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Battery life: when Apple says "10 hours" do they mean usage + standby?

JerTheGeek

JerTheGeek

macrumors 68000
Original poster
May 15, 2014
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Got to thinking about this; when Apple says you can get 10 hours of LTE web use, do they perhaps mean you can charge it up, use it off and on throughout the day and it will be 10 hours or so before you need a charge? Sounds a bit far fetched but so many people seem to be not getting near the battery Apple says. Could it be that the 5s battery really only lasts 5 hours for some users?
 
they mean 10 hours of actual use. So you unplug it at 100%, use it for LTE browsing for 10 hours, and then it dies. No standby included.

Personally, I do better than that on my iphone 6 (and did on my 5 as well) because I seem to get 10-12 hours of use PLUS a great deal of standby.

But it obviously depends on a lot of what exactly you're doing with it (games? GPS? video?) and whether you're in a low signal area (which will kill the battery life).
 
QCassidy352 said:
they mean 10 hours of actual use. So you unplug it at 100%, use it for LTE browsing for 10 hours, and then it dies. No standby included.

Personally, I do better than that on my iphone 6 (and did on my 5 as well) because I seem to get 10-12 hours of use PLUS a great deal of standby.

But it obviously depends on a lot of what exactly you're doing with it (games? GPS? video?) and whether you're in a low signal area (which will kill the battery life).
Click to expand...

I do a lot of Safari; along with messages and mail. Also cnet and nhl. I have a pebble connected.
 
if u were to just receive ur "new" iphone and surf the web, ideally u'd be able to achieve somewhere around 10hrs lte surfing as stated.
they also have a sort of fixed settings like, the level of brightness, etc.

their testbench doesn't factor in checking of mail running in the background, the notifications u'd receive from ur message apps, glitchy apps hogging the resources, bluetooth running, etc.

so u gotta factor down the stats urself by ur usage...

----------

i just realized that in ur OP, u mentioned the iPhone 5S.

i personally experienced that the iPhone 5 and 5S had horrendous battery life. i think it's because of apple's new venture into unchartered territory (64bits architecture)

it does get better with the 6.
 
JerTheGeek said:
Got to thinking about this; when Apple says you can get 10 hours of LTE web use, do they perhaps mean you can charge it up, use it off and on throughout the day and it will be 10 hours or so before you need a charge? Sounds a bit far fetched but so many people seem to be not getting near the battery Apple says. Could it be that the 5s battery really only lasts 5 hours for some users?
Click to expand...

Here is the testing procedure Apple uses to come up with its battery life estimates: https://www.apple.com/iphone/battery.html

Testing conducted by Apple in August 2014 using preproduction iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6 units and software, on both GSM and CDMA carrier networks. Internet over LTE tests were conducted over an LTE network using a dedicated web server. iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6 browsed snapshot versions of 20 popular web pages and received mail once an hour. All settings were default except: The Wi-Fi feature Ask to Join Networks and Auto-Brightness were turned off.
Click to expand...
 
I'm pretty sure it means 10 hours of actual use. However it's impossible for more than 6 and a half hours on my iPhone 6 with the brightness most of the time at 10-20%, location services stripped down, background app refresh turned off, mail set to fetch once an hour. I get good standby times but using the phone makes it drain really fast and get a little heat to it. 90% of what I do with it is Safari, (pretty much this site most of the time) Twitter, Instagram. Maybe checking snapchat stories briefly, then checking facebook once or twice a day at most.

This battery life is still better than when I got my phone at least with 8.0-8.0.2. I had "stacks+Backboardd" spammed in the logs 60+ times over a couple days, among other unusual things. Phone would drain 10 percent in my pocket in just 1 hour, it was bad. I once saw 3 hours and 50 some minutes of usage at 1 percent, I don't believe I played any games, and if I did it was just clash of clans or hay day for a bit, no heavy graphically intensive 3D games or anything. Software updates have repaired most of my problems, but for whatever reason, the way I use my phone drains it like mad when it seems like it shouldn't at all. I use my iPad for the same tasks at higher brightness (more clash of clans and hay day though) and still achieve over 9-11 hours of usage pretty regularly, and that thing has even lost over 400 mAh of battery capacity according to iBackupBot. No idea what the issue is. I get 2-4 bars of LTE typically, on wifi most of the time, Low Signal never really shows in the usage list.

I'm sorry that every single time battery life is brought up I write a paragraph how my iPhone 6 drains horrendously when using relatively lightly for little reason... Just can't find any answers, I've tried everything.
 
XTheLancerX said:
I'm pretty sure it means 10 hours of actual use. However it's impossible for more than 6 and a half hours on my iPhone 6 with the brightness most of the time at 10-20%, location services stripped down, background app refresh turned off, mail set to fetch once an hour. I get good standby times but using the phone makes it drain really fast and get a little heat to it. 90% of what I do with it is Safari, (pretty much this site most of the time) Twitter, Instagram. Maybe checking snapchat stories briefly, then checking facebook once or twice a day at most.

This battery life is still better than when I got my phone at least with 8.0-8.0.2. I had "stacks+Backboardd" spammed in the logs 60+ times over a couple days, among other unusual things. Phone would drain 10 percent in my pocket in just 1 hour, it was bad. I once saw 3 hours and 50 some minutes of usage at 1 percent, I don't believe I played any games, and if I did it was just clash of clans or hay day for a bit, no heavy graphically intensive 3D games or anything. Software updates have repaired most of my problems, but for whatever reason, the way I use my phone drains it like mad when it seems like it shouldn't at all. I use my iPad for the same tasks at higher brightness (more clash of clans and hay day though) and still achieve over 9-11 hours of usage pretty regularly, and that thing has even lost over 400 mAh of battery capacity according to iBackupBot. No idea what the issue is. I get 2-4 bars of LTE typically, on wifi most of the time, Low Signal never really shows in the usage list.

I'm sorry that every single time battery life is brought up I write a paragraph how my iPhone 6 drains horrendously when using relatively lightly for little reason... Just can't find any answers, I've tried everything.
Click to expand...

It's really annoying! I kinda want the 6 plus just cause of the battery; but that thing is just too huge; I love my 5s and it's super compact size.
 
Let me put some simple LOGIC into this question.

If it meant 10 hours standby, here is what would happen.

You would leave the house at 7am. Not use the phone at all. Then at 5pm before you even left work it would be dead. If you actually used the phone during the day, it might die by noon.

Of course, we all know that is not the case. There are folks that can go a day or two or more without charging. Not most of the people on this board of course because we are data sucking nerds. LOL!
 
usage is not SOT. When they say usage they mean that stat that everyone confuses for SOT.

Your phone pulling data for emails, text, notifications, etc. counts towards usage.

For example, I have pulled my phone out of my pocket 1 time this morning for maybe 5 mintues, but my usage says 1 hour 43 mins. I will probably see 10 hours of usage. My standby is at 5 hours 43 mins.

That is what apple means by usage.....not Screen On Time. It is clever and confuses the average joe. Android will give you screen on time. Try not to be confused when you hear someone with an iphone say 10 hours of usage and someone with an android phone say 4 hours of usage. They are probably comparing usage and screen on time, or apples to oranges.
 
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