This is not accurate. People stop posting screenshots other than 1% remaining.
agreed.
People don't understand that a minor tweak in how the software reports battery life can give the illusion of better battery life.
I did post a screenshot of my phone showing 10+ hours of standby with 100% battery life still showing. This is evidence of some tweaking of how the battery life is reported.
Unless you regularly took your phone down to DEAD before 5.1 and now can do the same with 5.1 and it's legitimately LONGER overall, the rest does not prove ANYTHING except Apple re-programed how the battery meter reports the remaining charge.
I keep hearing people saying "I used to be at 30% by the end of the day, now I'm at 50%!"
woo-hoo. That doesn't mean the battery is magically longer-lasting. It means that, where apple used to under-report remaining battery life under 20%, now they don't. My theory is that Apple built in some sort of "cushion" if you will so that when your phone reaches 20% you don't *really* have 20% remaining but you have something like 30-40% and the last 20% is going to drain more slowly as to not leave you stranded. Perhaps all they did with 5.1 is to level out the curve. Now when it reports 20% you really have 20% remaining. Does this mean that the battery is lasting longer? No. It just means that most people never took their phone down to 0% and timed it from 100%-0% so they are under the impression that their battery is up to 20% better now than it ever was when in reality, it's not.
They could program it so that 90% of the battery is lost in the first 20% of what the meter shows. That is -- You could go all day and it may still show 85% but in reality your battery has dropped something like 80%. That would make you think your battery is AWESOME...
I'm not saying this is exactly what Apple did. Heck I really do hope they made the battery life better! I'm just saying it's really easy for them to change how the little percent meter calculates things which would lead to the illusion of better battery life.