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How I achieved amazing battery life on the iPhone 5!

S

sam1990

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 28, 2010
14
0
Charging via computer USB

I've been one of the many people stuggling with the battery on the iPhone 5... I get around 5-8 hours on a good day but can literally watch the percentages drop as I am using the phone for simple tasks checking e-mails, replying to texts or a web browsing - I'm on Wifi most of the time or occasionally 3G.

I usually manage to stretch my phone through the day and charge it over-night via the mains wall charger cable provided so it's fully charged for the next day...

Today I forgot to put my phone on charge over-night so had to take my USB cable to work... I plugged it into my work computer and charged it via USB... my work machine is not USB 2.0 compatible so my phone did take a good 3-4 hours to charge to 100%...

However, check out my battery life after giving my phone a slow charge via USB! This is the best I've ever experienced and looks to be holding up strong... Anybody else test this out and see if it works for them!?
---
Following on from a comment from "iamthekiller" - I'll update the thread when my battery life runs out to see how much battery pans out over a complete cycle...

1zlswo0.jpg
 
Last edited:
I thought USB had the same voltage no matter what version? When's the last time you calibrated your battery.
 
Been charging it from 100% to around 0% since I got the phone on launch day to try help improve battery life...
 
Haha.. this is nonsense. It's like the pigeon that thinks he gets food when he does a certain kind of dance.

The phone's battery conditions itself. It has absolutely nothing to do with what you're doing.

Also, using the phone for less than an hour could not be any less of a scientific experiment. Wow.
 
i'll update with a screenshot later of my complete usage. But to say i got close to an hours usage out of 1% battery is brilliant improvement for me.

Thanks for your opinion though.
 
iamthekiller said:
Haha.. this is nonsense. It's like the pigeon that thinks he gets food when he does a certain kind of dance.

The phone's battery conditions itself. It has absolutely nothing to do with what you're doing.

Also, using the phone for less than an hour could not be any less of a scientific experiment. Wow.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Use it till it goes to 1%, screenshot it again and get back to us.

I've had my 4 last over an hour and a half for usage and still be on 100%, but then it all evens out.
 
seems like a placebo. 100-99% is always longer than any other movement in battery %. You can play music for 1 hour and only have it move 1%.

Edit: I meant WITH trickle charging.
 
for the past week or so i've been staying on 1% no longer than 2-3 minutes with minimal usage so this is why it shocked me today after charging via USB.

Who knows could be placebo or just a one of thing and the battery being confused... just thought i'd share my experience as i know lots of people have struggled with battery life too.
 
i would imagine iphone battery charging is like macbook charging, once it hits 100%, it stops charging totally until it drops capacity. on the macbooks, it was 95-100%. that means on the macbooks, anytime you unplugged after charging fully, your battery could be anywhere from 95-100% capacity.

you probably just got lucky once and was actually at 100% as opposed to 99.5% like most times.
 
sam1990 said:
Charging via computer USB

I've been one of the many people stuggling with the battery on the iPhone 5... I get around 5-8 hours on a good day but can literally watch the percentages drop as I am using the phone for simple tasks checking e-mails, replying to texts or a web browsing - I'm on Wifi most of the time or occasionally 3G.

I usually manage to stretch my phone through the day and charge it over-night via the mains wall charger cable provided so it's fully charged for the next day...

Today I forgot to put my phone on charge over-night so had to take my USB cable to work... I plugged it into my work computer and charged it via USB... my work machine is not USB 2.0 compatible so my phone did take a good 3-4 hours to charge to 100%...

However, check out my battery life after giving my phone a slow charge via USB! This is the best I've ever experienced and looks to be holding up strong... Anybody else test this out and see if it works for them!?
---
Following on from a comment from "iamthekiller" - I'll update the thread when my battery life runs out to see how much battery pans out over a complete cycle...

1zlswo0.jpg
Click to expand...


I'm amazed that A) You're still using 3G and B) your work computer doesn't have 13 year old tech in it.

Good to hear about the battery though, I've been pretty surprised how well mines holding up.
 
Here's mine after 17 hours and 40 minutes. This included a clock running for 8 hours at work keeping the screen on for the entire time, app downloading, browsing, streaming internet radio (only 40 minutes though), email and Facebook.

I'm coming to iPhone from a WinMo phone where it's routine to be plugging your phone in at the end of the day. That's still a process I follow with my iPhone as I use it as an alarm clock (with the clock on all night, but plugged in). But even so, it took me this long to get to 1 percent on Oct. 2nd.

This is good battery life for me. Better than my Touch Pro. IDK if that's what everyone else is getting.
 

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sam1990 said:
i'll update with a screenshot later of my complete usage. But to say i got close to an hours usage out of 1% battery is brilliant improvement for me.

Thanks for your opinion though.
Click to expand...

You can't say you got almost an hour worth of use out of 1% because that would imply that you will get 90 hours or so out of the whole charge. Which you will not. The thing is, Apple's battery gauge is very coarse to begin with. And secondly, it will stop charging and indicate 100%, when in reality the battery's charge has not even reached 95% (I think this is by design, to protect the battery's capacity in the long term. I have read that preventing a li-ion battery from fully charging is common practice nowadays by manufacturers of consumer electronics). This can be verified on any jailbroken iphone with batterydoctor pro or batteryinfolite installed. These apps get their charge data from the battery circuitry itself.

Anyhow, the cause of this is probably the fact that a computer usb port outputs half the current of an iphone wall charger, resulting in a slower charge with better topping off. Or it may be simply good timing on your part (trickle charge is periodic). Like you said, it's most accurate to compare complete charges, but I think it will make very little difference.
 
I've gotten something ridiculous like 10 hours of standby and my phone never dropped from 100%.

In for results after a day or whatever.

I do think it behaves a tad differently when charged via USB rather than wall. Probably no difference really but whatever lol
 
chambone said:
You can't say you got almost an hour worth of use out of 1% because that would imply that you will get 90 hours or so out of the whole charge. Which you will not. The thing is, Apple's battery gauge is very coarse to begin with. And secondly, it will stop charging and indicate 100%, when in reality the battery's charge has not even reached 95% (I think this is by design, to protect the battery's capacity in the long term. I have read that preventing a li-ion battery from fully charging is common practice nowadays by manufacturers of consumer electronics). This can be verified on any jailbroken iphone with batterydoctor pro or batteryinfolite installed. These apps get their charge data from the battery circuitry itself.

Anyhow, the cause of this is probably the fact that a computer usb port outputs half the current of an iphone wall charger, resulting in a slower charge with better topping off. Or it may be simply good timing on your part (trickle charge is periodic). Like you said, it's most accurate to compare complete charges, but I think it will make very little difference.
Click to expand...

exactly thats why apple didnt have the % in the first place.
 
you seem to be having the same issue as me.. usage time is very close to standby

make sure your usage time is not increasing while in standby (my issue)
 
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