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Is it normal to drop 1% every 3-4 minutes of use??

dictoresno

dictoresno

macrumors 601
Original poster
Apr 30, 2012
4,532
665
NJ
when browsing or using imessage on my iphone 5, i will lose 1% every 3-4 minutes. i noticed this on my iphone 4 as well. seems awefully excessive. i have wifi on, full cellular signal, bt off and screen brightness down. on my ipad, i can browse the internet for 10-15 min before it takes away 1%.

this is on a new iphone 5, set up as new. right now my usage/standby screen shows:

38% battery level
Usage: 5hr, 16 mins
Standby: 11hr, 27min

seems kinda poor after seeing people get day and a half standby, 12 hrs or so of use and still have some juice left. in the time its taken me to write this on my laptop, ive lost 3% on the phone just from having an on/off texting convo.
 
dictoresno said:
when browsing or using imessage on my iphone 5, i will lose 1% every 3-4 minutes. i noticed this on my iphone 4 as well. seems awefully excessive. i have wifi on, full cellular signal, bt off and screen brightness down. on my ipad, i can browse the internet for 10-15 min before it takes away 1%.

this is on a new iphone 5, set up as new. right now my usage/standby screen shows:

38% battery level
Usage: 5hr, 16 mins
Standby: 11hr, 27min

seems kinda poor after seeing people get day and a half standby, 12 hrs or so of use and still have some juice left. in the time its taken me to write this on my laptop, ive lost 3% on the phone just from having an on/off texting convo.
Click to expand...

I would chillax on battery until you can do some more conclusive tests. It is IMPOSSIBLE to compare battery tests unless they are very controlled. I have had this happen and been discouraged but after some control testing, i have usually identified the problem. Let me give you a few reasons why.

1) Notifications - Depending on how many you have and if you have them show on lockscreen, this can eat of battery at a faster rate. I would turn most of them off except for major ones like Messages.
2) Push Email - Many people i know dont even have a push message account. Push is very efficient now but it still uses much more battery than say checking your email manually or having it set to every 30 minutes.
3) Cell Signal. This one may be the signal biggest impact. If you are in and out of strong signal coverage, it has an enormous impact on battery life. I have seen many tests out there and the difference between say 80dcb and 95dcb on battery life is not insignificant. And both of those may register as 3 bars. The harder the phone has to work to keep a signal the more battery it uses. Even if you are in good coverage, someone else who may have very very strong coverage could get better battery life than you even if you have more services disabled.

The other big ones are location services. You can disable a bunch of the apple related location services to see if this helps. You could even disable them all together to see if there is an app that is over using it.

I would try and do some more control testing to see if any one has a bigger impact on battery. Then work your way back.

The last thing I might try is to re-calibrate your battery. Its possible it got out of wack although that usually happens over time. Simply charge to 100 and run it down without charging to like 2%. Dont let it die. Then charge it back up. This is not conditioning the battery but rather resetting the digital sensor that correlates the battery % to the actual amount of battery.
 
thanks for your input. thorough and well thought out. i restored as new again, this time i messed with an assortment of things (push is only on my main email, everything else is on manual) and a few other things. so far its looking really well. ill give you an idea later when i goto work of how its holding up.
 
so far im about 45 mins of use, 2 hours of standby and im at 97%. so far so good. ill see how the night goes.
 
It's perfectly normal, and something Apple is working on.

Your best bet is to just use your phone, charging it as needed. Then when the update is made available, this will only be a memory.

It's as easy as that :)
 
Kidder1994 said:
Push is only for email? or for all type of notification apps? like Facebook or twitter?
Click to expand...

well there are push notifications that push from the app to the phone and then email inboxes that push messages to the phone too.

i turned off push emails from all inboxes except my main one. so far it seems to be paying off a little.

and the dropping 1% every few minutes is just crazy. especially considering my ipad, while wifi browsing, will go 15 or more minutes before dropping 1%.
 
the problem is that iPad do not need to check signal strengh everytime coz dont have cellular to make calls... oh well, and the big battery reservers vs the 1430mah battery of the iphone xd

anyway, if i put "No" push notifications on the Email and contacts setting, it will turn off all my apps push nutifications? or only from email?
 
do the push notifications for all non essential apps REALLY make that much of a difference??
 
current stats are now at 82% battery

Usage: 2 hr, 24 min
Standby: 5 hr, 35 min

that works out to roughly 3.2% drain per hour. this is on par with what i felt was acceptable for normal usage with my blackberry. anything over 5%/hr i felt was high. so far this is looking better. im going to do a full discharge for a real full battery stat report.
 
well, after restoring as new, modifying email and notification settings and being conservative with location settings, here is what ive come up with. not as bad as i was expecting. this was normal use for me, not "trying" to conserve battery. basically just said "******* it", use it as you would as if battery wasnt a worry.

only gripe im still having is im unable to hold an LTE signal (2 bars), as it jumps to 4G. im assuming this is to save battery life. im still in a fringe coverage area. after talking to at&t twice, one rep said they didnt see LTE coverage at my location, whereas a tier 2 rep said that i should see it (zip 07081). oh well, guess it will be a waiting game.
 

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dictoresno said:
well, after restoring as new, modifying email and notification settings and being conservative with location settings, here is what ive come up with. not as bad as i was expecting. this was normal use for me, not "trying" to conserve battery. basically just said "******* it", use it as you would as if battery wasnt a worry.

only gripe im still having is im unable to hold an LTE signal (2 bars), as it jumps to 4G. im assuming this is to save battery life. im still in a fringe coverage area. after talking to at&t twice, one rep said they didnt see LTE coverage at my location, whereas a tier 2 rep said that i should see it (zip 07081). oh well, guess it will be a waiting game.
Click to expand...

Do you have wifi at your location? If so, why not use that instead of LTE or 4G? You will dramatically improve battery life. I only get 1 to 2 bars of LTE service at home and always use wifi over LTE at home.
 
darster said:
Do you have wifi at your location? If so, why not use that instead of LTE or 4G? You will dramatically improve battery life. I only get 1 to 2 bars of LTE service at home and always use wifi over LTE at home.
Click to expand...

yea i use blazingly fast wifi at home and at work and im connected while at home. i just think its weird that im in an LTE area, however the phone refuses to connect/stay connected to it.
 
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