iPhone 5 Weird Battery Behaviour

[Dino F]

I sometimes get this really strange battery drain whereby the battery will drain from around 60% to around 30% in literally the space of only a couple of minutes, whilst I am using the phone to browse apps?!

As an example, this morning, I was using the app 'Newsify' which a glorified RSS reader for all the news articles which interest me.
I opened the app and noticed that my battery showed 57%. I then browsed through the app, reading what I wanted to read (no video articles which could consume battery life) which probably took no more than 5-10 minutes.
As I was then finishing off and reading one of the last articles, I happened to glance at the battery which now showed 37%

How could the battery have jumped from 57% to 37% in less than 10 minutes of usage?! I know I didn't misread the numbers as this situation has happened before!

The above, all happened at around 8am this morning (whilst waiting for my train to commute to work). Its now 4pm and as I now glance at my phone, its now sitting at 36% and has been all day (I have used it a few times to send and receive some texts but that is all - it has been in sleep mode the whole time).

Its as if my phone sometimes experiences a massive lump sum drain in the battery (the 57% - 37% drop) and then realizes that it does in fact actually have more than 37% left and then proceeds to sit at that level (36%) for the next 4 hours or so....?!?!?

Totally weird.............?!

 

[Newtons Apple]

Does you phone get warm during this 10 minutes?

I assume that you have rebooted your phone and also done a calibration for the battery.

If you take it to the Apple store they can also test the battery on the spot.

 

[Superman80]

This happens to me whilst streaming, i put mine down to it being Jailbroken, if i plug it in to charge it jumps back to the normal percentage. I have tried all the usual battery conditioning tricks but none have worked, just lived with it

 

[Dino F]

This happens to me whilst streaming, i put mine down to it being Jailbroken, if i plug it in to charge it jumps back to the normal percentage. I have tried all the usual battery conditioning tricks but none have worked, just lived with it

Funny you should mention that because my phone has done the same thing in the past...! Its not JB'd though but once - I had the massive drain in a few short minutes (it dropped from about 27% to about 6%) but then, when I plugged it into the charger, the %age shot up straight away to over 30%.....?!

How do I re-calibrate the battery? Is it a case of draining it from 100% to 0% and then charge it back up to 100% (I don't normally allow it to drop to below than 20% before plugging it back in)?

I also find that when the the phone (it doesn't get warm by the way) is between 100% and 50% the battery drains alot slower (it will last for a good 2 or 3 days), however, when it then drops to less than 50%, I can lose at least more than 10% power in a single day just by having the phone in sleep mode and it will hit the 20% mark (when I feel the need to charge it) alot quicker.....?!

 

[Imac Sam]

This is a sign of battery failure, most likely one of the cells has gone bad. I had the same issue in 3 of my families 4 (launch day)-Iphone 5s. I got all of mine replaced at the Apple store under the Applecare warranty. If you are out of warranty they will replace it for $80 in about 30 minutes. When I took mine in, they gave me a url to run an in-store test on my battery and all three phones indicated failure.

Since replacing it back in November, I have not seen any of the large battery percentage jumps like the OP mentioned, but I did get them constantly before I had it replaced. As many other threads on here will state, they think it is an iOS7 bug, it is not. Apple had a lot of crappy batteries installed in the iPhone5 and neglected to let anyone know about.

So go get your battery replaced and you will be a happy camper.
....And just in case, do an Itunes backup before you go. One of the batteries they were replacing broke a connector on the phones logic board, and they just replaced the phone for free. An hour later I had the "new" phone restored, and all was good.

 

[T5BRICK]

Apple doesn't have any information suggesting that calibrating your battery is necessary anymore, although you can certainly try it. Some folks suggest that you never drain your battery below 20%, but honestly, I disagree. Just use your phone and enjoy it. Plug it in and charge it when needed.

Anyway I agree with another poster, what you're describing sure sounds like a bad battery to me.

 

[shawndc1]

this is my third iphone5, and what i have noticed is if you use non-apple chargers it does something to the battery life idk what but it does, as i did a self test ..i had the same problem id go to sleep with it 100% wake up and its like 75% without being used, send a text or two its at 58%..

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also a little birdy at apple told me that their phones are only good for 365 charges, so once a day any more than that then your battery is shot