Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
So I got my new iPhone 5 32GB a couple of days ago. It's great, I've been enjoying it.

One thing though, the battery life seems less than I anticipated for a brand new phone.

Last night when I went to sleep it had a 50% charge. After 7 hours of non-use it was down to 5%.

Anyone else experienced this? It seem weird I'd have to give it a full-charge every day on only light use.... that's what I was doing with my 2 year old iPhone 4.

Already a huge thread about this: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1449578/
 
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.

Head into Cellular and switch LTE off until it is deployed.

You will actually get superior battery when LTE is deployed. Not only will your iPhone not be searching for LTE but network tasks are completed faster so the chipset can 'sleep.'

----------

So I got my new iPhone 5 32GB a couple of days ago. It's great, I've been enjoying it.

One thing though, the battery life seems less than I anticipated for a brand new phone.

Last night when I went to sleep it had a 50% charge. After 7 hours of non-use it was down to 5%.

Anyone else experienced this? It seem weird I'd have to give it a full-charge every day on only light use.... that's what I was doing with my 2 year old iPhone 4.

Sounds like the errant iCloud syncing issue.
 
Don't know what kinda voodoo magic I did, but my battery life has improved 100%. Last week after 8 hours of standby by, my battery would drop around 20% over night, now it only drops 2-3%. The last three or four days, I've talked, watched a little video, used safari constantly and when I get home around 5pm, I still have at least 60%. I'm sure there is some kinda bug hanging somewhere in the OS doing this sporadically. My battery life is now way better than my 4s. And, I've done nothing to change anything on my phone, either.
 
My results were similar to this 5 hours use, 2 days 17 hours standby

I did not restore my ip4S data onto my 5, just started fresh. I keep the brightness at 50%.

No issues at all with my phone or its battery life. If you restored from a backup, I would consider starting fresh.

----------



You can selectively restore contacts during sync but not messages. I used a mac app to backup my messages on my 4S and just started new on my 5.

History has proven that those who restore older backups onto newer phones have all kinds of issues.

I always start new phones fresh (No restore) unless its a replacement phone of the same make and model, and IOS version.

What Mac App did you use?
 
I get pretty good usage on my iPhone 5 as well. I get about 8 or so hours really using the phone and when I don't use it as much, I get about 2 1/2 days on Standby. Not bad in my opinion.

Granted I do watch out for all the notification things that I try to disable.

Works great for me.

My policy as well, nothing gets notification or location rights unless I think it should, every single app these days wants to be able to use location settings, I can understand why a satnav app, or camera, or maps needs it, but why should snapseed or aviary editing app need either location services or notifications?

I have just gone 3 days standby on a charge, 10hours usage, and battery is at 13%.

I don't mess about with much else, I don't use iCloud, and shut wifi off when I'm out, but that's about it.

I think the iPhone 5 has had the best battery life of any smartphone I've had.

Oh, and I restored from my iP4 backup when I got the 5.
 
ImageUploadedByTapatalk1349488561.107751.jpg

AT&T used mostly on LTE. Streamed some radio, played podcasts, twitter, email, Facebook, safari, Siri.
 
My battery life has been pretty great this past week. Seemed like last week I could get through the day (which is what matters) but I'd be at 20% after I got off from work. But it seemed to have "fixed" itself. I haven't been using the phone less either. About 30-45 mins of my usage is from music playing over Bluetooth. The rest is varied over different apps and safari. I'm satisfied.

Edit: I also didn't start fresh. I'm using an iCloud backup from my 4S.

ma3eju3e.jpg
 
Backuptrans

Thanks!

So I restored from new last night and ran some tests last night. It seems my battery life is better. Pictured below is what I have when I woke up this morning. Started browsing the internet for a few then downloaded some apps, played a few games, messed with some settings.. Then streamed Pandora for most of the time overnight. Wifi on, LTE on, BT off, had two tap and wait games running in the background, brightness turned down and auto. Can't think of anything else but I think it's doing relatively well, no?
 

Attachments

  • image.jpg
    image.jpg
    133.8 KB · Views: 102
Over the last few yearsIve learned two tricks to maximizing Apples battery life:

1) Don't do anything they show you in the commercials

2) Buy a charging cable

I know it sounds like I'm being a prick but I'm serious. we should be getting a 2000mAh battery rather than an inadequate 1400mAh that is partially powered by excuses. Find my friends, Passbook, Turn by Turn directions, Geo Fenced reminders, shooting videos, watching movies etc are amazing but Apples obsession with "Thin" means that every iPhone is getting less battery than it needs to keep up with its features.

But IF you need to use those advertised features then get yourself a spare lightning cable. For the first week I heavily over managed the battery which resulted in a partially crippled phone to get me a charge that lasts until 4PM. But I've given up and bought 2 lightning cables and my battery woes are gone. Yes, it's expensive but that's part of being an Apple user.
 
Exchange Push Bug?

I have seen a tremendous increase in battery life since turning off Push for emails/contacts/calendars. I think there is something wrong with Push/exchange accounts in iOS 6.

It's the only thing that worked. Other things I tried since launch day. One by one at first, then all at once:

Disabled siri, turned off LTE, turned off wifi, turned off bluetooth, turned screen brightness down to 15-20%, turned off icloud, reset all settings, clean install of iOS 6, DFU restore of iOS 6.

Nothing got me over the ~three hours of usage time on the new iPhone in the last two weeks. Usually, my phone was completely dead by 4 pm. Yesterday, i turned everything else back on but put my two Exchange accounts (Gmail and school email) to Fetch 1 hour instead of push and when i left work yesterday at 6 pm I was still over 60%. By 1AM it was only down to 49%.
 
I have seen a tremendous increase in battery life since turning off Push for emails/contacts/calendars. I think there is something wrong with Push/exchange accounts in iOS 6.

It's the only thing that worked. Other things I tried since launch day. One by one at first, then all at once:

Disabled siri, turned off LTE, turned off wifi, turned off bluetooth, turned screen brightness down to 15-20%, turned off icloud, reset all settings, clean install of iOS 6, DFU restore of iOS 6.

Nothing got me over the ~three hours of usage time on the new iPhone in the last two weeks. Usually, my phone was completely dead by 4 pm. Yesterday, i turned everything else back on but put my two Exchange accounts (Gmail and school email) to Fetch 1 hour instead of push and when i left work yesterday at 6 pm I was still over 60%. By 1AM it was only down to 49%.

I don't think that is a bug. It keeps pushing your email client information constantly every interval you set up. It takes a lot of battery because it has to connect to the server and get your stuff into your phone. Makes sense to me.
 
I don't think that is a bug. It keeps pushing your email client information constantly every interval you set up. It takes a lot of battery because it has to connect to the server and get your stuff into your phone. Makes sense to me.

I've had an iPhone since 2007. Push has never required that much power, and it shouldn't be the case that a change to one setting has more than doubled my battery life especially when that has never been the case before.

I don't quite remember when exchange gmail with Push became available but I've used it since then. My iPhone 4 with the same settings before it would last two days on a charge over the last two years. Nothing about this not being a bug should "make sense".

Also, it doesn't sound like you know how push works. This is a good read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_technology
 
I've had an iPhone since 2007. Push has never required that much power, and it shouldn't be the case that a change to one setting has more than doubled my battery life especially when that has never been the case before.

I don't quite remember when exchange gmail with Push became available but I've used it since then. My iPhone 4 with the same settings before it would last two days on a charge over the last two years. Nothing about this not being a bug should "make sense".

Also, it doesn't sound like you know how push works. This is a good read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_technology

So...you think that is a bug? Maybe there is something wrong with your phone, maybe. Just sayin'...

Thank you for the link though ;)
 
I don't know how you guys are getting such awesome battery life. I have auto brightness on and set low, only four notifies, location services only for Siri, Maps and find my iPhone. Only two system services in notify. I have LTE off, passbook off, push off.

Just now my battery hit 20%, and I have 6 hours 3 minutes usage, 12 hours 57 minutes standby. I have run it down twice and recharged completely, and it has made no difference. I am not sure what I am doing wrong.

By the way how do you take those screen shots?
 
I don't know how you guys are getting such awesome battery life. I have auto brightness on and set low, only four notifies, location services only for Siri, Maps and find my iPhone. Only two system services in notify. I have LTE off, passbook off, push off.

Just now my battery hit 20%, and I have 6 hours 3 minutes usage, 12 hours 57 minutes standby. I have run it down twice and recharged completely, and it has made no difference. I am not sure what I am doing wrong.

By the way how do you take those screen shots?

Hit the sleep button and home button at the same time.

I don't think your usage is that bad. I'm happy to get ~8 hours out any phone considering I'm never away from a charger for much longer than that.

I'm loving the iPhone 5 battery. It's not as good as the i4, but considerably better than the i4S. My i4S would regularly die while at work. My i5 looked as though it was only marginally better until I adjusted some setting. I turned LTE off, screen brightness at 50%; auto-brightness off, Siri raise to speak off, bluetooth off and I turned off most of the iCloud backup toggles, but left a few of them on.

I also restored it and set it up as a new device, BUT shortly after, I restored from my last backup (seems counterproductive and may have done nothing, but someone recommended it). I also calibrated the battery as everyone has read by now, and battery life has improved significantly. I'm getting at least 10% more after doing the above. Hell, a few days ago I got off work with 25% of my battery left (~8.5 hours usage). That's almost on par with my i4. The battery also doesn't BUDGE when in standby overnight.
 

Attachments

  • image.png
    image.png
    119 KB · Views: 84
Last edited:
I've had an iPhone since 2007. Push has never required that much power, and it shouldn't be the case that a change to one setting has more than doubled my battery life especially when that has never been the case before.

I don't quite remember when exchange gmail with Push became available but I've used it since then. My iPhone 4 with the same settings before it would last two days on a charge over the last two years. Nothing about this not being a bug should "make sense".

Also, it doesn't sound like you know how push works. This is a good read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_technology

Well it could if you have 10 email accounts like me. I have push at manual as i dont need to know i have mail the second it comes in.
 
New Phone Setup

May be a dumb question if you set the iPhone up as new then how do you get your apps and other data on it without restoring from backup?
 
May be a dumb question if you set the iPhone up as new then how do you get your apps and other data on it without restoring from backup?

You have to do it all manually. You would lose all your texts and app save data. But I backup'd my iPhone first, then restored and set it up as a new phone. Then right clicked on the iPhone and restored from backup, getting my texts and save data back. It seems to have improved battery life.
 
You have to do it all manually. You would lose all your texts and app save data. But I backup'd my iPhone first, then restored and set it up as a new phone. Then right clicked on the iPhone and restored from backup, getting my texts and save data back. It seems to have improved battery life.

Text and save data can be restored through iCloud without restoring from the iCloud backup.
 
Definitely happy with this
I leave wifi, location services, push, etc on and brightness is default.
 

Attachments

  • image.jpg
    image.jpg
    133.7 KB · Views: 91
I have tried adjusting settings LTE on or off it just doesn't matter. I don't get much more than 5 hours use. I will try and turn off the push email today and see if that helps. Now I won't be at work, so it'll be on wifi all day but I guess I could turn it off and see if the life is the same. I have been able to get about 1hr talk time. 2.5 hr streaming and another hour of web surfing/text/twitter stuff. I've done the restore and all that stuff and haven't seen a difference. If this doesn't work I still have my 4 which got about 4 hrs streaming still I will send it back for a new one as there is no apple store within 2 hrs of me.
 
Well it could if you have 10 email accounts like me. I have push at manual as i dont need to know i have mail the second it comes in.

The point of the comparison was that it was the same settings between iOS 5.1.1/iPhone 4 and iOS 6/iPhone 5.

Comparing my old usage to your new usage is quite useless.
 
iPhone 5 #2. This is a Genius bar replacement (dinged worse than my original). This one is marginally better than #1. I had to scale back some settings to get this. Less than 6 hours browsing wifi, some gaming, pandora, etc. Screen at 50%.

This one is going back, too. I think I'll email Tim Cook and ask for a 5 from the same batch that the reviewers get. You know, the ones that get 10+ hours of usage. The ones that aren't dinged up. Those iPhone 5s.
 

Attachments

  • iphone5_crappy_battery.png
    iphone5_crappy_battery.png
    38.2 KB · Views: 93
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.