iPhone 5 battery now lasting only ~16 hours - help?

karansaraf · Jun 12, 2013

I have an iPhone 5 with iOS6. It's only about 8 months old.

For the last 4-8 weeks, the battery has been draining very fast. It used to last me 48 hours at least, with all the usage I would want to make - browsing, calls, messaging, app usage (no games), occasional maps usage. Often when I plugged it in to recharge at night, it would be at somewhere between 70-80% after all of that usage.

Now it's only lasting around 16-18 hours, and in fact in the evenings I sometimes have to actively avoid using it for some things because I know that if I do, then it will completely drain before I go to bed and recharge it. At 100% when I take it off charge at 7am, and often between 0-10% when I plug in at 11-12 at night.

On a day to day basis, it's not the biggest deal in the world, but I'm wondering why it's doing this now?

Location services is turned off on all non-essential apps (and that hasn't changed in the last few months anyway).

Brightness is near full, yes, but again, I haven't changed that recently either, so it should not be contributing to the faster drainage.

Battery drains even when I've got LTE off, and only 3G enabled.

Bluetooth is always off.

Mail set to push on my main account, fetch 30 mins on the others, but again, no changes there recently, so should not be contributory.

So any tips on what I can do myself to fix this? It was perfect when battery lasted me 48 hours because even though I normally recharge every night when I go to bed, if I go away for the night then it will still last until the next night, or go away for the weekend then with some light use I can get away with it - but none of that is possible currently with the way it's draining.

Any help is appreciated.

Zmanbaseball2 · Jun 12, 2013

iPhone 5 battery now lasting only ~16 hours - help?

Getting 8+ hours of battery life is EXTREMELY great if your lucky. If you think your iPhone has a problem, take it to the apple store. Take a pic in settings>general> usage, so i can see what your battery life is. I don't think your iPhone last lasts for 16-18 or even 48 hr of usage.

Sent from my iPhone 5 using Tapatalk 2

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Sent from my iPhone 5 using Tapatalk 2

karansaraf · Jun 12, 2013

You missed my point.

I'm not saying my phone got 48 hours of USAGE time and now only gets 16 hours of USAGE time. If you include ALL of my usage AND standby time in between, it would take roughly 48 hours for my battery to go from 100% to 0%. That includes the many hours of standby time during that period of course. My usage is sporadic. I use it more at lunch, I use it periodically in between seeing patients (I'm a doctor) and I use it more when I'm at home in front of the TV for example. In between that time it is locked in standby in my pocket, and the number of hours it's in standby is much greater than the number of hours it's in use.

If you had to represent it in a formula, you could say that for every hour, my usage is X and standby time is Y, with Y being much larger than X.

What I'm saying is that my usage habits haven't changed (ie. I haven't suddenly started using it a lot more within the same period of time; the relationship between X and Y hasn't changed), neither have I changed very much with regards to settings on the phone that could affect battery life (location services/notifications etc). HOWEVER, the number of hours that it takes to go from 100% to 0% has gone from roughly 48 to roughly 18.

To repeat, I am still using the phone in the same way I used to, but when I go to bed, the phone is near 0%, whereas in the past it would be somewhere between 70-80% at least.

So I'm wondering if there is anything to be done before taking it to Apple to see if they will sort it (of which I'm skeptical anyway).

Zmanbaseball2 · Jun 12, 2013

iPhone 5 battery now lasting only ~16 hours - help?

If it lasts all day thats great, charge it when you go to sleep. Please post a picture of your usage so i can help you more. Your battery is 8 months old and now the battery is starting to show its age. Go to the apple store for a replacement or find an iPhone repair shop to replace the battery. You can always get a battery pack as i stated above.

Sent from my iPhone 5 using Tapatalk 2

karansaraf · Jun 12, 2013

Yeah as I said, day to day not the biggest deal as I can charge overnight but I often go away for the night to do night photography or go camping for the weekend and need to use certain specialised apps such as star walk, and obviously it is a big problem then.

Plus I don't think it's reasonable to just live with it like this given its so obviously performing significantly below par compared to normal.

Attached screenshot, but usage values are blank.

MrMacMack · Jun 12, 2013

Double check the items you have in the notification center. Also open the Facebook app and go into settings within the app and check for individual apps within to see if they are using push.

karansaraf · Jun 12, 2013

Push notifications within FB are ticked (when someone comments, sends message, tags, posts on ell etc). Would that really make a difference? Plus I've not actively changed any of that recently.

Zmanbaseball2 · Jun 12, 2013

iPhone 5 battery now lasting only ~16 hours - help?

karansaraf said: ↑

Yeah as I said, day to day not the biggest deal as I can charge overnight but I often go away for the night to do night photography or go camping for the weekend and need to use certain specialised apps such as star walk, and obviously it is a big problem then.

Plus I don't think it's reasonable to just live with it like this given its so obviously performing significantly below par compared to normal.

Attached screenshot, but usage values are blank.

View attachment 416919
Click to expand...

For the usage stats to show the battery must be at 100% and not touch the charger(even for 1 second) or it might reset to 0 min or ----.

Sent from my iPhone 5 using Tapatalk 2

karansaraf · Jun 13, 2013

So usage stats:

Currently 44% battery remaining.

Time since last full charge:
Usage 2 Hours
Standby 10 Hours, 44 Minutes

What does that tell you?

paulie6978 · Jun 13, 2013

My battery has been weird... it will drain fast and once it gets below 30% it will fluctuate.. for example, from 30 to 22 to 12 to say 5 quickly and if i plug it in it will go up sporadically as well.....

very weird

mnsportsgeek · Jun 13, 2013

iPhone 5 battery now lasting only ~16 hours - help?

This is how mine looks:

I'm taking it to the apple store this evening. The battery has gotten out of hand. I have location services and notifications turned off. Brightness turned down, and email set to fetch every hour.

Apple says 8-10 hours. I'm getting about 3. That's not gonna cut it.

Oh, and I restored as new last night to make sure it wasn't a software issue.

l.i. bruce fan · Jun 14, 2013

afurry13 said: ↑

This is how mine looks:

View attachment 417318

I'm taking it to the apple store this evening. The battery has gotten out of hand. I have location services and notifications turned off. Brightness turned down, and email set to fetch every hour.

Apple says 8-10 hours. I'm getting about 3. That's not gonna cut it.

Oh, and I restored as new last night to make sure it wasn't a software issue.
Click to expand...

So what happened at the Apple Store last night? I spent an hour and a half at mine yesterday and ended up with them doing a DFU restore which is seeming more like just an FU...will wait and see if it helped, but so far does not look promising.

What did they do (or not do) to solve your battery issue?

mnsportsgeek · Jun 14, 2013

iPhone 5 battery now lasting only ~16 hours - help?

l.i. bruce fan said: ↑

So what happened at the Apple Store last night? I spent an hour and a half at mine yesterday and ended up with them doing a DFU restore which is seeming more like just an FU...will wait and see if it helped, but so far does not look promising.

What did they do (or not do) to solve your battery issue?
Click to expand...

She told me it was because I only had "3 bars" of service at work and no wifi, as opposed to 5 bars with wifi. Kind of lame, but whatever. The battery showed up fine in diagnostics so I guess I can kinda believe it.

I restored the phone and am only putting on apps I know I'll use and only using notifications and location services for apps that I know I will benefit from having. It doesn't make sense to turn everything off as then the phone loses the features it offers, but I don't need a game using my location or giving me push notifications or the 3 news apps telling me the same notification when I can turn it off on 2 and turn it on on 1, etc. etc.

It seems to be doing much better as of recently.

PNutts · Jun 21, 2013

Typically a large change in battery life is the result of a rouge app. You can undelete the apps and updates you've made to right before the change, but the first step is a simple hard reset. That's why a restore usually works because you are simply terminating the process causing the issue. You can also install a system monitoring utility to see which one is driving the CPU.

karansaraf · Jun 21, 2013

Any recommendations for a utility app?

I took mine to the Apple store and their diagnostic showed my battery life was apparently "normal" so not much I could say after that!

takeshi74 · Jun 21, 2013

afurry13 said: ↑

She told me it was because I only had "3 bars" of service at work and no wifi, as opposed to 5 bars with wifi. Kind of lame, but whatever.
Click to expand...

Coverage will impact battery life on any cellular device.

Damolee · Jun 26, 2013

There was an issue with the Facebook app not long ago and the messenger one.

Don't leave it running as a background app. By all means allow push notifications, but close the app down itself when your done.

Some guy found there was some sort of memory leak which causes battery drain.

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