Q: iPhone 5 battery draining very fast

Did you ever do a complete restore before you turned everything off.

I did a restore last week but not a DFU restore.

Just a suggestion here to troubleshoot/diagnose your iPhone 5 without being technical.

TEST 1

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1. Use your iPhone 5 until the battery is dead low 2%/dead

2. Charge for 6 hours

3. Restore from itune but ONLY sync (3 top apps i.e. Social Networking, news, etc) that you are using.

4. Do a reset to default on your iPhone 5 (Setting>Reset>Reset All Settings)

5. Start using your phone for the rest of the day (Email, TXT, Phone Call, Browsing, Internet) but only limited to 3 apps.

6. Check your usage (capture 1 screenshot when you start using it and 1 screenshot when the battery is dead low).

*No need to close the background apps for this test.

Point of this exercise:

a. To determine if the battery drainage is causing by bad apps or the IOS itself

b  Able to compare with your normal/general usage when you have all the apps loaded on your iPhone.

TEST 2

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1. Charge your phone again when it goes dead low (from 2%) for 6 hrs during the day i.e. from afternoon 4 pm

2. Turn on the airplane mode when you go to bed BUT turn ON the WIFI

3. Do not use it at all from this point

4. Check the battery the next day

(Again only with top 3 apps loaded).

Point of this exercise:

To compare how much the 3G/LTE consume the battery in your area

I think if people in the forum are using this method of testing, holding everything constant. We can have orange to orange comparison/better view of the "actual/average" iPhone battery life.

Feel free to post your result. Hope this helps.

In the UK, on o2, the iPhone 5 doesn't even have an LTE option and my battery is lasting just over 5 hours usage. So it can't be LTE related IMO.

Apple are annoying me now, I at least want them to aknowledge it.

I'm going to try the turning off iCloud options except contacts. Today my phone died around 3pm. I sent some texts, made one phone call, and used Facebook for about an hour. I was in very very poor coverage (in a basement) that defaulted to very low 3G service instead of LTE.

This is so unnaceptable.

Hi Realmaverick,

If you don't mind run TEST 1 of my post, I am also interested to compare my iPhone 5 battery life with other folks with the same settings. Thanks.

Hi JCew7384,

If you don't mind run TEST 1 of my post and let us know the result. That would be great. Thanks.

Problem solved for me after a few simple steps.

I had the exact same problem, I figured it was partially because I just couldn't stop playing with the new iPhone when I first got it. After a couple of full discharge-recharge cycles the battery life seemed to improve quite a bit. Also I turned off Cellular Data under Settings-General-Cellular when my phone is connected to my home wifi. That seemed to help a lot.

So far I've gathered that the phone actually has pretty decent stand-by time as long as it's not constantly seeking LTE signal in the background. It is a powerful phone and it drains the battery pretty quickly if you are actively using it all the time.

Hope this helps.

Hi Al2012,

While your way might improve the battery life but that beats the purpose of basic phone functionality i.e. to receive/make calls. Just my 2 cents. Cheers.

1. Formatted and started fresh: slight improvement. 4 hours usage to 5 hours.

2. Turned off all notifications: no change

3. Turned off locatin services: no change

4. Turned off iCloud: no change. 

5. Reset all settings: phone "appears" to be playing nicely. The battery has only dropped 4% in 30 minutes of web usage over wifi with 3G turned on. (No LTE on my network).

At this rate, the battery would be excellent.

I thought my battery was doing well earlier. But I was stupidly looking st standby not the usage.

Anyway I'll keep you all updated. It seems crazy if this somehow fixes it, because surely starting over would have also wiped the settings. Very odd.

i have also tried leaving Wi-Fi on at home, rather than my usual 3G connection. The battery was at 25% life remaining at 5:30pm, now, almost 4 hours later (with no use since 5:30) but WI-Fi enabled, the phone is at 24 % life remaing. this is much more like what I'd see with the iPhone 4.  I am not in an LTE enabled community so I have LTE set to off, but I have to wonder if there is something in the software that continues to drain the battery excessively when connected to 3G (even if it's not seeking an LTE connection)

clearly a software issue somewhere I think.

Hi JLAU133, No it doesn't. Turning off cellular data does not affect your basic phone functionality at all. It just stops your phone from using data.

Thanks for mentioning it, I should have clarified that in the original reply.

Cheers.

Hi Simon, I agree with you on the data issue. That seems to be the biggest battery drain for me as well.

This article is claiming that ios6 is reverting to cellular while in standby even though it is wifi connected.

http://tidbits.com/article/13304