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iPhone 5 Battery Life Goes to Nothing - Overnight

B

Bushwood

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 26, 2014
50
2
Up until Friday, the phone would last all day on a charge. Thursday, went to bed with the phone at 80%... it was dead in the morning (it went peacefully in its sleep). Since then, it takes a loooooooong time to charge and then dies very (!) quickly. And, of course... the phone is a mini space heater.

I've reset, restored, restarted... nothing.

What happened to my 5?

Thanks!
 
Bushwood said:
Up until Friday, the phone would last all day on a charge. Thursday, went to bed with the phone at 80%... it was dead in the morning (it went peacefully in its sleep). Since then, it takes a loooooooong time to charge and then dies very (!) quickly. And, of course... the phone is a mini space heater.

I've reset, restored, restarted... nothing.

What happened to my 5?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Your iPhone 5 may be eligible for the replacement program: https://www.apple.com/au/support/iphone5-battery/
 
Seems to be getting worse. I did a few more restores, restarts... and now it's not charging. It has been plugged in (lightning bolt icon visible) for an hour and it's holding at 7%.
 
Bushwood said:
Seems to be getting worse. I did a few more restores, restarts... and now it's not charging. It has been plugged in (lightning bolt icon visible) for an hour and it's holding at 7%.
Click to expand...

Why don't you try reinstalling iOS and not restore for a day or two? It seems that both times after your restore the same issue popped up, so it could be tied to a rogue app or system process that repeatedly gets restored and not remedied.
 
While trying to figure out how to un/reinstall the IOS, I went ahead and erased the phone. I had a theory: If I wiped the phone and did NOT restore it from back up and it took/held a charge, then I'd know the problem was software-related - not the battery. Keep in mind, this "theory" comes from a guy who still hasn't figured out how to un/reinstall the IOS.

Net of test:
The phone is charging at what seems like a normal rate - it's at about 60% in an hour. Prior to this test, it wouldn't go higher than 7% after 90 min. on the charger.

What did I learn here? Battery's likely good? Some app has gone rogue and hates my battery?
 
Bushwood said:
What did I learn here? Battery's likely good? Some app has gone rogue and hates my battery?
Click to expand...

You could try to test this by leaving applications open one by one each night and see if there's any effect (you can manually control what's running in the background by double-clicking the home button and removing apps from the stack).
 
A friend who knows slightly more than I do about Macs said "I've heard iCloud can do that... might be something in those settings". Okay... but what?
 
Abiatha Swelter said:
You could try to test this by leaving applications open one by one each night and see if there's any effect (you can manually control what's running in the background by double-clicking the home button and removing apps from the stack).
Click to expand...


or, better, you can download geek bench 3 for your iPhone 5.
i did this and its battery test is great.
i also have an iPhone 5 and it started doing the behaviour you mentioned. with sudden drops to 4 or 5% from 20% or more.

the only bright news is that apple has announced that apple care + will begin to replace batteries if the total capacity is falling below 80%. before this, the standard was it needed to fall below 50%, IF you have apple care + you might be able to get a new battery.
 
niji said:
or, better, you can download geek bench 3 for your iPhone 5.
i did this and its battery test is great.
i also have an iPhone 5 and it started doing the behaviour you mentioned. with sudden drops to 4 or 5% from 20% or more.

the only bright news is that apple has announced that apple care + will begin to replace batteries if the total capacity is falling below 80%. before this, the standard was it needed to fall below 50%, IF you have apple care + you might be able to get a new battery.
Click to expand...
Only if you've purchased applecare + as of April this year
 
No applecare here.

Not optimistic about my "fix"... The battery made it up to 83% when it was wiped and not restored. So, I restored from backup - about 30 minutes ago... The phone is still connected to the macbook, but the battery hasn't moved from 83%.

I deleted about 50 apps from iTunes prior to restoring. Looks like it's one of the remaining apps or iCloud.
 
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