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For those who have an iPhone 5 updated to iOS 8.2

Ultra AleM

Ultra AleM

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 22, 2012
674
66
Italy
Hello, guys! Thanks for entering my thread. I have an iPhone 5 since 2012. I love it, but battery life is terrible. It's not eligible for the replacement program, and the battery's healthy. I just want you to help me understand what's the problem, or help me understand if my battery life is normal, after all, and my usage is just too heavy.

You can find 3 screenshots. One is representing the Wi-Fi usage situation with iOS 6 (3 years ago) while the second one with iOS 8.2 (this year). The third is on cellular data. As you can see everything got definitely worse. I tried a DFU recovery, but it just helped me to delete GBs of trash, not to improve my battery life.

I usually have everything on, except for background refresh or handoff, I manually turn off 4G and cellular data while on Wi-Fi. I have 5 mail addresses (push and 1h fetch). That's all.

Can you post your results specifying your usage and your settings? Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it!

iOS 6:

www.imageupload.co.uk/images/2015/04/03/image37027.jpg

iOS 8 (don't mind the signal):

www.imageupload.co.uk/images/2015/04/03/image16213.jpg

The situation becomes catastrophic when I leave wifi and enable cellular data, even with an extremely light usage:

www.imageupload.co.uk/images/2015/04/03/imageeac09.jpg
 
Well, what you have in your first two screenshots is about right. In iOS 6 the battery life was better for many, although many probably still didn't get as good of numbers as you got in your first screenshot. Since iOS 7 it went down overall for many as well, and what you have in your second screenshot is something that wouldn't be unusual. Now, your third screenshot certainly seems on the low side. Not quite sure what might be responsible for it in particular though.
 
Something to keep in mind is that your battery life is not going to be the same as it was when you first got the phone, even if you never upgraded the OS. Batteries age and lose some capacity over time.

My iPhone 5 still gets decent battery life for being just over two years old (January 2013). I posted on your other thread that I have background app refresh and Bluetooth turned off. I also limit unnecessary location services and close apps out of the switcher when I'm not using them (more of an OCD thing; It doesn't seem to help or hurt anything). For email I have three addresses set to manually fetch since I don't use it as a main form of communication. Bear in mind that the screenshot is from a Sunday. During the week I still get pretty good usage though.
 

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KUguardgrl13 said:
Something to keep in mind is that your battery life is not going to be the same as it was when you first got the phone, even if you never upgraded the OS. Batteries age and lose some capacity over time.

My iPhone 5 still gets decent battery life for being just over two years old (January 2013). I posted on your other thread that I have background app refresh and Bluetooth turned off. I also limit unnecessary location services and close apps out of the switcher when I'm not using them (more of an OCD thing; It doesn't seem to help or hurt anything). For email I have three addresses set to manually fetch since I don't use it as a main form of communication. Bear in mind that the screenshot is from a Sunday. During the week I still get pretty good usage though.
Click to expand...

Thanks to both of you for your kind replies. My battery was replaced 4 months ago thanks to the standby button repair program, so it's pretty healthy. When I'm out with 3G (I can't use 4G, it literally kills my battery in 2 hours of light usage) my battery life is really annoying. 4 hours of usage if I am lucky, 3 average.

PS: do you manually turn of cellular data while you're at home with wifi as I do?
 
Ultra AleM said:
Thanks to both of you for your kind replies. My battery was replaced 4 months ago thanks to the standby button repair program, so it's pretty healthy. When I'm out with 3G (I can't use 4G, it literally kills my battery in 2 hours of light usage) my battery life is really annoying. 4 hours of usage if I am lucky, 3 average.

PS: do you manually turn of cellular data while you're at home with wifi as I do?
Click to expand...

Something odd is going on there. It really shouldn't be using up the battery so quickly on 4G unless you are in truly horrible reception are perhaps. 4 or 3 hours of usage is rather low in general. Certainly needing to turn off cellular data or WiFi constantly here or there isn't how the vast majority uses their phones. Unless you really have bad reception (as in truly noticeably bad) almost all the time things should be better than that.
 
C DM said:
Something odd is going on there. It really shouldn't be using up the battery so quickly on 4G unless you are in truly horrible reception are perhaps. 4 or 3 hours of usage is rather low in general. Certainly needing to turn off cellular data or WiFi constantly here or there isn't how the vast majority uses their phones. Unless you really have bad reception (as in truly noticeably bad) almost all the time things should be better than that.
Click to expand...

When signal is bad, an alert shows up in the usage statistics. I usually have a good signal. Could the problem be the fact I have the same backup since 2009? But I keep my software very clean, and I often recover the default settings. Or may the problem be the 5 email accounts?
 
Ultra AleM said:
When signal is bad, an alert shows up in the usage statistics. I usually have a good signal. Could the problem be the fact I have the same backup since 2009? But I keep my software very clean, and I often recover the default settings. Or may the problem be the 5 email accounts?
Click to expand...

Have you tried wiping the phone, reinstalling iOS and NOT restoring your data?
 
Ultra AleM said:
Thanks to both of you for your kind replies. My battery was replaced 4 months ago thanks to the standby button repair program, so it's pretty healthy. When I'm out with 3G (I can't use 4G, it literally kills my battery in 2 hours of light usage) my battery life is really annoying. 4 hours of usage if I am lucky, 3 average.

PS: do you manually turn of cellular data while you're at home with wifi as I do?
Click to expand...

I don't turn off cellular data. My wifi isn't always the fastest, so I sometimes turn it off and use LTE instead. My iPhone is also my only phone, so I need cellular on for emergencies. I'm on Verizon in the US, so I get a good signal most places.
 
Ultra AleM said:
Thanks to both of you for your kind replies. My battery was replaced 4 months ago thanks to the standby button repair program, so it's pretty healthy. When I'm out with 3G (I can't use 4G, it literally kills my battery in 2 hours of light usage) my battery life is really annoying. 4 hours of usage if I am lucky, 3 average.

PS: do you manually turn of cellular data while you're at home with wifi as I do?
Click to expand...

My iPhone 5 had lousy battery life too. 6-6.5 hours of browsing on WiFi, or around 3 hours on 3G. Dreadful.
The battery was fine, the phone checked out fine and it had numerous clean installs of iOS to try and cure it. My 6+ gives me 10 hours of usage no matter whether 4G or WiFi.
 
sunking101 said:
My iPhone 5 had lousy battery life too. 6-6.5 hours of browsing on WiFi, or around 3 hours on 3G. Dreadful.
The battery was fine, the phone checked out fine and it had numerous clean installs of iOS to try and cure it. My 6+ gives me 10 hours of usage no matter whether 4G or WiFi.
Click to expand...

Do clean installs improve battery life? Or are they a loss of time and data?
 
Last edited:
I see that you use the Facebook app. that monster drains battery like crazy. Delete it and check your Facebook in Safari. Put location services for safari off. It's also better for your privacy.

(even better to dump Facebook and use ello or any other alternative not owned by creepy Mark)
 
Well I too have an iPhone 5. It was in the battery replacement program and battery life has gone 1 hour since around 5 hours but god I wish I still had battery life of iOS 6.. So brand "new" phone same as the person who started this thread. With iOS 7 I had around 6-7 hours. Hopefully iOS 9 brings it back again.
 
Mac-lover3 said:
Well I too have an iPhone 5. It was in the battery replacement program and battery life has gone 1 hour since around 5 hours but god I wish I still had battery life of iOS 6.. So brand "new" phone same as the person who started this thread. With iOS 7 I had around 6-7 hours. Hopefully iOS 9 brings it back again.
Click to expand...

Can you post a screenshot of your statistics? I'd like to make a comparison with you
 
Mac-lover3 said:
Sure! Here you go. I will post another when the battery is low.
Click to expand...
Thanks a lot. You're very helpful! Can you tell me which settings are you using? Is 3G enabled with Wi-Fi? How many mail accounts? Is background refresh on? Thanks so much!
 
Ultra AleM said:
Thanks a lot. You're very helpful! Can you tell me which settings are you using? Is 3G enabled with Wi-Fi? How many mail accounts? Is background refresh on? Thanks so much!
Click to expand...

Well Wi-Fi is ON all the time. 3G/4G disabled en enabled when needed. I have 3 mail accounts, refresh is manual though for all 3. Background refresh is on for around 7 apps (WhatsApp, Viber, Weather, Instagram, Messenger, some news apps). Location for most apps is "only when in use".
 
Mac-lover3 said:
Well Wi-Fi is ON all the time. 3G/4G disabled en enabled when needed. I have 3 mail accounts, refresh is manual though for all 3. Background refresh is on for around 7 apps (WhatsApp, Viber, Weather, Instagram, Messenger, some news apps). Location for most apps is "only when in use".
Click to expand...

Thank you! My settings are similar and I can get 3-4 hours of usage over 3G and 4-5 over Wi-Fi. Let's see how your iPhone 5 does...

PS: iOS 8.2, right?
 
Ultra AleM said:
Thank you! My settings are similar and I can get 3-4 hours of usage over 3G and 4-5 over Wi-Fi. Let's see how your iPhone 5 does...

PS: iOS 8.2, right?
Click to expand...

My brother's iPhone 5 (my old phone) can reach 5 hours of usage under 3G, and the battery is quite old.
I think 3 hours are definitely not right unless:
- You have a bad installation of software (in this case a reinstall as new could help);
- You are in a very poor network coverage area.
 
Max(IT) said:
My brother's iPhone 5 (my old phone) can reach 5 hours of usage under 3G, and the battery is quite old.
I think 3 hours are definitely not right unless:
- You have a bad installation of software (in this case a reinstall as new could help);
- You are in a very poor network coverage area.
Click to expand...
The problem is I cannot reinstall iOS without my backup, because I'd loose a lot of very important data, that I absolutely need. iCloud doesn't work for everything, so it's not helping in this case. I don't really know what to do...
 
Ultra AleM said:
The problem is I cannot reinstall iOS without my backup, because I'd loose a lot of very important data, that I absolutely need. iCloud doesn't work for everything, so it's not helping in this case. I don't really know what to do...
Click to expand...

What kind of data you can't recover ?
 
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