My iPhone 5, which is a pre-order from last year, has literally the worst battery life I've ever seen. I have a new replacement a battery on order (since I fix my own stuff), but I don't understand why it's this bad. This usage has been on wifi, and I have a ton of stuff turned off. I know everyone will suggest restore from new but that is not an option for me. My friend also has a iPhone 5 with similarly bad battery life. I have a mophie I use and get probably 3 hours of device usage in total with the mophie and the devices battery.
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Tragically bad battery life.
- Thread starter Mars478
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Take the brightness off the maximum. I leave mine just slightly below the Bluetooth button on control center.
No, it's not. I'm not going to suggest restore as new, but why is that not an option?
Anyway, you may have one of the bad batteries. Or, you have an app or process that's gone wild and you need to simply reset your phone to stop it. Depending on what it is, it may return (Facebook, etc.). Or, the battery usage is normal depending on what it is you're doing.
There only a few reasons for battery life: Location (weak signal), an app, or a looping process (authentication), or the unicorn bad battery. If you don't do anything else a new battery won't help. Because the phone is turned off when someone replaces a battery, the processes stop and folks think it was the battery when in fact it was simply turning off the phone.
Whatever it turns out to be, good luck getting it resolved!
For anyone else reading this thread, a good test is to restore as new and don't put ANYTHING or any accounts on the phone. The expectations are you won't have a battery issue and then you can play Sherlock and find out what usage or app or process is causing the issue.
Well, if you leave it a while and check the usage, and the time of usage is about the same as time of standby, you might be better off restoring it. I used to have this bad battery life with my iPhone 4S and I noticed that pattern. After restoring it the phone is having better battery life than before.
Nope.
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It's not an option because I'm not keen on losing all of my data, achievements, pictures, and just the way I have the phone setup in general. The phone regularly turns off, because it runs out of battery so quickly (and also regularly turns off at 40% or 30% battery indicated on the icon, probably because the battery charge isn't calibrated) so that's ruled out, and I quit apps when not using them.
Thanks for the suggestions everyone! I will dim the brightness a bit but I doubt that's gonna do much.
Gotcha. I recommend it as a test (figure out the problem then put your backup back on the phone and fix the offending item) but I've seen a few other threads where folks' phones are turning off like yours and they say it's the battery itself.
Just an FYI, the iCloud back-up will save all of your app data and will restore it properly along with your accounts and settings so that your restored iPhone will be indistinguishable from how it is now.
I just restored from an iCloud back-up with my new iPad Air (exchanged for a different model) and everything is identical to the original one, including the data and files contained within my writing and music making apps, etc.
I did too
it's so bad that it's funny.----------
My battery just died at 56%. Had to activate the mophie.
Please start a new thread. The OP has an iPhone 5 and folks may not read down to your post.
I just posted in a different thread about this. Did you notice your issues started / got worse after ios7? If you use the camera app below about 50% charge, will your battery drop suddenly / phone shut off? Is your battery meter going up and down, and overall inaccurate?
I had all of those issues, and they all started after ios7. There are apple support forum threads full of people with the same issues, who all claim it started after ios7. I tried a full reset, which helped for a few days, but in the end it went back to this. The only thing that fixed it was replacing the battery.
I think that ios 7 measures the voltage / manages the shutdown etc differently to ios 6, and so a battery which is nearing the end of its life creates some crazy behavior. For me, this meant i was recharging many more times per day than before, which sped up the death of the battery.
Future software updates may fix your issue (e.g. shutting down with more than 40% battery), although you battery may be quite bad by then. A battery replacement should fix it (provided its an OEM battery).
Did you disable the most known culprits for battery drain?
http://mashable.com/2013/10/11/ios-7-battery-life/
http://mashable.com/2013/10/11/ios-7-battery-life/
All I can say is: forget about silly battery tips (they can give you another 30-40 mins a day AT BEST and you are denying all the new feature of your phone, not an acceptable trade off), forget about a restore as new (I did it on my former iPhone 5 and it didn't solve ANYTHING, but I've lost all my texts), just download iBackupBot and search battery info.
If the value is on the low side you probably have a defective battery and need a replacement.
Keep in mind that a battery endurance lower than expected on iPhone 5 with iOS 7 is a well known issue ....
![iosbattery.png]()
If the value is on the low side you probably have a defective battery and need a replacement.
Keep in mind that a battery endurance lower than expected on iPhone 5 with iOS 7 is a well known issue ....
Yes
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Thanks for the tip will use backup bot
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Been going on for a very long time.
Then you're blowing off what's most likely the culprit (software, configuration, etc). A new battery won't address such issues but if you have the same battery life with the new battery at least you ruled out the battery.
Sure it's an option. Back it up. Restore as new. Test it and see if it exhibits battery issues in a known good state. Basic troubleshooting.
You can restore the backup if needed though you really need to implement things one by one to narrow down the cause(s). I'd suggest going through that and then restoring.
Just had my wife's iPhone 5 battery replaced. The Apple store recommended turning off Settings->General->Background App Refresh as a good way to improve battery life. They also suggested turning down brightness, and turning on auto-lock, but those are pretty obvious. Anyways - the new battery is a huge improvement. I think a lot of iPhone 5 batteries were just crappy for some reason, and tended to deteriorate faster than previous models.