Q: iPhone 5 battery draining very fast

I've got 4 hours and 28 mins of usage and 1 day and 3 hours of standby on my iP5 since the last charge.  11% left.  I'm trying to run my battery down all the way and try the full cycle charge to see if the battery gets better than it is now.  I turned off all the settings i didnt need in Restrictions, privacy:, deleted Facebook and twitter.  After that I saw a big change in the battery performance.

Plswun, I deleted FB as I don't use FB anyway and I have not logged on to Twitter at all since having the phone. All these little "fixes" can make a minor difference but, my experience so far is that even with everything off, a reset and three full recharges the improvement is VERY minor. If I were traveling in an airport all day I'd be really worried my phone was going to die all the time. Reliability is important here and an all day on one charge phone or at least the advertised length of time is to be fully expected. I'm glad you got some improvement. It's not a fix however. There's no reason we should not expect to be able to use the functions on the phone AND get decent battery life. That was the reason the phone was desireable. A lot of functionality and good battery life. Now we have functions being turned off and still not getting good battery life. What was the point of this phone again?

FINALLY FOUND SOMETHING THAT PROVES THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG!

My wife's 4S on iOS5 is the first phone, the second is my iphone 5 on iOS 6.

Both were charged to 100% last night and taken off the charger where they sat near a STRONG wifi signal.

NEITHER PHONE WAS TOUCHED BY ANYONE.

Repeat:  NO ONE EVEN TOUCHED THE PHONE.

Just look at the usage stats.  SOMETHING IS CLEARLY WRONG WITH iOS 6 and/or the IPHONE 5.

My 4S was draining fast after 6.0 update and also wouldnt shut down.  I simply installed a new app after reading about a corrupted app causing the problem. Worked like a charm.

Whats the point of the phone if I have to turn off everything? I think this product was not tested at all.I hope we get ios update as soon as possible else I am going to return it and wait until the problem is fixed.

I travel a lot too.  Even when I'm not traveling I'm never home.  The reason I turn all that stuf off is simply because I don't use it.  I don't need wifi all the time, don't need location services, dont need Bluetooth ect.  I enable those features as I need then IF I ever need them.  I'm not claiming a "fix" but those things sure helped.  I Understand what you're saying though.  For the phone to cost as much as it does in addition to the history and the hype....the least it could do is hold a charge so you can use it.  I'm "cycle charging" now.  It's worth a try at least.

@handsfull:

Thank you for posting this. This is the smoking gun. Your post clearly shows there is a problem with the iphone 5 and/or ios 6. Apple needs to make an announcement and fix this asap.

I'm sorry guys, but Apple is supposed to be the product where you don't have to go through the same things you would if you were on Android or another OS. This is terrible for Apple. My first apple product, because I was tired of being a "beta" tester for other mobile OSes and this is what I get?

I have news for you Apple - my other smartphone was three years old and it got *far* better battery life than the iphone 5. Something is wrong.  My wife's iPhone 4s with ios 5 lasts far longer than this phone.

This may likely be my last apple device if they don't announce something or fix it quick. I'm tired of walking around with my chargers and disabling every app and service on my phone just to get through the day. Really, what's the point?

I turned of LTE today to test it, it's not making a difference, still gone thru 21% of the battery already.

I'm not sure what all it considers "usage" but something is definitely not right.  Here's my stats today

No LTE

WIFI, LS, on

Standby since last charge 5hrs 45mins (about right)

Usage since last charge 1hr 15mins

Usage is NOT right at all, I've had the phone open (not locked) maybe a total of 20-25mins today tops.  Just texting, websurfing, email, and one minute long video!

Something is definitely wrong, my guess is iOS6 in some fashion.  Oh and I have closed all my apps after use today too, so it's not just something running in the background.

Oh and I just went thru 2% more typing my last reply!

ok update, after charging my IP5 yesterday afternoon I backed it up then wiped it clean and restored it to the factory settings. i restored the phone from the backup, charged it last night  and now i have 1hr 3 min of usage and 4hr 17 min of stand by and I am at 90%. I have notifications on wifi on.

it looks like the wipe and restore has solved the battery issue to what it should be. CLEARLY this is a software issue!!!

Yup. Battery life is awful as usual. Where is the world do they come up with the limits they claim? Its ridiculous. And I also get a kick out of the people that just say well turn this feature off, turn that one off, don't use this, don't use that. Dont't use any of the features that make a smartphone useful. Seriously.

People engineered the pyramids. 1/4 of a mile high skyscrapers. Cars that drive over 200 mph. Space stations for crying out loud. How about a battery that you cant actually watch drain right before your eyes???

Darkfiremn: give it 24 hours or better....the processes after a restore need to work awhile, giving them a chance to go into their failed state.  I've lost count of the people who say 'I fixed the problem!'.....only to have them return saying 'update: I thought I had it fixed but....'

I know of 6 people who have performed a DFU restore and set up as a new iPhone - NO BACKUP....and they have battery life that lasts less than 18 hours total.  One of them is a person who is a highly talented developer.

So for this "setup as NEW, NO BACKUP" don't you lose all your game progress/saves and the like?

I have a lot of games on mine with a lot progress, I'm ok with having to redownload an app, but if I lost progress, that would suck.

So do you have to manually re-add all your contacts and such?

I've seen a lot of people say turning off LTE helps, but trying it myself it clearly didn't help.

I do not belive you loose any of that data if you back it up to itunes. It transfered over all my contacts, games etc automaticly.

How?  If you did not restore from backup?