iPhone 5 battery life [Merged]

[ipedro]

WiFi vs 3G/LTE

I had the opportunity to spend an entire couple of days at home which left my iPhone 5 on WiFi the entire time. I used it extensively for email, messaging, twitter, facebook, and played GTA3 a few times too. Brightness on 100%, Bluetooth off.

Here's my battery on a typical day on a mix of WiFi/3G/LTE:

Here's my battery on WiFi all day:

8 hours of use, a day and a half of standby and still going. While I did plug in to my Mac to sync some videos, it wasn't in for more than a few minutes. I don't think it affected the charge much. I didn't plug it in last night because it was nowhere dead.

This seems to explain the wild variations in battery life for iPhone5 users. It seems that in places with good LTE coverage or none -- one or the other -- battery life is good. In places with bumpy LTE reception, you get really bad battery life because the radios keep switching over and looking for towers.

Notice my 3G reception. On my iPhone 4, I always had full bars on Rogers. With iPhone 5, even if I have LTE off, I get at most half of 3G. In the LTE zone that I've been in, I can pick up 4 bars. I wonder if they de-prioritized 3G antennae in favour of LTE or if my provider - Rogers - has something to do with it. Either way, it explains the poor battery life on cell radios.

The good news is that it charges really fast. I'm impressed with that. If I have a near dead battery and come home for a quick stopover, I'll charge my phone and when I leave in under an hour, it's 100%.

I'll be able to test my theory in a couple of weeks. I'll be in New York for 4 days. Manhatten allegedly has excellent LTE reception so I'll see if there is any difference in battery life on New York's LTE vs Toronto's.

 

[andrv1126]

Wow, everyone seems to be getting such good battery life, mine's at 23% with approx. 2hrs of usage (Facebook, Spotify and a bit of Skype video callinv and web browsing on 3G) and 3hrs of Standby. I don't have LTE, could it be because it's the battery's second cycle? Can I expect it to improve with further cycles?

 

[ShaunOK]

Happy-ish with mine. Drained very fast the other day until I realised the usage and standby were the same but haven't experienced it since and can't find an answer as to why it happens online just seems to fix itself if you mess around with wifi/3G.

 

[buddybd]

Mine seems ok. I FaceTime'd with my friend via Wifi for 2 hours yesterday. Went down from 80% to 10%.

 

[Usehername]

What are you doing on it? Only calls ?
What's your screenbrightness?

Brightness is on the low side, too bright hurts my eyes. I'm mostly browsing on the Internet with wifi on, reading on iBooks, 30mins-1hr of music sometimes with screen locked other times while browsing, 20-40mins of video, light calls/ messages and checking on my games couple times a day.

 

[TM WAZZA]

I think the disabling of automatic time zone setting has helped out big time. It has added 1 hour of usage, and less battery drain overnight. Normally I'd lose 1% every hour. Last night I only lost 2% on a 7 hour sleep.

 

[Eduardboon]

Only used the phone for texting. Browsing. Mixed 3G/wifi. Kinda sucks.. 4 did an hour more easily

 

[Merkie]

I'm not too happy with battery life yet, it was far better on my 4. I think it's a software bug somehow, my phone went down from 98% to 69% overnight. It shouldn't even drop 1% imo (my 4 never did), so that's not right at all.

 

[IFRIT]

Happy-ish with mine. Drained very fast the other day until I realised the usage and standby were the same but haven't experienced it since and can't find an answer as to why it happens online just seems to fix itself if you mess around with wifi/3G.

To get the battery to last as long as that you hav'nt been using the phone barely at all.

 

[epphllps]

I strongly strongly believe the battery drain on cellular is a software issue intertwined with radio power draw. An update can solve this, at least somewhat. Hoping it comes out at the event on the 23rd or before.

 

[Dukat]

How many times does someone have to repeat: WIFI battery life is outstanding on the 5. Cellular radio use ISN'T.
View attachment 370683

I'm in complete agreement. Wifi battery is good, 3G/4G it drains before my eyes. Sucks phone battery only lasts in the house, where I don't need battery.

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Mine seems ok. I FaceTime'd with my friend via Wifi for 2 hours yesterday. Went down from 80% to 10%.

My iPhone 4 would do 4+ hours on FaceTime.
Haven't had a chance to try it on the 5, but 2 hours seems kinda low, even from 80%.

 

[Deacon-Blues]

For the last three days my phone has hit 20% battery with exactly 7 hrs and 15 min use, with around 15 hrs standby. I am pretty happy with this because in all three cases I was just going to bed. The battery is lasting me all day with 20% to spare.

The big change for me came when I broke down and flipped on wifi. Using wifi over cellular data is making a huge difference for me. I thought keeping wifi on would negatively impact battery but I was wrong.

 

[Shockwave78]

Ok Ill chime in now...

Back story... I have had every iphone on launch day since there releases. I started getting tired of iOS and iphone around the iphone 4. Not that they were bad, just needed a change. So i waited and waited for Android phone or anything else out there that could actually compete. It took almost two years for that after i started getting bored with it..but here were the results, battery life only. Won't go into any other details..all phones were 4g LTE and the signal is 5 bars up here in New England, great coverage on Verizons part..

Galaxy Nexus - 2hrs average, 2 1/2hrs max
Droid Razr - LOL...ya thats the number LOL
Galaxy SIII - 3hrs average, couple times squeezed out 3.5hrs with tweaking.
Iphone 5 - 4-6hrs average

Iphone 5...HOLY CARP...The phones battery is what 30-45% smaller than the Gnex and SIII and the battery life kills both of them. I know the new LTE radios were supposed to make a difference, but the SIII has the new 2nd gen radios also that consume less power. The only thing i can think of is that since apple put everything on ONE chip, and not two like every other phone out there, that is the reason for the great battery life.

Now some more detail...at work i work deep in a huge 500,000sqft building, I always loved AT&T and had them for 8yrs, but finally got tired of having 0 bars at my work(everywhere else was great) so i switched to verizon about 16 months ago. Now i get 1-2 bars on average and it floats in and out of 3g/LTE which is great. I bring this up because the signal strenght has a huge impact on battery life...A weak 4g LTE signal will drain the battery like a monster. With the Gnex and The SIII those battery lives i posted were hit about 30% on my work days, so subtract that off. With the i5 it barely affects it.

To carry on a bit farther...I did pick up the i5 on launch day at the store. But ended up returning it about 5pm on the same day. At first glance it seems like not much of an improvement over the 4s but it really is. I found this out about a week later when i picked one up again to give it another shot. Its is a much better phone, and while switching to white for the first time it has almost completely gotten rid of my "boredness" with iOS. I can't say i won't switch to windows phones once released next month. But the i5 has breathed some fresh air into the phone once you have played with it for a couple days.

 

[TM WAZZA]

^ Not sure how the color of the phone has direct correlation to the operating system, but whatever

 

[Shockwave78]

^ Not sure how the color of the phone has direct correlation to the operating system, but whatever

Color of the phone or any other device you watch stuff on has a HUGE impact on how things are perceived and how realistic stuff looks. Ask any videophile..

 

[hatersgonnahate]

having a darker home screen wallpaper helps a lot. im getting 6-8 hours.

more of 7:30. i rarely get 5-6 hours. so far im happy with the battery life.

 

[Coastercraze]

I get around 5 hrs at least right now with 3G usage. I'm sure it'd be higher if I only used Wifi at places.

 

[MrMacBookPro]

had just over 8 hrs with 64% left and decided to charge it here at work.. I must say this phone charges fast.. its been charging 20 min and up to 84% already..

Granted i'm around radiation and high voltage generators so that may deplete my battery some..

 

[sparayno1]

I am happy with the battery life. 2 hours of usage was music playing through the speakers. The rest is normal usage on auto brightness (browsing on wifi and lte).

 

[Adutrumque]

Brightness is on the low side, too bright hurts my eyes. I'm mostly browsing on the Internet with wifi on, reading on iBooks, 30mins-1hr of music sometimes with screen locked other times while browsing, 20-40mins of video, light calls/ messages and checking on my games couple times a day.

Checkin on your games? Now you got me interested. Which ones?
By the way, thats very light usage so I can understand the hours you're getting.

 

[Nathan20]

Loving it after erasing all content then restoring from back up, not that it was bad before.

 

[sdm1985]

How are some of you getting 8-9 and plus hours usage?? I've had three iPhone 5's and got around 24 hours standby and 5-7 usage maximum! Arghh!

 

[Adutrumque]

How are some of you getting 8-9 and plus hours usage?? I've had three iPhone 5's and got around 24 hours standby and 5-7 usage maximum! Arghh!

What do you have your brightness on? have you tried the fixes around? turning off location services etc?

 

[Dick Whitman]

So I have tried all the tricks and my battery life is still way worse than my 4. Setup as new, turned off everything that isn't necessary, fully drained and charged a few times, auto brightness everything. By the drive home from work my battery is on its last leg. Not much heavy use during work hours and when I do I'm on wifi. So bummed. I'm hoping this is an iOS flaw and will be fixed.

Same here. It's very disappointing. The best battery life I ever had was with my 4 running iOS 5. I noticed slightly decreased battery life upgrading to iOS 6 but the battery on the 4 was still so good that it didn't matter much. But take iOS 6 and LTE and LTE signal strength issues and I think that it unfortunately makes for very subpar battery life.

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How are some of you getting 8-9 and plus hours usage?? I've had three iPhone 5's and got around 24 hours standby and 5-7 usage maximum! Arghh!

They're using Wifi and shutting off LTE sometimes. There's no other way they can possibly be getting that kind of battery life. I'm on my second iPhone 5 and am still getting 5-6 hours of battery life.

 

[MrMacBookPro]

i noticed today right after i unplugged the phone after a few text messages and phone conversation the phone went to 98%.. 2 days ago it stayed at 100% longer than i expected...

besides turning down brightness and turing off spotlight, is there anything else i can turn off etc.. someone mention location in the above post.. how do i get to that?

Thanks