iPhone 5 battery life [Merged]

This is with a fresh restore from DFU mode, then set up as a new phone.
2% of drain per hour on standby....regardless of which notifications/settings/background apps/etc are "on" or running.


I'd say this is a fail:
 

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my phone was fully charged 100% 42 minutes later 82%
I went under usage and it doesn't show time since last full charge just a -

is this normal ?
 
nidserz said:
So, I didn't think was possible but after restoring my phone, my battery life has gotten worse!
This morning I took it off the charger and 7 minutes later of browsing twitter, it dropped 1%.
Usually on the subway (no service) I read my timeline, and drop between 5-6%, today it dropped 11%.
Think I might replace my phone today as I have a replacement ordered for my WiFi issue, but that appears to have been fixed.
I usually use my phone for Twitter and Facebook/Browsing. A few photos and games. No streaming, so I would expect 6-7 hours easily, but it drops quickly when in use for 10 min+.
Click to expand...

I always recommend Airplane Mode in areas of No Service.
 
My white 64GB iPhone has been terrible. I restored as new, drained completely to zero, charged back up to 100% and got 4 and a half hours of usage just browsing the Internet on 4G, not even LTE. No push, Bluetooth off, wifi off, location on, no iCloud sync. I'm pretty upset with the battery and have tried everything short of getting a replacement. Has anyone had luck getting a replacement with better battery life?
 
Trying to kill my battery to cycle it (again) tonight.

Had 5% left. Watched 46 minutes of Netflix before it died.

I swear some of the issues must be calibration. The last 5-10% lasts forever lol

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whoknows87 said:
what is that M-Cell? some type of tweak? :confused: excuse my ignorance
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Microcell by AT&T. Basically in-home cell tower that runs off your broadband.
 
jlake02 said:
Trying to kill my battery to cycle it (again) tonight.

Had 5% left. Watched 46 minutes of Netflix before it died.

I swear some of the issues must be calibration. The last 5-10% lasts forever lol

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Microcell by AT&T. Basically in-home cell tower that runs off your broadband.
Click to expand...

thanks for the info
 
I wasn't around on the forum when iPhone 4/4s came out along with IOS5; were people having similar battery gripes at the time?
What I'm saying is could this be a problem simply with IOS6 than can be compared with simple hindsight to the afformentioned phones/IOS?

On another note, the battery does seem to last for an incredible amount of time once it reaches 15-or-so %.
 
bigred7078 said:
I feel like I have been getting fantastic battery life.
Click to expand...

Right below the stats it says iphone has been plugged in since last full charge so that might be why your stats are high. It didn't fully charge but you were using it while it was charging so the stats display more usage and standby time while you are on AC power. Then pulled it off before you had a full charge. I just looked at mine and I just pulled my phone off the charger this morning and I do not have that iPhone has been plugged in since last charge statement on my phone.
 
SR71 said:
I too was getting horrendous battery life on my iPhone 5, and just like you, I had restored my iPhone 5 from an iCloud backup that I had done on my iPhone 4. To fix my battery life problems I "transferred purchases" from my iPhone 5 into iTunes and then did a backup on iTunes. I then fully restored my iPhone 5 and synced all my "transferred purchases" back to my iPhone 5. So essentially I backed up my apps/songs to iTunes, but NOTHING MORE (an iCloud backup backups apps, songs, and other data specific to that device that can screw up the battery life if that backup is restored to another device. Back upping apps to iTunes and doing a full restore with iTunes erases all of that old data that iCloud backup stores and deletes it all.

Now, for most people this would be a bad thing because they'd be losing all of their apps, but this isn't a problem because if you "transferred purchases" from your iPhone to iTunes, your apps will all be there sans the old data from your past iDevice. Now simply sync all of your apps, songs, etc to your iPhone 5, login to your iCloud account to restore contacts, pictures, message threads and other settings and boom you're all done. Your battery life should jump exponentially.

Before I did this, I could only manage 3-4 hours of light usage, with 10-13 hours of standby before it would die. Now I average 6-8 hours of usage with 18-23 hours of standby depending on how I use it. This is a HUGE increase that others can also achieve if they follow these steps.

This whole process took me only an hour to complete (not including the time it took me to download the entire iOS 6 ipsw file). I'd definitely do this if you're getting bad battery life.

Note: I also have LTE and wifi always on, Bluetooth off, auto brightness on, location services always on for many apps, everything on to sync with iCloud, push notifications on for nearly all 75 of my apps, and push email for one email account.

Below are before and after pictures of my battery life before I did this restore and after I did this restore:
Click to expand...

how do you selectively restore contacts, pictures and messages from the icloud backup? i thought it was either a full restore from backup or nothing
 
scottw324 said:
Right below the stats it says iphone has been plugged in since last full charge so that might be why your stats are high. It didn't fully charge but you were using it while it was charging so the stats display more usage and standby time while you are on AC power. Then pulled it off before you had a full charge. I just looked at mine and I just pulled my phone off the charger this morning and I do not have that iPhone has been plugged in since last charge statement on my phone.
Click to expand...

That's because I woke up early to take the dog out, unplugged the phone, came inside to get ready for work and plugged the phone back in before I left

So I never charged it between uses, but this is the Internet and I cannot prove that lol.
 
After over a week now, I'm consistently getting around 7.5-8.5 hours of use on my i5 with mixed LTE/WiFi use, almost all with screen on, and anywhere from 15-20 hours of standby. I've noticed the standby could easily be longer except that i'm using the device constantly.

As a test, I've left it unplugged after charging to 100% before bed; I've lost between 2 and 3% overnight (around 7h sleep) with wifi enabled and a strong connection to my microcell; Do Not Disturb is enabled from 2am to 6am also, so the screen doesn't just turn on.

Very, very happy with my phone, esp. compared to the 4S.
 
My battery is pretty solid actually. I usually charge it overnight when I go to sleep and unplug it at 6AM when I get up for work.

The other day, before going to bed for the night, my iPhone was only at 64% battery so I didn't bother charging it and when I woke up roughly 8-9 hours later, it was only at 61%. It maintained this throughout the day and still had 14% by the time I went to bed at 10PM.


Yes, I go to bed super early because I'm cool like that.
 
This sucks. 4 - 5 hours usage per charge. I'm not even in an LTE area, so I can only assume it'll be worse once it rolls out here. While browsing over 3G I watched the battery percentage literally drop a point every minute. On top of that, it gets uncomfortably warm. After 30 minutes of browsing my hands were sweating. Battery life is (or was) the only thing keeping me with the iPhone. Looks like I get to eat the return fee now.
 

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Okay, I'm not taking credit for this because I read this on one of the threads last night. Someone had mentioned to turn off the inbuilt iOS Facebook account in Settings. I did this last night and charged the phone all night long. Took it off the charger and used it for 15 minutes. Happy to report that in the 15 minutes of use the battery did not drop by a single percentage point.

I will continue testing this all day today and report back. If anyone else is willing to try please give it a shot.

Edited to add:
By the way, I had noticed that my phone would continue to have usage times even when it was in standby. For example, yesterday it showed 18 minutes of usage time over 4 hours, even though my phone was in my pocket the entire time. I have already taken the standard precautions of minimizing notifications, push, brightness, location services etc.
 
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