iPhone 5 battery draining very fast

Doug Lerner2 wrote:

My new complaint is that despite the Apple tech pages saying that LTE use and Wi-Fi use should drain the battery at the same rate it appears not to be true at all. LTE use is definitely a bigger power trainer then Wi-Fi use.

It doesn't say that at all. It says "up to 10 hours". It does not say "10 hours". The battery drain is highly dependent on apps that are running. WiFi uses power continuously, whether transferring data or not, because it maintains a continuous connection with the access point. Specifically, 30 mw of continuous drain. LTE uses power only when transferring data. It uses no power when not actually transferring data. When LTE (or any cellular signal) is active it uses 50 mw to 600 mw, depending on signal strength. So if you have "5 bars" (about -85 DBm) or better LTE will use almost twice as much power when actually transferring data; with 1 bar, it will use 20 times as much power. So LTE (or any cellular data) battery life is highly dependent on signal strength and the actual data transfer duty cycle.

If you have background apps (which you can now control, with iOS 7) using data continuously your battery life on LTE will be shorter than on WiFi. If your data use is intermittent LTE should be close to, or in some cases, even better than WiFi.

Notice I didn't mention a specific our number, like 10 hours. What I pointed out was that the Apple specs state the LTE time and the Wi-Fi time to be the same number. I have no apps running with background refresh. If the Internet time is supposed to be the same with LTE and with Wi-Fi then why is the LTE time much less? And if there is a technical reason why the LTE should drain more power than when on Wi-Fi, then why do the Apple specs give the same time for both? You can see that one or the other is inconsistent.

But the fact of the matter is, Apple is claiming that LTE Internet time and Wi-Fi Internet time is the same. And it's not. It just doesn't.

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I know you didn't specify a certain number. But you said that "Apple specs state the LTE time and the Wi-Fi time to be the same number". So I went to Apple specs, and that "certain number" is 10 hours. But it isn't 10 hours. It is up to 10 hours. And the numbers will be different for each depending on what you are doing, as I've explained. And I'm not going to repeat. You can either believe my post or not. That is your choice. My choice is to not waste any more time with you.

And what I'm saying is the "up to" amount should not depend on whether you are on LTE or wifi, from the way Apple promotes it. Yet even if I am in a controlled environment in my house where I get 5 bars on LTE, just switching from wifi to LTE causes the battery to drain quicker. It's easily observable, whether you ignore me or not.

doug

To whoever said their phone dies at 24%, I have this same issue. But I don't have a conclusion for this. It's done it with another iPhone 5 until I was replaced with the one I have now. I've reset the software and it's still occuring. It isn't always 24% it goes off on though, sometimes it can go off at an other percentage.
I've had nothing but battery issues though. My most recent one is it drops from 10% remaining straight down to about 3 :S
I'm on my fourth iPhone 5 because of this battery issue an I've given up even trying with it.

I have a friend who has got a 5S and he says the battery life is tonnes better on his 5S than it was on his 5. But I even reset the phone the factory default last week, after fully charging I got about 2 and hours out of it out of about 5 hours standby. Ridiculus.

What I can say after some weeks of heavy usage is that "battery optimization" suggested had very little (if any) influence on my iPhone 5.

I noted a merely 20 minutes difference by the end of the day between a "full optimized" and a "full optional" (background app upgrade aside) configuration.

What I observed is that network signal strength is the main factor to influences battery life.

The place I live and work has very poor coverage, with frequent switch between 3G and E, and I reach 5 hrs usage AT BEST. In my hometown, where I did spend the weekend, with full signal strength almost everywhere I reach 7,5 hrs usage.

Huge difference with the same pattern.

The more i read these comments the more I am buying a Samsung Galaxy ASAP. After many years of happy use I am now fed up of Apples complacency. Anyone want to buy and Iphone 5 in excellent condition?

DOM

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Dom1958 wrote:

The more i read these comments the more I am buying a Samsung Galaxy ASAP. After many years of happy use I am now fed up of Apples complacency. Anyone want to buy and Iphone 5 in excellent condition?

My associate with a Samsung S4 keeps it plugged in whenever he is at his desk. If he doesn't the battery doesn't get through the day.

Do you want to have a worse problem ? Feel free ....

Ha Bugger😠 😠 😠 😠 😠 😠

So yogurt pot and string it is then. We are doomed

Max(IT) wrote:

The place I live and work has very poor coverage, with frequent switch between 3G and E, and I reach 5 hrs usage AT BEST. In my hometown, where I did spend the weekend, with full signal strength almost everywhere I reach 7,5 hrs usage.

Huge difference with the same pattern.

Yes, huge difference. If you have a 5 bar signal (-85 DBm or better) your phone transmits with a 50 MW signal when on the phone, and also when periodically re-registering with the network. If the signal is 1 bar (typically below -104 DBm [note that these are all negative values]) the phone must increase its power significantly, as high as 600 MW, to maintain a connection. So it will use up to 12 times as much energy when actually transmitting when the signal is weak. And if the signal ever drops out entirely, just attempting to reconnect every couple of minutes will drain the battery very fast.

Sometime my network signal strength goes below -110 dBm, usually staying between -95 and -105 dBm most of the time.

In my hometown it is around -85/-90 all the time ....

Other than battery, the S4 is a really great phone; I considered it myself, but unfortunately, the 200 or so iPhone apps I have bought or downloaded won't run on it 😟

It's also kind of big, which some people like, others can't stand.