iPhone 5S: what are the chances of much improved battery life?

[Romf]

That's bizarre. I can't imagine what would be doing that but it shouldn't be the case. I've been through a Windows Phone, Nexus phone, and an iPhone 4S, and my iPhone 5 has them all beat for longevity.

People have done extensive tests on the iPhone 5 and it always beats the 4S in battery life so I don't have answers for you .

Really? Well as I said I didn't make any proper testings but have had the 5 since it's out (and different ones due to some little problems, or stolen phone ) and I really see the difference. Maybe I'm just using it more but then again, don't see any change in my everyday use
Also have a friend who says same about i5 batt

 

[Luuthian]

Really? Well as I said I didn't make any proper testings but have had the 5 since it's out (and different ones due to some little problems, or stolen phone ) and I really see the difference. Maybe I'm just using it more but then again, don't see any change in my everyday use
Also have a friend who says same about i5 batt

It depends on how you use it.

If you set the phone to push a lot of notifications to you or borrow a bunch of GPS data then yes, you will see a battery decline. You'll also take a hit for using a high brightness setting (with the new screen the iPhone 5 is pretty damn bright even at just below half brightness) or having the wifi on (although if you're doing web surfing wifi will help save battery).

I know this dumbs my phone down a bit, but I have virtually all notifications off (I have to manually check my Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, etc), I use just below medium brightness, and I never turn on wifi unless I intend to update apps or do heavy web surfing. With the iOS7 Beta I've even turned off auto app updates. So far my battery life is even better than iOS 6. I lose about 1% of battery for every 10 minutes on Safari, which is within Apple's "perfect scenario" battery expectations.

The only other culprit would be the LTE radio. If you have LTE on and you're in an area where LTE reception is not very strong the antenna will struggle to find a strong connection and noticeably drain your battery. LTE will also simply take more battery in general, even if you're in a good location. There are several articles on this regarding the iPhone 5. Personally I find HSPA+/3G to be more than fast enough, so I keep LTE off and it definitely does improve battery life.

In any case, use the phone as it suits your needs . But I'd suggest turning off LTE for a few days and see if you really notice that much a loss in web surfing speed, because if you don't the battery gain may be worth it.

 

[Lucille Carter]

I would still expect there are some things Apple can do to further improve battery life such as more effecient circuitry, perhaps underclock the A7 processor and graphics (while still imporving performance). I would expect a substantial improvement in battery life, but I would expect some. It seems extremely unlikely Apple will be increasing the size of the screen this year, so to ensure more people buy their product they will have to work hard to justify people upgrading to this new phone (especially those with an existing iPhone 5).

I believe I mentioned the number one increase in any possible battery use would be from more efficient circuitry. Increasing battery capacity without making the device thicker would be impossible as you can not cram more capacity in the same size area using the same chemistry.

I think the most we can expect is a "small" increase in battery life or which will hardly be noticed. The 5s will have more than enough power for the average user just like the 5.

 

[Parkin Pig]

Always leave 'em hungry....

Better battery life appears to be one of the more popular improvements that iPhone users want.

I do think it's highly unlikely we'll get that though. If new hardware and iOS 7 gave better battery life, chances are that Apple would simply use the opportunity to fuel their obsession with making the iPhone even thinner and lighter, reducing the battery size to give the same battery life.

How many iPhone owners actually feel their phone is too fat or heavy?

Apple has shareholders, therefore it's primary responsibility is to those shareholders.

The best way to ensure customers spend their money on unnecessarily frequent upgrades is to always leave them hungry, and Apple are masters of that art.

 

[iAlphard]

Just imagine moto x with iOS. Damn, i bet it would stand for 2 days.
It's all common sense and logic. Design the OS with power consumption as low as possible, limit multi tasking to 2 apps, don't give bigger RAM to also save battery and to instant kill app if it's using too much and also give nonsense feature that paralel to battery consumption. There you have a phone which looks like it has different battery, but in reality there is no such thing. That is what apple has been doing. Sooner or later, they need to wake up.

 

[JulianL]

I wonder whether Apple are saving some big battery life boosters for the 2014 iPhone so that they can go up to a noticeably bigger screen (4.7"?) and can use the same line to head off criticisms that they're behind the competition and playing catchup as the line that they used way back when copy and paste was introduced into iOS . The line is essentially "We don't rush things out before they're ready (implication: like our competitors do), we wait until we can do something right before we release it. Behold the iPhone 6 with a significantly bigger screen and significantly better battery life.".

Going to an IGZO screen plus some significant SoC efficiencies (maybe a good implementation of ARM's big.LITTLE architecture) could allow them to announce a big battery life boost at the same time as a big screen size increase which would be a very big win for them.

 

[JodyK]

I hope so HORRIBLE battery life on my 5.

From a video I saw of leaked iPhone 5S casing looks like screws for processor are moved over a decent amount to presumably accommodate a larger battery! Yay!!!