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FIXED - iPhone 5 ios7 Battery Life (Reinstall)

Z

Zjgolf44

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 22, 2013
11
0
I've.been having battery life issues like quite a few others and I've tried all the "turn off settings" ideas out there. Basically my phone drained battery 2-3 times as fast as ios6. Plus the battery percentage would jump around really sporadically... Sometimes going down 5-10% at once without reason. I then tried doing a erase all content and settings. Again the results were still the same with poor battery life.

I then decided to do a reinstall by forcing a new ios7 download through itunes. (Search the web for "DFU reinstall itunes") I also deleted my icloud backup so I had to start fresh over. Since I did this a couple days ago I've turned all my settings back on and I'm getting GREAT battery life!! I'm amazes that doing a reinstall of the ios fixes things. I'm more amazed how great my battery life seem after a week of painful experience... Even though I know it's the same as with ioS6. I even have all the location, background refresh, and other small battery savers tips turned back to non saving modes. (Previously drained my battery after 3.5 hours of use and 7 hours of standby, now I can get 2x that after the reinstall) to be honest I haven't gotten it to drain completely by days end yet since doing the reinstall... I even used gps for 69 mins yesterday in addition to normal use)

So use or loose, but I think a reinstall is in order. There must be some bad downloads out there, or the over-the-air had some bugs. One thing it'd be good to hear from others if they've successfully done a restore after doing this, or if part of the solution is getting rid of the icloud backup as well. Cheers!

PS - it sure be nice for Apple to give us some hints on fixing this... They've got to have a ton of people having issues.
 
I did the same thing the other day, in fact it was my second time doing this. Unfortunately, it hasn't helped at all yet.
 
We've been preaching reinstall as NEW since Beta 1. Some people just don't want to do it or feel like they shouldn't have to but it does solve a lot of issues that linger.
 
My battery life is the same, no change at all between ios 6 & ios 7, ON - reduce motion and disabled background app refresh :rolleyes:, haven't done reinstall
 
Armen said:
We've been preaching reinstall as NEW since Beta 1. Some people just don't want to do it or feel like they shouldn't have to but it does solve a lot of issues that linger.
Click to expand...

or 99% of people don't know that they have to follow obscure steps to upgrade their easy to use Apple device. Just saying.
 
oplix said:
or 99% of people don't know that they have to follow obscure steps to upgrade their easy to use Apple device. Just saying.
Click to expand...

Since when is re-installing software fresh an obscure step? Just because Apple products are easy to use does not mean they are immune to issues that plague software upgrades in general.
 
For those of you not seeing any improvements after a full DFU reinstall through iTunes, are you starting fresh and deleting your backups before starting the process? I think the key may be to make sure there is no trace of what existed before.
 
Zjgolf44 said:
For those of you not seeing any improvements after a full DFU reinstall through iTunes, are you starting fresh and deleting your backups before starting the process? I think the key may be to make sure there is no trace of what existed before.
Click to expand...

i started fresh and a restore. both appear to be with negative results. battery life is still crummy.
 
funny thing is, my battery is perfectly fine when idle. i just logged my battery life over the past hour. from 3:32 am to 4:32 am, i dropped from 57% to 56%. anything from 0-3% per hour discharge i think is perfect. all i did was play two moves on words with friends. thats it.

its only when actively using the phone where the drain seems excessive...more than it was on ios 6. i could easily burn 2-3% in under 10 minutes.
 
Nuts... After a week of good battery life it seems yesterday and today I'm back to poor battery life. When it is going bad, like others, it seems like it drains quickly while in use. The phone also feels abnormally warm for not doing anything with the GPS... Just normal emails or browsing. Even though all apps are off, it's like something is running or a radio is acting up.
 
hmmm... Seems like after a clean reboot last night batter life seems to be better again today. Its like something is getting stuck running in the background even though I don't have any apps open. I use MS Lync and I noticed today even though I shut down the app, I continue to get alerts... hmmm
 
Zjgolf44 said:
hmmm... Seems like after a clean reboot last night batter life seems to be better again today. Its like something is getting stuck running in the background even though I don't have any apps open. I use MS Lync and I noticed today even though I shut down the app, I continue to get alerts... hmmm
Click to expand...

Push notifications and local notifications do not need the app to be running.
 
Zjgolf44 said:
hmmm... Seems like after a clean reboot last night batter life seems to be better again today. Its like something is getting stuck running in the background even though I don't have any apps open. I use MS Lync and I noticed today even though I shut down the app, I continue to get alerts... hmmm
Click to expand...

I remember a bug with iOS 5? It would keep the speaker running and nuke the battery. Could be a process is getting stuck open. Keep an eye on the apps you use, switch background refresh off. You might be able to pinpoint which part of the OS or which app is the culprit.
 
dictoresno said:
funny thing is, my battery is perfectly fine when idle. i just logged my battery life over the past hour. from 3:32 am to 4:32 am, i dropped from 57% to 56%. anything from 0-3% per hour discharge i think is perfect. all i did was play two moves on words with friends. thats it.

its only when actively using the phone where the drain seems excessive...more than it was on ios 6. i could easily burn 2-3% in under 10 minutes.
Click to expand...

Absolutely agree with you.
My idle drain is perfectly fine.
Usage is another thing: my iPhone 5 drains the battery faster than iOS 6.

I tried everything on and everything off to compare results and the difference is within 20 minutes, so all the "tips & tricks" found in the web are almost useless (and you miss all the great new things of iOS 7).

----------
irnchriz said:
I remember a bug with iOS 5? It would keep the speaker running and nuke the battery. Could be a process is getting stuck open. Keep an eye on the apps you use, switch background refresh off. You might be able to pinpoint which part of the OS or which app is the culprit.
Click to expand...

Background refresh alone change my iPhone 's endurance no more than 10 minutes in a day, if you remember to close background apps when not needed
 
Zjgolf44 said:
hmmm... Seems like after a clean reboot last night batter life seems to be better again today. Its like something is getting stuck running in the background even though I don't have any apps open. I use MS Lync and I noticed today even though I shut down the app, I continue to get alerts... hmmm
Click to expand...

Lync can zap it if you leave it running. Double-press your home button and end lync (swipe it upwards) when you're not using it
 
I've tried several methods and nothing seems to works (even the dfu restore and a cautelous selection of settings). I'm getting about 4.30/5 hours of usage. Just including browsing, twitter and Facebook. I'm so desperate that I just activate all the settings that iOS 7 brings (background refresh, automatic updates, etc). If I get less than 3 hours of usage I will try to get a replacement from apple. If usage remains the same then I won't even bother to turn those settings off and will move on.
 
My battery life stunk when I first installed iOS7. Then I turned off background app refresh, turned off the motion thingie, turned off auto upgrade for apps, and unchecked everything except contacts in spotlight search. Battery life is pretty good now.
 
Most of the time it's an app causing the problem. A clean install might later exhibit the same issue if you install the same apps. This is also why a simple reset may solve the issue (kills all processes).
 
i'm testing a new thing I stumbled across on the apple community forums. On my iP5 I put my old photos dating back from my 3GS & iP4 onto my iP5 photo albums, about 1000 of them. I removed the album via iTunes and synced the iPhone again and did a backup.

Apperantly some users on there had success with better battery life on removing photo albums that were synced to the iPhone via iTunes or iPhoto.

my iP5 on iOS 7 has been acting weird lately. I've done a restore and setup the iPhone as new and nothing helps. my iP5 died last night at 27%!!!??? It's died the previous times at no less than 9%. I used to be able to drain it all the way to 1% and sometimes show 0% for a minute then die.

we'll see?
 
... It seems to be getting better?? ...

Not sure on this, but it seems my iPhone 5 is slowly getting better over the weeks. I've tried all the tricks above, and now I'm back to a regular settings cause they didn't make much difference. The main thing was doing the DFU reinstall as new like I stated in my first post.

At the end of today I have used my phone 3 hours, standby for 18.5, and am at 40%. In location services I have many locations turned on, but I have all the system services turned off. I have had wifi turned on all day.
 
Nothing changed for me.
I tried everything.
Everything.
Spent a lot of time in downloading again iOS and apps, with no results.

I'm sure, nothing is wrong on my iPhone nor in my apps.
Now I have almost nothing installed on it, and usage time can't reach 5 hrs.

I think is a combination of poor network coverage and iMessage use.
What I can't explain is why the same combination in iOS 6 was 2 hrs better than this.
 
So has anyone found a solution to the battery issue as of today? My percentage jumps around and the phone will shut off at 33%, 22% etc.
 
69JOMAC said:
So has anyone found a solution to the battery issue as of today? My percentage jumps around and the phone will shut off at 33%, 22% etc.
Click to expand...

If it happens once, forget it.
If it happens several times I suggest to have your iPhone checked at the nearest apple Store.
 
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