iOS 7 Beta 5 Improved Battery Life

[robodude666]

Actually, you should avoid letting it go all the way down with a lithium battery. Just charge it whenever you can.

Charge it when you can, but...

There are three important items to keeping your lion batteries healthy:

• Don't leave them completely drained all the time,
• don't leave them completely charged all the time, and
• don't charge the battery, use it for a couple percent, and then stick it back on the charger.

Generally try to keep the battery within 20% to 80% of it's charge, as you're able to fast charge from 20% to 80% pretty quickly. You want to then fully discharge and recharge to 100% before using it again at least once a month to keep the battery healthy.

There's a good writeup on Ars Technica about proper care of Li-Ion batteries with some more details about charge cycles/temperature, and capacity over time if anyone is interested.

Really?? I thought rechargeable batteries some sort of memory in it. I've always been told when I've purchased an Apple product to charge it too full, run it to 0% and charge it up to full again. Then to do that again at least every so often. Like you have to "train" the battery to know what's "full" and what's "empty" to get the longest charge. Maybe I'm thinking of older types of batteries.

You're thinking of other kinds of batteries. Lion batteries don't have a "memory" or need to be "trained." There is no logic or smarts in a lion battery, besides external safety logic that attempts to keep the battery safe and not discharge too quickly or be charged too quickly (which can cause fires). As the Ars Technica article above points out:

However, if you are using something like a notebook computer that gives you time estimates of how much longer the battery will last, this clock can be confused by shallow charging intervals. Most manufacturers recommend that you do a full discharge of the battery about once a month to help your device calibrate the time gauge.

As for the original topic of this thread, I've seen a great improvement over the first beta. I install beta 5 again recently, and so far battery life is better than it was in iOS 6 for me.

Previously a single charge in iOS 6 seemed to last me only 4-5 hours. Now it seems iOS 7 beta 5 is lasting me about 6-7. And that's the number of hours before getting the 20% warning. The phone in use is an iPhone 4S 16GB AT&T that's about 16 months old.

-robodude666

 

[throys]

Very consistent battery life so far.

 

[MacOSXAddict]

How is this for battery life?

I have local weather location off, background multitasking turned off, Bluetooth Turned off, wifi turned on, frequent locations turned off, and weather, traffic and stocks turned off in NC.

 

[adamgbiggs]

Battery seems very good here, i5 with iOS 7 beta 5, iv not used it too much today but here's a screen shot.

 

[illyb2000]

Very good; had to clean install after my battery dying in 4 hours

 

[mrsketch]

I love how we're all using less than 500 MBs in iCloud. That 5 GB really goes a long way.

 

[Bacong]

I love how we're all using less than 500 MBs in iCloud. That 5 GB really goes a long way.

1.4 GB for me

 

[mrsketch]

Image

1.4 GB for me

I clearly didn't look at all the screenshots haha

 

[emckai]

Yeah I use mainly Dropbox for my photo and files. iCloud is just for contacts, email, etc. simple stuff.

 

[BvizioN]

iOS 7 b5, iP5. Wifi Off and On (depending where I am) Bluetooth OFF. All other settings as by default. And no music played since last charge, just web browsing and using different apps.

For me this beta 5 has been just as good as iOS 6.

 

[Mad4clay]

This is what I have now. Doesn't look so good. What can I do?

 

[Tyler23]

This is what I have now. Doesn't look so good. What can I do?

Depends on what you were doing for those 55 minutes. 55 minutes straight of video playback or playing a game can easily drain 10%.

 

[Mad4clay]

Depends on what you were doing for those 55 minutes. 55 minutes straight of video playback or playing a game can easily drain 10%.

Wasn't doing anything but reading this forum. All apps closed.

 

[lucamacis]

Great to hear so many peoples battery life has improved. I haven't had any problems with my battery life since beta 1 but beta 5 on my iPad mini is horrendous. I suspect it's some kind of memory leak as I lose about 50% in 1 day when on standby! I used to get about 1-2 weeks with beta 4 and light usage (web browsing - feedly etc)

 

[emckai]

An hour every 10% is pretty in my opinion.

 

[Antoni Nygaard]

This is mine on beta 5

Location Services on
Wifi on
LTE On
Bluetooth off
Brightness automatic
Reduce motion off
Background app refresh on
Mail push on

Lot of texting some phone calls listening to music safari surfing.

 

[Chocolatemilty]

Just loaded up iOS 7 on my iPad mini last night on a full restore. Plugged it in at 97% for a minute to turn iTunes wifi sync back on.

This is real life?!

 

[this is funah]

iPhone 4 - iOS 7 Beta 5 (OTA since Beta 1)

Amazing battery life lately... I had to leave home with my battery at 55% and made it back from work before I even got the <20% warning... that hasn't happened in over two years for this device.

 

[Jakimo]

I really wonder.. do you suppose that they've learned battery tricks that come over from the Mavericks team?

Their advances coming soon in Mac OS regarding battery life are quite amazing..

The battery life is SO much better than I've ever had as well, just sayin!

 

[dictoresno]

Very good; had to clean install after my battery dying in 4 hours

This battery life is horrible. It's exactly where I'm at now, 4 hrs of use and 11 hours standby and at 37%. With iOS 6 I would be around 6-7 hours of use at this battery level.

This is mine on beta 5

Location Services on
Wifi on
LTE On
Bluetooth off
Brightness automatic
Reduce motion off
Background app refresh on
Mail push on

Lot of texting some phone calls listening to music safari surfing.

This is perfect battery life and similar to what I used to see on iOS 6. I can't get anywhere near this now on iOS 7 and can't figure out why.

 

[batting1000]

This battery life is horrible. It's exactly where I'm at now, 4 hrs of use and 11 hours standby and at 37%. With iOS 6 I would be around 6-7 hours of use at this battery level.



This is perfect battery life and similar to what I used to see on iOS 6. I can't get anywhere near this now on iOS 7 and can't figure out why.

In the exact same situation.

 

[dictoresno]

In the exact same situation.

And it has to be a beta 5 issue. The battery life on my iPad is suffering too, browsing the forum here costs me 1% per 3-5 minutes or so. On iOS 6 1% would last me 15 minutes. And this is on a fresh install on my iPhone, not from backup. One 10 minute phone call will use 5% or more.

 

[batting1000]

And it has to be a beta 5 issue. The battery life on my iPad is suffering too, browsing the forum here costs me 1% per 3-5 minutes or so. On iOS 6 1% would last me 15 minutes. And this is on a fresh install on my iPhone, not from backup. One 10 minute phone call will use 5% or more.

Yep, I'm getting the same thing on my iPhone 5. I could easily get around 6-8 hours and be at 20% everyday on iOS 6. Now, I'm at about 4-5 hours at 20% on beta 5.

 

[dictoresno]

An hour every 10% is pretty in my opinion.

That's horrible. Under heavy load my blackberry used to go 5-6% per hour. At idle or low load, 1-2% is perfect for battery loss per hour.

----------

Yep, I'm getting the same thing on my iPhone 5. I could easily get around 6-8 hours and be at 20% everyday on iOS 6. Now, I'm at about 4-5 hours at 20% on beta 5.

Judging from my use the last few days, it looks like my average usages if I go to full drain will be like 6 hrs use, 17 hours standby. And that's a lot worse than 6. I used to get 8-10 use and 26+ hours standby at 1%.

 

[batting1000]

Judging from my use the last few days, it looks like my average usages if I go to full drain will be like 6 hrs use, 17 hours standby. And that's a lot worse than 6. I used to get 8-10 use and 26+ hours standby at 1%.

Exactly the same here.