iPhone 5 battery draining very fast

3greythounds wrote:

Update - Yesterday, before bed, I turned everything off that updates automatically, pushes info and even turned off all of my apps. So, this morning I woke up to 51% battery life. That is still unacceptable because all I have at this point is a phone that can make and receive calls. Everything else will require me to turn on the app or change the settings for any updates, alerts, etc to come in automatically. Smart phone? I don't know about that. I can't imagine that there are any other fixes other than going back to the old operating system and deleting everything I currently have on my phone to see if that will work. How can I lose half of the battery life in my 2 month old phone while I am sleeping? I know I keep asking the same question, but it just seems so unreal to me.

Why don't you charge it at night? I do that all the time.

I am charging it before going to bed and it has 100% battery life at that point. The suspicious and frustrating part is how can it drain to such a low level of 15%, 50%, etc., when the phone hasn't been used. It is even worse when I use the phone - the drain is much faster if I make calls or use bluetooth.

Yes, I am using that button every time I complete a task. But will make an extra effort to make sure I am doing this at night as well.

But why not leave it plugged in overnight? Having the phone on power all night does not damage it. In fact it helps it because you are using more cycles on the battery than you really need to. Plug it in before going to bed at night.

I understand what you are saying and agree that what you are proposing is an option to waking up with a full charge on my phone and I have done that to avoid the situation I am in. The bigger concern is that regardless of when I charge it, the drain is significant even when not in use. So, I am in full agreement that I can start my day off with a 100% charge doing what you suggest, but within minutes of unplugging it, the drain begins and then I am charging it 3 - 4 times throughout the day just to keep it up to a useable level. Also, the phone shouldn't be draining to these low levels if it is at a full charge and turned off. In my initial post, I did not have this problem the first 2 months of owning the phone and this just started occurring, so this is a new problem and I have not done anything different in my usage or charging patterns. I believe the only thing that has occurred is my recent download to the latest OS. But, I will do as you suggest and plug it in at night so I am not cranky at the start of my day.

Does anyone know how the 4S is? I just upgraded to the 5 today from the 3GS and noticed the battery drainage/hot phone right away...i'm going to exchange it for the 4S if the battery is better...how can this phone perform worse than a phone i bought 3 years ago that still works great??? Slow but great:)

yeah that's no solution...carrying around a ridiculously short cord all day just so you can top up...

My iPhone 5's battery started draining rapidly yesterday. As in I charged it overnight like I always do, got up at 6:15 this morning with a 100% charge and it was at 1% by 10:30. And I didn't use it except for one text! Nothing was changed, I haven't done anything differently than I normally do. It was draining as fast last night, I went from 28% up to 38% on the charger in my car (approx. 30 minute drive), then dropped to 7% in two hours. I've cleared my preferences and killed all apps, even turned off my wifi and bluetooth last night, but nothing has helped. Apple wants to blame the wifi where I work...but its happening everywhere. Ideas?

I was having the same issue with my iPhone 5. My wife has an iPhone 4S and was not having any battery issues. Granted she has not upgraded the IOS since Apple removed Google Maps as she love that app and the other apps are just not the same. Back to the battery problem....I solved my battery drain by disabling the LTE on my iPhone. I have noticed that my battery drain has reverted back to charging every 4 to 5 days without heavy use and 2 to 3 days with heavy use. To disable the LTE go to General - Cellular - Enable LTE turn to off. This should solve your battery drain until Apple and the Cellular companies can solve this problem. They will both say it is the others fault and not attempt to help unless they start losing clients. Hopefully this will help with your problem as it did mine.

ok did the reboot and set it up as a "new phone" and it's been 2 hrs with no use holding steady at 49%. I've also disabled LTE and push notifications etc. We shall see.

I didn't go through all of the threads but has an apple support person commented? Also, when prompted during set up to let my phone send apple performance updates i replied no...who knows if this will help but i figured it's worth a shot. Don't want it doing "extra" behind the scenes work that could further drain the battery...

I've been having the same battery problems as everyone else with my iPhone 5. It loses 10-20% of battery on standby no matter what percentage its at. I have turned all my location services off, push notifications, made sure all apps are closed, brightness is dimmed, wifi is off while I'm out. Cycled the battery 2-3 times. Still doesn't make much of a difference. The phone last 5-6 hours, with minimal standby. I can literally see my percentage drop by the minute while I'm using it.

I have been to 2 Apple Stores trying to replace it, the first one was helpful, the apple clerk wanted to replace my phone but couldn't because of some override they can't approve. He ended up telling me it was the software, and not the battery If I restored it twice, and the problem still plagued. So he told me all they could do was change my battery and If the problem still continued call Apple Care to replace it. I didn't want to do Apple Care, I don't want to send my phone in by mail, go without a phone for a couple days on a chance or have them hold $600 in my account to send me another one, on the promise I send mine afterward. Also did I mention a $29 fee with that?

The second Apple store I went to I figured I could press my luck, and they would replace it, because Apple Care had informed some stores abide by thier own policies. Well, this clerk made me feel very insulted to say the least. He ran a diagnosis on my phone, and it came back nothing was wrong. So he initially said they can't replace it, because his systems reads there is nothing wrong with the phone. After I proceeded to tell him how bad the battery is, showed screen shot proof, and debunked all of his theories of me making this up. He tried to forcefeed to me that the 4 apps I had on my phone was draining it, and my charging cord might be bad.

The whole time I felt he was trivializing me, and tried to make me feel I was delusional. Even with screen shot proof of poor battery, he seemed confident it was me, and not the phone that was acting up. I told him even with a replaced battery, the phone still drains. He ended up restoring my phone for a 3rd time, and told me to put nothing on it and If the battery is still draining like I was insisting, bring it back and they will see what they can do.

Now, I'm just tired of fighting and waiting for the next update. So my advice is let Apple know of these problems, because according to these Apple clerks, there are very few users with this problem.

I am having the same problem. My battery cant last more than 2 hours when i am using my phone just for browsing and make calls, hope apple will fix this issue very soon

I dont know you guys but I am 200% convinced that my case has something to do with the fact that when I got the phone, I restored it from my iphone4 icloud backup.

The reason is not very simple but plausible to me:

- I have another 3 friends who have iphone 5 that we've been comparing against each other

- 1 of them bought the phone on pre-sale, just like me. We got our phones in the same week, so you'd imagine produced around the same time (from at&t). He setup as new phone (not icloud restore) and after 3 hours standby and 1 hour usage, he's at 95%. With very similar usage, I'm already at 80% or so...

- Another friend just bought a phone. Brand new. Migrated from android. He freakin' leaves bluetooth on all day long, take several phone calls throughout the day, reads emails... regular usage - 12 hours and he's got impresive 38% left !!

- Yet another friend had iphone 3gs, bought phone5, restored icloud backup. I will let you guess.... batt goes away at 7%/hour or so

Now.... I did soft reset (only erases network data, etc - no data). Not better. Did a factory reset (erases all crap in phone). Restored from backup. It seemed to improve a bit but after a while, back to the draining.

I leave wi-fi off, bluetooth off, about half my apps are on notifications, a handful on location services, screen bightness at around 40%, emails on push hourly. So... I think I did a pretty good job in restricting to what I need.

The first friend I mentioned, has wi-fi on all day, more apps running on background and location/notification with more than I do... and his batt goes at 1% per hour or less.

I am aaaalmost on a point that I will erase the crap out of it and start from scratch. Download all apps again (as if I never had an iphone b4) and see how it goes... am just afraid that if doesn't work, I'll want to throw the phone in the toilet 🙂

Ah, yeah, I also have turned LTE off to see if it would do any good... not much...

i agree with you 100%