any advice on how to maximize the battery life of the iPhone5? I mainly text and use it for actual phone calls....rarely online or using apps. It drains so quickly!! Im a new iPhone user...coming from a Blackberry...which seemed to last so much longer....
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maximizing iPhone5 battery life?
- Thread starter north0311
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Disable the stuff you dont use like wifi, bluetooth, cellular network, lte. Watch the brightness and make sure auto brightness is on. Disable the notifications and the the location services for the apps you dont want it to use and disable push under email setting. Also, enabling airplane mode where you dont get any cellular signal will also save battery.
I was thinking the same thing with my iPhone 5 especially with what I was getting on my old 4. But I was basing this mainly on what I was seeing on the battery meter. Even after an overnight charge it would quickly drop to 90% with hardly any usage.
Then I read that the battery meter could be recalibrated.
I simply ran the iPhone 5 until it shut itself off completely by turning off the power save function and running a streaming video over wifi until it shut down. I noticed that the phone seemed to last a long time for the last 10% suggesting that the meter was non-linear.
Then I charged it to 100% and did a hard reset. Now the battery meter seems to react much more like my iPhone 4. So the differences I had initially observed were actually incorrect due to the nonlinear display of the battery meter.
Check out anandtechs battery testing on the iPhone 5. The battery life is very good compared to the iPhone 4s on WiFi and outstanding when web browsing over LTE compared to the 4S on 3G.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/13
Then I read that the battery meter could be recalibrated.
I simply ran the iPhone 5 until it shut itself off completely by turning off the power save function and running a streaming video over wifi until it shut down. I noticed that the phone seemed to last a long time for the last 10% suggesting that the meter was non-linear.
Then I charged it to 100% and did a hard reset. Now the battery meter seems to react much more like my iPhone 4. So the differences I had initially observed were actually incorrect due to the nonlinear display of the battery meter.
Check out anandtechs battery testing on the iPhone 5. The battery life is very good compared to the iPhone 4s on WiFi and outstanding when web browsing over LTE compared to the 4S on 3G.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6330/the-iphone-5-review/13
What's quick? Hours...days?
I too came from a blackberry (got lucky, walked in for a replacement BB and walked out 20 min later with an iPhone on the day it came out!). At first my battery was dead after 6 hours(max). After I stopped playing around with Siri and maps and downloading apps and so on,it did not get much better. I did what the others on this thread and others recommended but it really didn't help much, close apps,GPS off,Bluetooth off,reminders that used locations etc. I ran it down and then charged it up , after an hour of doing nothing but 5 short phone calls ,2 texts and 6 emails it was down 20%! I checked and all apps were closed,I went to the Apple store and they ran a diagnostic check. The genius wasn't very helpful, that's another story.... Bottom line after all that I learned that simply powering it off instead of doing the hard resets ( as recommended ) was probably the cure.
Using it as I used my prior phone the battery life is significantly better, once I start using all the bells and whistles its a different story.
I too came from a blackberry (got lucky, walked in for a replacement BB and walked out 20 min later with an iPhone on the day it came out!). At first my battery was dead after 6 hours(max). After I stopped playing around with Siri and maps and downloading apps and so on,it did not get much better. I did what the others on this thread and others recommended but it really didn't help much, close apps,GPS off,Bluetooth off,reminders that used locations etc. I ran it down and then charged it up , after an hour of doing nothing but 5 short phone calls ,2 texts and 6 emails it was down 20%! I checked and all apps were closed,I went to the Apple store and they ran a diagnostic check. The genius wasn't very helpful, that's another story.... Bottom line after all that I learned that simply powering it off instead of doing the hard resets ( as recommended ) was probably the cure.
Using it as I used my prior phone the battery life is significantly better, once I start using all the bells and whistles its a different story.
After owning all 5 iterations of iphones I can tell you, that the only real feature that sucks your battery empty within hours is bluetooth.
Disabling 3G, disabling WiFi etc. almost doest nothing to the batterly life. But having bluetooth turned on makes my iphone 5 go from 100% to 60% within roughly 5h....just sitting there doing barely anything.
Oh, and disable Push....that will (depending on the amount of emails and notifications you receive) also suck up a lot of power.
Disabling 3G, disabling WiFi etc. almost doest nothing to the batterly life. But having bluetooth turned on makes my iphone 5 go from 100% to 60% within roughly 5h....just sitting there doing barely anything.
Oh, and disable Push....that will (depending on the amount of emails and notifications you receive) also suck up a lot of power.
I have Bluetooth, Location Services and just about everything else disabled and carrier and wifi signals are at maximum.
After calling Apple for the 3rd time they transferred me to their higher level support. Spent an hour explaining what I'm experiencing and going through troubleshooting steps. Support is in agreement that it could be a software bug but thinks it's just as likely there's a hardware defect, like a chip/transistor/something turning on and not shutting off properly. They authorized me for a phone replacement. Once I get the new phone I'll report back if the drain changes.
That should not be true. Bluetooth is the lowest power of all the radios. That's why it exists. It only works in 30 ft radius, unlike several hundred for wifi and thousands for cell.
Try it yourself. I use bluetooth almost daily in my car and yes, it drains the battery amazingly fast. No matter what you think, its a fact (otherwise all my iphones were broken). BT has, contrary to Wireless, to maintain a connection to your cars handsfree and will empty your iPhones battery withing hours (8h car drive, 3 calls - 10 minutes each - reduces my iPhone battery from 100% to roughly 40%). Turning BT off and using the included headset reduced the battery for the same period and making more calls by less then 20%.
I got my phone swapped out last night.
It's too early to tell if the battery drain issue is resolved but so far it's looking very good. I'll hold off my final verdict until I get several days use and go through 2 calibration cycles.
Quick summary of what I'm seeing vs. my first iPhone 5.
Both phones have location services and bluetooth disabled and wifi/carrier signal at full strength. Results with my old 5 were random with 1 night being great and the next bad so unknown if pattern will repeat with new one.
Old 5: Charged to 100%. Standby 6.5 hours, usage 3.5 hours. Usage # wrong because I didn't touch the phone a single time so actual usage should have been 0-20 minutes for background apps. Battery at 75%.
New 5: Charged to 100%. Standby 10h 48m, usage 2h 48m. This is actual usage, not the fake usage the first phone reported. The nearly 3 hours of usage was heavy app usage, primarily IM+ Pro running in the foreground, connected to multiple IM accounts. Battery at 76%.
Assuming this isn't a fluke, or a battery calibration issue as I haven't cycled the battery yet, the new phone's battery drain is drastically improved as it's dropped less % with far greater usage.
Old phone constantly reported usage when there was none.
Using apps would drain the old phone very rapidly.
Spent over an hour with tier 3 support and performed every troubleshooting step including DFU restore and setting phone up as a new device. Diagnostics showed battery was fine. The support person believed something may have been defective in the electronics that would turn on and not shut down properly creating large drain and showing as usage when there was none.
I'll report back in a few days but right now it looks like the hardware was the issue.
It's too early to tell if the battery drain issue is resolved but so far it's looking very good. I'll hold off my final verdict until I get several days use and go through 2 calibration cycles.
Quick summary of what I'm seeing vs. my first iPhone 5.
Both phones have location services and bluetooth disabled and wifi/carrier signal at full strength. Results with my old 5 were random with 1 night being great and the next bad so unknown if pattern will repeat with new one.
Old 5: Charged to 100%. Standby 6.5 hours, usage 3.5 hours. Usage # wrong because I didn't touch the phone a single time so actual usage should have been 0-20 minutes for background apps. Battery at 75%.
New 5: Charged to 100%. Standby 10h 48m, usage 2h 48m. This is actual usage, not the fake usage the first phone reported. The nearly 3 hours of usage was heavy app usage, primarily IM+ Pro running in the foreground, connected to multiple IM accounts. Battery at 76%.
Assuming this isn't a fluke, or a battery calibration issue as I haven't cycled the battery yet, the new phone's battery drain is drastically improved as it's dropped less % with far greater usage.
Old phone constantly reported usage when there was none.
Using apps would drain the old phone very rapidly.
Spent over an hour with tier 3 support and performed every troubleshooting step including DFU restore and setting phone up as a new device. Diagnostics showed battery was fine. The support person believed something may have been defective in the electronics that would turn on and not shut down properly creating large drain and showing as usage when there was none.
I'll report back in a few days but right now it looks like the hardware was the issue.