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Battery life - iphone 5 and ios 7

M

mrdm

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 21, 2010
158
10
I know there are numerous variables and various tricks that can be done to improve battery life but my iphone 5 running ios 7 has definitely taken a performance hit versus when it was running ios 6.

Arstechnica discovered a 3 hour difference when browsing wifi connected - specific to the iphone 5 alone:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/09/ios-7-thoroughly-reviewed/6/

Middle of the page...

This could explain a lot of what I am seeing as I tend to use the browser often. I'm not sure why the problem would only appear on the 5 but I truly hope apple fixes it.

Anyway, thought I would pass this along so others don't go mad trying to tweak settings after turning brightness down doesn't improve the situation :).
 
I noticed a drop in battery life on my iPhone 5 that I purchased for Christmas last year when I installed iOS 7, I got it replaced and since yesterday morning I've gone through the first full charge on the new phone. According to iBackupBot it had 97,5 % battery health and had already been through a full charge cycle.

I charged it overnight, took it off the charger at 8 am yesterday, right now it's 9 am where I am, and I'm at 7h44 usage with 13 % battery left. I slept for 8 hours, and the battery fell from 25 % to 20 % during that time. That's 7h44 of active screen time by the way, killing all apps when locking the screen, no background apps such as playing music pushing the usage time up without the screen being on.

Safari, e-mail, texting, Facebook, Instagram, about an hour worth of playing Clash of Clans (a real battery killer) and some misc app use. Pretty much 100 % on wifi, very little cell data usage.

I'm gonna let it run until it dies, then check the LowBattery log to see what I managed to get out of it.
 
Yeah I've definitely noticed a huge drop in battery life. Today downloading an app it fell by 5% just downloading it.

As far as battery life decreasing from browsing, maybe it has something to do with the unlimited tabs. Just a wild guess though.

Even just typing this on my 5 the battery has dropped by 2%. Hopefully it'll be fixed in the next update.
 
Are you using it on 3G or Wifi? I'm finding rapid drain in the order or 1% per 1-2 minutes during usage on 3G. Standby and WiFi usage times seem ok. There no LTE here, so can't comment on that.
 
I feel like i must be the only one who is going against the grain with these battery life issues!

Battery life was not great on IOS6 for me, since i updated to IOS7 my battery life has been fantastic. Im often getting to the end of the day with more than 50% life. Getting 8-10 hours usage according to the data in the phone. Have background refresh on but parallax off and dynamic wallpapers off. Then again i only switched those off recently and battery life was still good before that.

Guess I'm one of the lucky few!

iPhone 5 by the way, and I'm finding no difference when using 3G as opposed to WIFI, i still get great battery life.
 
Lexical said:
I feel like i must be the only one who is going against the grain with these battery life issues!

Battery life was not great on IOS6 for me, since i updated to IOS7 my battery life has been fantastic. Im often getting to the end of the day with more than 50% life. Getting 8-10 hours usage according to the data in the phone. Have background refresh on but parallax off and dynamic wallpapers off. Then again i only switched those off recently and battery life was still good before that.

Guess I'm one of the lucky few!

iPhone 5 by the way, and I'm finding no difference when using 3G as opposed to WIFI, i still get great battery life.
Click to expand...


I agree I'm getting mostly all day battery life
I wake up at 6am everyday and by the time it's 10pm it's around 25%
I do a lot if heavy browsing morning times at work in the afternoon I mostly do texting
Background refresh on, parallox on
 
i'm getting outstanding battery life. i5 at&t. wouldn't say it's better than being on 6.1.4 but it sure isn't worse. charge it all night use it all day long lately i'm around 40% come nighttime before a charge again.
 
I used to get 50 minutes of usage for every 10% of battery power but now I get around 30 mins. I've done three clean DFU installs and set up as a new phone every time. All power hungry settings are switched off and all the new iOS7 settings are switched off. I am baffled by the comments that some people have perfectly good battery life with iOS7. This is absolutely not possible on my iPhone 5 no matter what I do.
 
sunking101 said:
I used to get 50 minutes of usage for every 10% of battery power but now I get around 30 mins. I've done three clean DFU installs and set up as a new phone every time. All power hungry settings are switched off and all the new iOS7 settings are switched off. I am baffled by the comments that some people have perfectly good battery life with iOS7. This is absolutely not possible on my iPhone 5 no matter what I do.
Click to expand...

Are you using an exchange account for mail ? I noticed that this was constantly going to the server. Deleting the account solved my battery problem.
 
Last time I saw decent battery life on an iPhone was iOS 5. iOS 6 and 7 really don't do great with battery life.
 
muon25 said:
Are you using it on 3G or Wifi? I'm finding rapid drain in the order or 1% per 1-2 minutes during usage on 3G. Standby and WiFi usage times seem ok. There no LTE here, so can't comment on that.
Click to expand...

using 3G on my iphone 5 on ios 6 also drain the battery, so I don't think it's an ios 7 problem.
 
sunking101 said:
You get 16+ hours of battery usage??
Click to expand...

I used to get up at 7 am and my phone would be dead by the end of work at 5pm.

Last night I got up at 7 am, spent the day at work, went to bed at 1.30 am and still had 30% battery....

This has happened everyday since I upgraded to iOS 7
 
PaulOBrain said:
Those who are getting really good battery life. Did you update or set up the phone as new?
Click to expand...

I restored to an iTunes backup, didn't just update.

See my previous post, I got 9h05 usage and 28h (and four seconds ;)) of standby before the battery died.
 
Thanks guys just curious. I did a DFU restore and restored from iCloud backup but getting poor battery life. Have all the power hungry settings turned off brightness is way down yet my battery is still dropping like a stone.

Strongly considering setting the phone up as new but don't want all the hassle if it's not going to make a difference.
 
PaulOBrain said:
Thanks guys just curious. I did a DFU restore and restored from iCloud backup but getting poor battery life. Have all the power hungry settings turned off brightness is way down yet my battery is still dropping like a stone.

Strongly considering setting the phone up as new but don't want all the hassle if it's not going to make a difference.
Click to expand...

I did all this last night. I uninstalled iTunes and downloaded it again. Then I did a DFU restore through iTunes and set up my iPhone 5 as a new phone. Then I switched off ALL the power hungry settings in iOS and ALL the new iOS7 features. Then I reset network settings and charged the phone fully whilst reinstalling all my apps. It took me hours. The handset performed beautifully for the first 40% of battery life and I thought I had fixed the problem. I then switched my phone off like I always do at bedtime. When I rebooted this morning the old battery drain fault reared its ugly head again :-(
My battery has plummeted today probably twice as fast as normal. There is definitely something wrong with iOS7, certainly where my iPhone 5 is concerned.
 
I just did a standard OTA update. Didn't restore or anything and as i previously said my battery life improved significantly.
 
Lexical said:
I just did a standard OTA update. Didn't restore or anything and as i previously said my battery life improved significantly.
Click to expand...

OK...right after update from 7.1.2 to 8 then 8.02 then 8.1 on all 8's battery life is awful. Bought a new battery...same things. Could it be bad mother-board?
 
I would not.

I have an ipad air on 7.1.2 it may never go beyond 7.

I have an iphone 5 on 6.1.4, no plans to go up with this, battery and speed are fantastic.

I have an iphone 6 on 8.0.2, not in a rush to go to 8.1.
 
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