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

Doc750 said:
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.
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'Tis a valid argument with any phone/portable device. Nothing to do with fanboy-ism.

I had a plugin for my PSP which did multiple things to extended battery life when listening to music through it when locked, such as underclock the CPU, lurn off LEDs, turn off screen completely etc. It worked wonders, I got about 4 extra hours of music when using it.
 
Prof. said:
I'm optimistic Apple will learn from their mistakes eventually. If not, I'll get a nexus phone. And yes, I'm in contract, but that doesn't really matter since I'm planning to buy the iP5S outright to keep my unlimited data.

For the record, I have an iPhone 4S and I get phenomenal battery life. Even back in October 2011 when I first got it.
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So you're fine with not getting LTE because no carrier is letting you grandfather your data plan over...
 
Hasn't this always been the case? I know the general population probably isn't aware of this, but I'd expect anyone who follows Tech sites to be aware that poor signal strength has always had a direct relationship with poor battery life. At least that was always my understanding of it. In simple terms, the weaker the signal the more the phone has to boost it's antenna to maintain a reliable connection.

I've always come to expect less than advertised battery life on Apple devices, since their numbers are always based on the most ideal situation. A category which most of it's users don't fall into anyway.
 
I was initially noticing decreased battery performance with my 5. When I first set my phone up I had restord it from a backup that I had made from my 4. I have since restord my phone to default settings and have seen a vast improvement in battery life. Something about resorting from a backup just murders the battery, so I would suggest clearing your phone if you experienced the same thing as me.
 
Doc750 said:
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.
Click to expand...

No, thanks. That—cut and run at the first media-induced sign of trouble, I mean—may be the attitude of people who can't see beyond the good points of a product/service/environment (be it Apple, Android, Nokia, or whatever).

Those who can see the good points of their choices will find solutions, even if those are not up to non-carer standards.
 
This decreased battery life seems to be true in my experience. At my house I have weak LTE and slightly better 4G, and I feel like it trying to stay connected to LTE is draining the battery a bit faster than my iPhone 4 (though not unreasonably slow).

I really wish there was an option where it wouldn't even try to connect to LTE while you're connected to wi-fi. There's really no value in it, since there's no voice over LTE, so why bother? Maybe when we get a jailbreak and SBSettings makes it easier to flip LTE on and off, I'll start doing so manually.
 
lwapps said:
I swear companies always use theoretical estimates to make their products seem as if they have better battery lives.

Use real world averages! If customers can rely on your values they are more likely to trust in future products and the brand.

Battery life is almost as bad as the 'up to 20mbps' labels plastered over Internet service provider websites. No one actually gets those speeds!
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I've always found advertised internet speeds to be fairly close to reality if the server is fast enough. Mine is advertised at 50 down and 10 up and this is what I get:



And I know I've gotten 40-50mbps with my 4G hotspot

Even for battery life estimates, my macbook pro is pretty realistic. None of my iPhones ever achieved the claimed usage though
 
GFLPraxis said:
My battery life on my iPhone 5 has been incredibly poor. I even turned LTE off yesterday and fully charged it overnight, and I'm halfway through my work day and down to 47%. I have only done texting and Facebook messenger.
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Facebook messenger drains the battery like hell on my 4S too.
 
I have had much better battery life with my i5. All day without a charge and at least moderate usage. I go in to work at 6, used it all day in a building where i get 2-4 bars, more usage all night and forgot to charge it last night when I went to bed and still had 15 percent at 5 this morning. This is all while on AT&T LTE all day. My 4s was abysmal and I would have to charge it after about 8 hours of use.
 
zulumonk said:
I was initially noticing decreased battery performance with my 5. When I first set my phone up I had restord it from a backup that I had made from my 4. I have since restord my phone to default settings and have seen a vast improvement in battery life. Something about resorting from a backup just murders the battery, so I would suggest clearing your phone if you experienced the same thing as me.
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This could be a rationale explanation. I ll give it a try
 
Because some of us are on 46% and only 1 hour, 57 minutes Usage, and 4 Hours, 6 minutes standby.

The coverage has really screwed with me, OR I got a dud, based on everyone else's results I may have a dud :(
 
You should already know take whatever number Apple gives you and cut it in half, and there's the real number.
 
I am seeing my battery drop at a rate of about 1 percent every 2 or 3 minutes

I have iCloud Safari sync off and LTE disabled.

bYRwEl.png
 
technopimp said:
Even doing "nothing" (phone is locked, etc.) on AT&T's 4G network (no LTE here yet) I've been losing 1-2% every few minutes. Once I switch to WiFi it goes back to normal. Hope this improves.
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My exprience with Sprint 3G has been like that recently. I've had them for almost a year, the first 8 months were outstanding speedy 3G , then it became average, but since August I've noticed that I barely get 1-2 bars, more importantly, my phone looses 15 - 20% overnight with 3G on. If I turn data off, it barely loses 1 - 2%.

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spyd4r said:
I am seeing my battery drop at a rate of about 1 percent every 2 or 3 minutes

I have iCloud Safari sync off and LTE disabled.

Image
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Yup, same as what I'm experiencing with Sprint, in your case it's probably low 3G
 
Chrisg2014 said:
So you're fine with not getting LTE because no carrier is letting you grandfather your data plan over...
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Not entirely true. AT&T customers with a grandfathered unlimited plan can upgrade to iPhone 5 and LTE and keep the plan. It does get throttled at 5GB but unless you run streaming video and audio all day every day you should be fine. But I would go to an AT&T store to make sure they keep you in your plan or can fix it if they mess it up, Apple is great but its not their system.

That said, I had an unlimited plan on ATT and still broke my contract and wnt to a 4GB capped Verizon account. Unlimited data is great but useless when your damn phone wont work despite having full bars (bars /= bandwidth) Since switching to Verizon this sucker screams but I have the LTE battery thing. I have 2 bars and this thing sits idle/locked and drops power pretty fast. I stem the tide by switching off LTE when not in use, battery is a bit more stable that way. I'd like to see Apple implement this in software. If we lock our phones, we def don't need the LTE connection. Have it toggle down to 3G when locked, then pickup LTE when unlocked.
 
terraphantm said:
I've always found advertised internet speeds to be fairly close to reality if the server is fast enough. Mine is advertised at 50 down and 10 up and this is what I get:

[url=http://www.speedtest.net/result/2205813165.png]Image[/URL]

And I know I've gotten 40-50mbps with my 4G hotspot

Even for battery life estimates, my macbook pro is pretty realistic. None of my iPhones ever achieved the claimed usage though
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i know right, i dont get the fuss over mbps. maybe the poster just didnt realize there was a difference with mbps and mb/s until recently.. so hes a little upset ;)

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devsfan1830 said:
Not entirely true. AT&T customers with a grandfathered unlimited plan can upgrade to iPhone 5 and LTE and keep the plan. It does get throttled at 5GB but unless you run streaming video and audio all day every day you should be fine. But I would go to an AT&T store to make sure they keep you in your plan or can fix it if they mess it up, Apple is great but its not their system.

That said, I had an unlimited plan on ATT and still broke my contract and wnt to a 4GB capped Verizon account. Unlimited data is great but useless when your damn phone wont work despite having full bars (bars /= bandwidth) Since switching to Verizon this sucker screams but I have the LTE battery thing. I have 2 bars and this thing sits idle/locked and drops power pretty fast. I stem the tide by switching off LTE when not in use, battery is a bit more stable that way. I'd like to see Apple implement this in software. If we lock our phones, we def don't need the LTE connection. Have it toggle down to 3G when locked, then pickup LTE when unlocked.
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theres a jailbreak app for that! to bad you can break the ip5 yet.
 
Why?

Not that it's an excuse for sub-optimal battery life, but if part of your job is testing cell phones, WHY would you test a phone with a weak signal? And if your testing location has poor signal, maybe you didn't choose your location wisely.
 
Bezetos said:
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.
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He didn't miss the point. As many people have stated, ALL phones are affected by this, and this is nothing new. On any iPhone before the 5 this was true. On any Android phone, this is true. On that POS Nokia that I used to have, this is true. Take a lesson from your own words and read carefully. No one is disputing the article is true, people are commenting on how obvious it is.
 
Can we like not justify to have crappy batteries.. I'd rather this be big news and having Apple rectrifying the solution and thus having a better battery :D
 
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