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How should you treat your iPhone 5 battery?

R

ReetC

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 8, 2012
28
0
Toronto
When you first recieve it, are you supposed to kill it and let it charge back to 100% a couple of times? is there a certain time you're supposed to charge it to maximize your battery life such as charging it only below 20% and killing the phone battery once a month? Any tips?:confused:
 
i just charge it whenever i want, don't be too busy with this kind of thing. just enjoy the product. by the time the battery goes bad, your iPhone will be obsolete anyway.
 
Just use your phone and don't stress. Sometimes we spend so much time stressing over everything that we don't actually enjoy using the device! I used my iPhone 4 for almost 3 years with no battery degradation by just charging it when it needed to be charged. Sometimes I let it run out, sometimes I don't, depends on where I am and what I am doing.

Relax! Use your phone! :rolleyes:
 
I've read that charging all the way down might be suboptimal. The recommendation to do full decharge and then recharge is for older battery technology from many years ago. But that recommendation still lives on in lore.

Reality is that you shouldn't worry about it. iPhone 5 is supposedly most repairable iPhone yet. Battery replacement a year or two from now should be fairly inexpensive or something you can do yourself in 20 minutes for $20 in tools and a $10 battery.

Quote from iFixit:
In the 3GS, the display assembly was easy to take out, but the battery was a pain. In the 4 and 4S, the display assembly took 38 steps to remove, while the battery was a breeze. We like to think that Apple has started tailoring to our preferences in allowing us to remove both the display assembly and the battery in only a couple of steps.
 
I usually charge my phone at the end of the day when I go to bed. Once a month I let the battery die completely and charge it back up to 100% to calibrate the battery.

With that said, I have not yet calibrated my iPhone 5 battery since I received about 3 weeks ago.
 
I've had a smart phone since way back when and the saying "old habits die hard" is very true. I didn't feel right doing the first charge until it was completely dead and so i killed the battery, charged it up fully (without using the phone until it was completely charged) and I killed it again and did a full charge and I realized that my usage time went down by an hr. Not sure if it is fully related to killing the battery or not. So i went online and looked up some charging tips for the iP5 and apples website states not to kill it and to charge it when it's almost dead and to only kill it ONCE A MONTH to that it can get a charge cycle reading. So now I've been charging it once it hits 5% and i've seen an increase in my usage time.
 
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I think it's a legit question. Maybe the OP isn't necessarily "stressing" about it but maybe they're in a position like me where the phone is going to need to get 2-3 years of service and they'd like to ensure that the battery is maintained properly from the beginning. I pass my phone down to my wife after a year so I can get a new one. I try to keep it in as new of condition (functionally and cosmetically) as possible for her. As such, I try to take proper care of the battery from the beginning.
 
Not worth thinking about. My iPhone 4 is almost 2.5 years old, and I'm currently at nearly 4 days of standby and 6 hours of usage in this charge cycle. I charge it when I feel like it.
 
zhenya said:
Not worth thinking about. My iPhone 4 is almost 2.5 years old, and I'm currently at nearly 4 days of standby and 6 hours of usage in this charge cycle. I charge it when I feel like it.
Click to expand...

Same here. Old iPhone 4, battery is still better my new HTC.

I used to stress about the battery all the time but you know what that did? Stressed me out :p

Just charge it when you need to and when it's convenient and enjoy the phone!
 
zhenya said:
Not worth thinking about. My iPhone 4 is almost 2.5 years old, and I'm currently at nearly 4 days of standby and 6 hours of usage in this charge cycle. I charge it when I feel like it.
Click to expand...

Holy shath! 2yrs later you still get 6hrs of usage time with a 4day standby?! Is that normal for iPhones? I've had windows, blackberry, and android phones and I can't remember a phone giving me 6hrs of usage time and still have a good standby time.
 
tvith said:
Holy shath! 2yrs later you still get 6hrs of usage time with a 4day standby?! Is that normal for iPhones? I've had windows, blackberry, and android phones and I can't remember a phone giving me 6hrs of usage time and still have a good standby time.
Click to expand...

If I leave my iPhone on standby and literally do nothing to it, yes it will last days. iPhones have excellent batteries compared to other smartphones. The only smartphones which are better are probably the old BlackBerries, they could go on forever. The battery life in new BlackBerries is just as terrible as normal smartphones though.
 
Leonard1818 said:
I think it's a legit question. Maybe the OP isn't necessarily "stressing" about it but maybe they're in a position like me where the phone is going to need to get 2-3 years of service and they'd like to ensure that the battery is maintained properly from the beginning. I pass my phone down to my wife after a year so I can get a new one. I try to keep it in as new of condition (functionally and cosmetically) as possible for her. As such, I try to take proper care of the battery from the beginning.
Click to expand...

What a wonderful husband you are! You give your wife old technology so you can have the latest and greatest? What a putz! That'd be grounds for divorce in my house!
 
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