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My iPhone 5 battery sucked until...

P

poidog81

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 22, 2010
25
1
...I did a factory restore and set the phone up as new.

When I received my phone on Friday, I set it up from my, recently cleaned up, iPhone 4 (5.1.1) back up. Battery was terrible and I was ready to through the iP5 against the wall. Was only getting about 2 hours of usage before it died even after multiple charging cycles (with everything possible turned off). I could watch the screen doing nothing and the battery indicator would tick down every 30 seconds. I could deal with the chips in the black bezel, but a crappy battery life was a deal breaker.

I decided to restore the phone and set it up as new, what the hell I have nothing else to lose besides it being a PITA to redo all my settings, etc...

Well.... now after the restore as new, battery is holding strong. It's been off the charger for 2 hours now and I'm at 99% on LTE (with everything on, BT, wifi).

If your battery is sucking, restore it as new phone and hopefully that'll work for you.
 
How about if you set it as new from start and battery is still sucky?

Is it even worth doing a restore, I wonder?
 
did you guys notice the battery would drain fast when the phone feel warm? Mine would get warm when the data reception is bad, as if the phone is turning up the gain on the antenna.
 
I've seen multiple posts alluding to this. How does restoring to factory settings improve battery life versus upgrading from an older phone?

On the surface, this seems to be a classic placebo effect..
 
cosmic68 said:
How about if you set it as new from start and battery is still sucky?

Is it even worth doing a restore, I wonder?
Click to expand...

itunes did have to download iOS6 from apple's servers doing the restore, so unless there are some unannounced tweaks to the software from the manufacturing load in Aug to whats on the servers now.

----------
mtneer said:
I've seen multiple posts alluding to this. How does restoring to factory settings improve battery life versus upgrading from an older phone?

On the surface, this seems to be a classic placebo effect..
Click to expand...

That's what I thought too, but it really did fix the battery issue. Otherwise I would of been going into apple today for a return or exchange. No placebo here.
 
steph280 said:
did you guys notice the battery would drain fast when the phone feel warm? Mine would get warm when the data reception is bad, as if the phone is turning up the gain on the antenna.
Click to expand...

Usually linked to corrupt "Accounts data" (like mail, iCloud). A solution is to remove ALL these accounts from your device, turn off and on your design and than add them again.
 
steph280 said:
did you guys notice the battery would drain fast when the phone feel warm? Mine would get warm when the data reception is bad, as if the phone is turning up the gain on the antenna.
Click to expand...

there were times over the weekend where it would get really warm like it was constantly processing even though I wasn't doing anything, all background apps closed.
 
steph280 said:
did you guys notice the battery would drain fast when the phone feel warm? Mine would get warm when the data reception is bad, as if the phone is turning up the gain on the antenna.
Click to expand...

Where I work I get really poor signal. I feel mind getting warm sometimes and it definitely makes a difference on battery
 
also, if this add anything to the mystery

ios5.1.1 backup had .5gb of "other" (after clean up)
restored iP5 as backup other was 2.5gb!
restored iP5 as new other is .7gb
 
My battery life was questionable until I turned LTE to "off"

I don't have LTE in my area and the antenna sniffing for the signal apparently was using unexpected battery power levels.

Since turning LTE off, battery life has improved to a higher level than my iPhone 4.

BJ
 
mtneer said:
I've seen multiple posts alluding to this. How does restoring to factory settings improve battery life versus upgrading from an older phone?

On the surface, this seems to be a classic placebo effect..
Click to expand...

FWIW, I have heard from a few people that work for apple, (both corporate and retail) that you should set up a phone as new whenever there is a new OS. You are right that it's not supposed to make a difference to restore from a backup, but it seems to.
 
JayLenochiniMac said:
Yes, we always get "My new iPhone battery sucked until......" threads at every release and they invariably disappear after it's been out for a while.
Click to expand...

and ******s troll on these boards while others actually try to help. I've every iPhone on release day and never had an issue until this battery issue with the iP5. Looks like I found the fix to my problem, so I shared it. Unless you have something useful to say, S TFU.
 
Tried that and my battery is still awful. I get about 4 hours with light texting and web surfing. Going to wait a week to see if I can figure out the issue and if it doesn't improve I guess I'll return it and hope it was just a dud.
 
jasonmac21 said:
Tried that and my battery is still awful. I get about 4 hours with light texting and web surfing. Going to wait a week to see if I can figure out the issue and if it doesn't improve I guess I'll return it and hope it was just a dud.
Click to expand...

That's how mine was.... just light usage and I would just drain. Sorry this didn't help for you.
 
I restored my 4S a couple days ago to get rid of unused apps and that terrible "other" category. I was just going to set up my iP5 from the backup of the fresh restore on my 4S, but I guess I'll go ahead and set up as new device. I've seen a lot of these posts. May as well just set up as new to be safe.
 
ThatsMeRight said:
Usually linked to corrupt "Accounts data" (like mail, iCloud). A solution is to remove ALL these accounts from your device, turn off and on your design and than add them again.
Click to expand...

So, how would one do this without having to set up as a new phone? It's a pain to redo all those settings and get it back just the way you like it...

Also, would the chances of this happening be less if you restored from an iOS 6 backup instead of an iOS 5? It seems to me like it would.
 
Setting the phone up as brand new has nothing to do with battery life. Last night I got 10 hours and 57 minutes usage, with 1 day and 4 hours of standby. I restored from my 4S backup and didn't start fresh.
 
poidog81 said:
and ******s troll on these boards while others actually try to help. I've every iPhone on release day and never had an issue until this battery issue with the iP5. Looks like I found the fix to my problem, so I shared it. Unless you have something useful to say, S TFU.
Click to expand...

Calm down. It's an accurate observation at every iPhone release and has little to do with the various methods that users tried which may not be actual cause and effect.

ando27 said:
So, how would one do this without having to set up as a new phone? It's a pain to redo all those settings and get it back just the way you like it...
Click to expand...

You manually delete those accounts and re-enter them.
 
Ishimaru said:
Setting the phone up as brand new has nothing to do with battery life. Last night I got 10 hours and 57 minutes usage, with 1 day and 4 hours of standby. I restored from my 4S backup and didn't start fresh.
Click to expand...

I beg to differ with you. However, I'm sure this is not a universal fix. There was something in my back up that did not agree with iP5 or IO6 that was causing poor battery performance.

I'm at 1 hour usage, 3 hours standby and at 97% on LTE. Before the restore I'd be around 40-50%
 
I walked into work today at 99% and I have little to zero service in my building, and forgot to put it in airplane mode like I always do and I picked up my phone. It was extremely hot and batter was down to 88%, turned airplane mode on and it hasnt moved. So it looks like it sucks a ton of battery going in and out of service. Lesson learned.
 
so you would have to manually add back your email accounts but wouldnt you lose all of your pics, etc?
 
I restored from a backup and my battery life is great. I'm having trouble draining it to zero in one day
 
I've tracked the battery life of my iPhone 5 closely just for fun. So far it is about average for an iPhone. It's neither worse, or better than my iPhone 4S, which I have kept active.

As I've stated before, battery life is never a deal breaker or big deal for me. It's last on my list of priorities.

Even though it impacts my usage, and it's nice in the case of my SGS 3 to have the choice of carrying a spare as I do, I have far more important priorities for the smartphones I use, than the battery.
 
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