Battery Usage

[jsnuff1]

Ok I need to try this another day, but I think I figured out where my issue is. I was getting 3-4 hours with the iPhone 5, and I just got 9:30

I have about 6 email accounts, and they are all set to push/fetch 15 min. I never thought checking email every 15 min would destroy battery like that but I guess it does. I changed all accounts to manual and got a lot more battery life.

I will test this again today, and then turn push/fetch back on to confirm.

 

[malibuboats91]

Last night my phone was at 25% so I decided to turn it off and charge it. Now today I'm at 71% with 4 hours of usage and 9 hours of standby. My battery life has dramatically increased.

 

[TroyBoy30]

Feel sorry for you guys having trouble. I've charged mine once since I got it Friday morning

 

[CSpackler]

Hey CSpackler, thanks for this suggestion and is exactly what battery university says. But how do you charge while the phone is off? ios6 automatically turns back on? Should i charge it on airplane mode. thanks!

Just turn it back off. It will stay off the second time.

I did notice that with 2-3 bars the battery does drain faster, so that's one explanation for those with lower battery life. Also if you get 20 notifications and 20 emails per hour, there ya go

 

[CanadaEh]

I let my battery drain, and completely turn off before I even charge it. I've done this about 2 times and my battery life has gotten A LOT better.

I now end off with

Usage: 5 Hrs
Standby: 16Hrs, 25 minutes

 

[LastZion]

Just turn it back off. It will stay off the second time.

I did notice that with 2-3 bars the battery does drain faster, so that's one explanation for those with lower battery life. Also if you get 20 notifications and 20 emails per hour, there ya go

I get that many easily so are you saying I can't make it through a day?
U - 4:09
SN - 10:26

1%

Brutal

 

[JFC]

Great Battery Here

I'm getting 3 full days, and this is with wifi turned off. I was only getting 2 days with my 4S. I'm very impressed.

 

[zschiffman]

i've had the battery go down quickly...but it stays at 1% for a few hours. just seems like it's reporting inconstantly. anyone else?

 

[danpass]

Ran it to 1% last night, plugged in, THEN turned it off.

This is today's run:

 

[CSpackler]

i've had the battery go down quickly...but it stays at 1% for a few hours. just seems like it's reporting inconstantly. anyone else?

My original iPhone 2G did this. I could never completely fix the issue no matter how many times I ran it down. Try charging it while turned off after it hits zero.

 

[CanadaEh]

Ran it to 1% last night, plugged in, THEN turned it off.

This is today's run:

 

[fongyuen]

My battery really hangs in there.
Let the battery discharge until the phone turns itself off. Then charge fully while the phone is off (you'll have to manually do this as it turns back on automatically). Charging while off prevents parasitic load, or when the battery and phone are vying for power and the battery gets confused where 100% should be.

well, following CSpackler's advice, ran it down to 0% yesterday, recharged while powered off and this is the result from yesterday afternoon till now. The last 10% I just streamed a movie trailer over and over on full brightness just to run it down to 1%. After the screenshot, got about 5 more min. of streaming the trailer, for a total of about 7 hours and 26 min. Not as good as CSpackler's 10 hrs but better i guess. this is with bt off, LTE off (no coverage in my area), wifi on, brightness set to about 1/3, 3 gmail push accts. don't feel like i did any heavy lifting so that's why i'm still a little disappointed with the battery life. mostly just emails, texting, surf the web, listen to music, watched a few videos, etc. during the overnight period, it dropped about 10% from 60% to 50%. I feel like this is more than the 4 that I owned previously.

 

[CSpackler]

well, following CSpackler's advice, ran it down to 0% yesterday, recharged while powered off and this is the result from yesterday afternoon till now. The last 10% I just streamed a movie trailer over and over on full brightness just to run it down to 1%. After the screenshot, got about 5 more min. of streaming the trailer, for a total of about 7 hours and 26 min. Not as good as CSpackler's 10 hrs but better i guess. this is with bt off, LTE off (no coverage in my area), wifi on, brightness set to about 1/3, 3 gmail push accts. don't feel like i did any heavy lifting so that's why i'm still a little disappointed with the battery life. mostly just emails, texting, surf the web, listen to music, watched a few videos, etc. during the overnight period, it dropped about 10% from 60% to 50%. I feel like this is more than the 4 that I owned previously.

I'm glad it helped a bit. I don't expect a magic bullet but charging it while off seems to improve it at least a little. A lot depends on signal strength I think. Also location services draws the most power. My 10+ hours were mostly at home with a full signal, only occasionally using location.

 

[fongyuen]

I'm glad it helped a bit. I don't expect a magic bullet but charging it while off seems to improve it at least a little. A lot depends on signal strength I think. Also location services draws the most power. My 10+ hours were mostly at home with a full signal, only occasionally using location.

ah yes, I forgot to say thanks! yeah, i think there was some article identifying signal strength as the main culprit. hopefully improvements can be made through software updates.

 

[remmy123]

Had mine looked at today at the Genius Bar. They found the software had corrupt stuff on it. They guessed it could have been from my last iPhone from either a funky song or app. They said corrupt software will only transfer over from a computer backup. It will NOT however, transfer the corrupt material from an iCloud backup.

 

[remmy123]

Battery is doing good now. Still kind of sucking because the phone is power housing downloads of all the apps and music over wifi at the car dealership I'm at right now. None the less, it's holding up fairly well.

 

[MrGimper]

I did 2 discharge/charge cycles and my most recent was:

Usage = 9h 25m
Standby = 1day 1hr

It actually increased usage by 2.5 hrs over the first recharge cycle.

 

[nwmtnbiker]

My battery is doing great and I'm really shocked! I have ran it down completely once and upon buying it did a dfu restore right off the bat. This is last nights usage while I was at work for 10 hours. Yes it was a very slow night... Couple hundred text messages, couple dozen emails and Facebook posts, couple hours of safari here on macrumors and a little solitaire.

 

[iViet]

Here's mine

 

[johnothy]

I erased my iPhone 5 and set it up as a new iPhone to hopefully improve battery life. I think it has helped. What I've noticed the most is the battery drains quicker when I am in areas with a low signal. I was in a restaurant last night and the battery dropped 12% in 30-40 minutes with hardly any use. The signal there was 1 bar on 3G/2G no LTE reception.

When I get 4-5 bars on the LTE signal or 3G signal the battery does far better. Ironically the reception on LTE is better where I live than the 3G signal seems to be (dropping back and forth to 2G at times). When I am in an area with 3G only, the phone seems to have better reception than my iPhone 4 did with 4-5 bars.

For me, it seems turning LTE off makes the battery worse, as the phone is constantly in and out of 3G and 2G. In the buildings I work in the signal is low however I usually connect to wi-fi. When my phone is connected to wi-fi, is the phone antenna disabled or is it still going between 3G/2G causing the battery to drain?

 

[jpcapili]

I noticed that my battery lasts longer if I'm using wifi where it's available. The question is if it hurts if I Leave it on where it is not available.

 

[macmaccy]

Finally I have GREAT battery life!!! My phone died 2 minutes after this screen shot.
Mostly wifi but some LTE. I had sooooo many issues with my 4s and poor battery life...

 

[emil3m]

I have poor reception in my apartment. The coverage outside the building is 4 bars on both LTE and 4G (on average). Inside the apartment, there is no LTE and about 1-2 bars for 4G.

Poor reception means radio is working extra hard to seek and/or maintain connection. I tunred off "cellular data," kept WiFi on. I was still able to make/receive phone calls, regular text messages, and iMessages (through WiFi).
***don't forget that my regular 4G still struggled at 1-2 bars, but I still need it to function as a phone ***

On my first trial I got 9 hours of usage and 21 hours of standby (I'm pretty sure that "standby" is always elapsing even when the phone is used, so it is not 30 hours). The usage part was all-encompassing: games, video, phone, texting, browsing, downloading, music streaming, music playback, and anything else i'm forgetting.

Other important info:
Brightness is set bellow the letters T&N (looks like about 40-45%) and on 'auto'.
I do not use nor have any desire to use: iCloud, Bluetooth, Siri, Miscelleneous location services (other than "cell tower search"), Automatic Time Zone setting.
I have 4 email clients--2 of them push emails, 2 fetch only when I open the mail client.
I did NOT go "terminator" on Push notifications--refuse to give up functionality--BUT I do pick wisely which apps TRULY NEED to be pushed to notify me.

At the end of this test, I let the phone die (as per Apple Website). It took 1hr 55min to fully charge (from the wall)--this is very welcome news!

It is POINTLESS for me to keep "cellular data" on at home since my phone doesn't even load google.com without wifi--THANKS AT&T!!! But I do wonder how long it will last outside.


Can you post more details with your screenshots? It would be helpful for all of us to know what settings/usage yield what results.

 

[macmaccy]

I did not change any settings out of the box. Everything is left as Apple had shipped it to me. My signal (Verizon) ranges between 2-full bars in my house. At work my signal is about 1-3 bars inside.
I place and receive many calls per day. I use internet a bit each day, very little gaming, use twitter several times a day, and various news/weather apps.

I can tell you that my 4s got less then a half day between charges. I always had to carry a cable to charge my phone because it would run out quickly.

Very happy with my iPhone 5...