cell phone on the market, it EATS battery. Probably the worst coded game ever released. I wish I didn't like playing it...
Last night I realized there was a setting to turn off LTE. So, I did this and my battery life was markedly better today. I think my phone had constantly been looking for LTE, when LTE isn't available in my area at this time.
Just a suggestion for those of you in areas without LTE.
Update: I guess I should have read through the whole tread before posting, I see a couple of others have suggested this also. It works!
Just a suggestion for those of you in areas without LTE.
Update: I guess I should have read through the whole tread before posting, I see a couple of others have suggested this also. It works!