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iPhone 5 Battery Life May Be Impacted Greatly by Cellular Signal Strength

This article is pointless... any phone on which the weak signal doesn't have an impact on battery life? :confused:
 
While once you could trust the battery life stated by apple, the last couple of years (as most companys) it overstates battery life.

Sad to slowly see apple descend to the level of all the rest not only in this but also innovation, services, usability,... Lets see them maintain the current customer levels when they are no different from samsung.
 
OTACORB said:
Last night I realized there was a setting to turn off LTE. So, I did this and my battery life was markedly better today. I think my phone had constantly been looking for LTE, when LTE isn't available in my area at this time.

Just a suggestion for those of you in areas without LTE.

Update: I guess I should have read through the whole tread before posting, I see a couple of others have suggested this also. It works!
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I'm definitely going to try this. My battery is great over wifi but it drains really fast over AT&T's "4G". My area doesn't have LTE, so it's not really necessary to have it on. If I go to LA or an area where I know LTE is available, I'll turn it on.
 
Geckotek said:
Your original statment implied that it's not annodized. So what you are actually saying is that it IS annodized, but you feel they should have used a special dye?
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I am sorry if I confused you, my first post was a thought you saw I said "it is not anodized or if it is.... Naah they can't be so stupid" .
With this words I hoped that apple didn't go all the trouble to anodize the aluminum and then just coat it with a simple dye,you see this special dye on anodized aluminum doesn't just cover the aluminum but hmm how to say it(forgive my lack of words) ,it becomes one with the anodized aluminum so if you scratch it with keys (I am not saying to stab it with a knife or screwdriver) you will not see the silver of the metal but it will remain black since the dye is one with the anodized.
The dye doesn't just stay on top of the aluminum but gets "absorbed", so to peel off? Nope it can't be done.
 
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Waxhead138 said:
Most people (at least in the suburbs) aren't in situations where they have all bars for even a single charge.
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I'm on a great carrier and always get 4-5 bars LTE and 4-5 bars 3G. 24/7 everywhere I am. I would spend more than 12 hours a day with 5 bars and never see 3 bars.

My battery life is **** with LTE on. Dead before I finish work. Embarrassing.

The battery life is fine with LTE off - as good as or better than the 4S.

That said, the 4S also had appalling battery life for 5 months, until 5.1 was released.

Perhaps we should wait 5 months before judging this phone.
 
The funny thing is my battery dies ridiculously fast on full brightness but even just turning it down to 80-85% makes a noticeably HUGE difference. And obviously I think I could go a day and a half of use on a dimmed phone...
 
Than you Captain Obvious!

My battery is much better than my iPhone 4 and a lot of it is obviously due to the better reception I'm getting, people have actually told me they can hear me a lot better than with my iPhone 4 and now I get strong signal in places inside the house where before I wouldn't get any bars at all.
 
camaroIOM said:
Why does this comes as a surprise....This is what Driod users have been faced with from day 1. If you ask most droid users they have apps such as Juice plus and others to help maintain peek battery performance. Otherwise devices using LTE will drain like no tomorrow.
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Only 1st generation LTE chip sets have this problem. Newer (worldwide usable) LTE chip sets are more power efficient. The iPhone 5 uses a 2nd generation LTE chip set.
 
rman726 said:
Mine too. The other day I was on LTE for almost all of the usage time, and had 17% battery left at the end of the day, with 8 hours 3 minutes of usage, and 16 hours 53 minutes standby. I could hardly ask for anything better than that.

Oh and how is my LTE signal? Well, AT&T doesn't actually advertise LTE being available in my area. Nor do they advertise it as being available in my area by the end of 2012. All I have is a couple of towers that are somewhat unreliable at this time due to the fact that they are in the process of getting it up in my area. So I definitely don't have a great LTE signal all day, as it switches back to 4G occasionally since they are definitely doing some testing/expansion to get ready for an "official rollout"
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8 hours of usage in one day? Please tell me that is music streaming or are a telemarketer...
 
I must say I fail to see how this is news, it has long been known that weak signal hammers battery life in any phone. The move to 3G and now 4G sees ever larger power drains especially in weak signal areas. Surely this is a case of move along nothing to see here? :confused:
 
what the data posted here is not even representing at all because the test is depends on every moment, condition. the result is not the same. but wifi use doesn't seem accurate. it was little bit over 7 hours in another article with the same test. so you don't have to believe it. the important thing is how your iphone 5 does for. it's matter.
 
Prof. said:
Another reason why I'm waiting 'til the end of 2013 to get the iPhone 5S.
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Because LTE and 3G towers will populate areas better by then or because of completely unexpected battery revolutions? If the former, you could as well buy an iPhone 5 now and simply wait for coverage to improve.

Battery life improved in general in the iPhone 5 simply because the screen was larger = more area for battery. Battery power per surface area hasn't improved that much lately -- certainly not the past few years. They're using huge batteries in the MacBook Pro Retina covering the better part of its insides, for example. The iPhone 5s is not expected to be larger than the iPhone 5.

Having this issue out of the way in time for an iPhone 5s would be totally unexpected, almost revolutionary. Because increased battery usage during times of poor reception is an issue that has been here for as long as mobile phones have existed.
 
All phones work like this, in low signal areas the phone has to boost power to the radio in order to maintain a radio link. It works like this in all cell phones and means the power required with a poor signal can be multiples of the power required in good signal areas. The manufacturer usage figures usually reflect not necessarily a perfect signal scenario but at least a good signal area. LTE is no different than 3G or 2G in this respect, if the signal is poor your battery is going to drain faster if the signal is really poor then a lot faster. No the phone is in the wild and real world test data is coming back to Apple they may be able to tune the software to reduce this a little but its still going to be there. The lower the signal strength your phone produces in low signal areas the more dropped calls you get and its a fine balance to get good battery life without too many dropped calls.
 
This holds true for any cell phone for the most part. My iPhone 4 will hold a charge all day and maybe lose 10% from the time I leave the house to when I leave work when I worked in a building that got reception. Where I work now I barely if at all get a signal an my battery % drops like a rock since the phone is struggling to get a signal. If I turn data and wifi off it definitely helps cons rev power though.

So this not something specific to the iPhone 5. My two iPhone 5's just shipped so I will test them out and see if they perform about the same as my 2 yr old iPhone 4.

Oh for those waiting for their phone, my estimated shipping date was 5 October per Verizon. They shipped today, 27 Sep, so don't be surprised if you get you new iPhone earlier than you were expecting.
 
G51989 said:
Newsflash.

ALL Cellphones, even dumbphones are affected by signal strength, the weaker the signal, the phone has to boost power to the radio to maintain a connection.

Turn on Airplane mode on pretty much any dumb or smart phone, you'd be amazed how long the battery lasts without having to power the radio, I did that with my old Samsung Replenish Android Phone after I got my S3, I think with airplane mode on, it lasted almost a week before it died, my old 3GS would go almost a week to.

In other news, the pope is catholic.
Click to expand...

Newsflash. You've missed the point entirely.

Of course if you turn Airplane mode on you save battery (Duh!) but what are you trying to prove here?

The article clearly says that the promised battery life is way higher than the real life battery life and that it is affected by signal strength (NOT the fact that a 3G/LTE radio is turned on the phone).

So before you try to be funny, how about you read carefully.
 
I hope this 3100 mAh Note 2 battery will be more resilient than iphone 5 one!
I really need more autonomy...
 
OTACORB said:
Last night I realized there was a setting to turn off LTE. So, I did this and my battery life was markedly better today. I think my phone had constantly been looking for LTE, when LTE isn't available in my area at this time.

Just a suggestion for those of you in areas without LTE.

Update: I guess I should have read through the whole tread before posting, I see a couple of others have suggested this also. It works!
Click to expand...

Well duh. Why would you leave lte on if you don't have it in your area?
 
jent said:
More than the actual battery life I'm suprised at the discrepancy between Apple's claim and real-world testing. Didn't Apple boast at a keynote a few years ago that its battery life claims were based on realistic usage while competitors were disingenuous with their claims?
Click to expand...

iLounge specifically stated that they had poor coverage in the location where they tested the phone's battery life. So this was more like a worst case scenario rather than what normal users should expect.
 
I love the fanboy solutions.

1. Turn off LTE
2. Turn down brightness
3. Turn off Bluetooth
4. Turn off time zone tracking
5. Turn off location tracking
6. Wait 5 months for apple to get it right
7. It'll be fixed in iPhone 5s


How about you just turn off the phone and return it.
 
wlossw said:
Battery life is definitely worse than my iPhone 4 for comparable usage. I am on Rogers in Montreal, quebec, and am often on 2-3 LTE bars.

Hopefully the run time will improve as network coverage is expanded, and hopefully that will be soon.
Click to expand...


I have the same problem, my iPhone 4 had excellent battery life, I find that even on standby the battery drains quicker.
 
I'm really deceived about the battery reports I'm seeing here.

Compared to this, my old iPhone 4 has MUCH better battery life than the iPhone 5.

As you can see I'm getting over 10 hours use and one and a half day standby and still 12% left. This is way over this poor iPhone 5 batteries.

I'm afraid I will stay with my great iPhone 4 for some time...
 
This is like a "no ****** sherlock" article... My iPhone 4, EVO 4G, and other phones I've had ALWAYS killed the battery when fighting for a signal, and the iPhone 5 is no different... I'd spend 2-3 hours in an area where the signal is low, and my battery would suffer, on ANY phone I've had.. unless it's just me...
 
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