Q: iPhone 5 battery draining very fast

Update:

Replacement phone is still better than the original but I'm still experiencing battery issues.  When I'm working at home on wifi, I seem to be ok but I do turn Cell data off which is pretty annoying because when I leave the house I have to remember to turn it back on.

BUT.... this past weekend I was in Vegas and both the 3G and LTE signal were both pretty bad (1-3 bars) in and out of the casinos/hotels and my battery was draining very quickly!  I tried turning off LTE and that wasn't doing anything to help.  I got barely 4 hours of usage and had to keep turning off cell data and going into airplane mode in an attempt to conserve battery.  All I was doing was texting, checking FB and a couple of phone calls.

So.... I thought the replacement phone was a lot better but now it seems that's not the case. 

So I thought that an 'erase/set up as new' had fixed my issue. That was not true. Well, not entirely. There are days now where my battery is passible. But when it isn't, it's hot. What I have begun to notice in these times is that my downloads are quite slow. In one instance, I found safari trying to load a page with zero progress. In fact, all active pages where having the same problem. Closing safari and removing its instance in the recently used section took care of this. But, while this was happening, I was still able to use other internet services. This was using mobile data.

In another instance, and on wifi, I was attempting to download a book thorugh Audible's app. It took ages. 20 minutes. All signals were great. The phone was hot.

Immediatly after, I downloaded the same book on my old iPhone4 as a test. It was done before I got back in the room with my coffee.

I would love to have this fixed. In both instances it really looked the way it does when you try to download/stream something on the very edge of your wifi network.

The first two days, My phone was working fine. Today, my battery is draining 1% every 2-3 minutes. I've turned off LTE, wifi, and yet it is still draining like crazy. I literally lost 30 % of my battery over the course of a 30 minute phone  conversation...

Any other suggestions on what to do?

As a first time Apple device owner, I'm thoroughly fed up with this company and disgusted that I decided to go with their product. I should have heeded the advice of close colleagues and not gone with this product.  On top of all the issues I've been facing, battery being the worst, now I come across these two articles that really aggravate me:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/10/17/hon-hais-explanation-for-iphone-5-shortag e/?mod=WSJ_qtoverview_wsjlatest

Quoted from Foxconn: “It takes time to learn how to make this new device. Practice makes perfect. Our productivity has been improving day by day.”

Really? So you're admitting that there were problems with some builds that people have had to pay top dollar to get defective equipment?

Then, I come across this:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/17/business/china-foxconn-interns/index.html?hpt=hp_b n5

"[Foxconn] admitted that interns as young as 14 worked at one of its Chinese plants"

So you're telling me that someone as young as my daughter actually assembled this phone?  Really Apple? I can assure you that this is the first and last Apple device I will ever own. You mask your products as something of "quality" by overpricing it, when in fact it's nothing different than everything else made in China. Why would I ever want to pay for something more expensive when I can get the same or better quality for cheaper?

You fooled me this time Apple, you won't fool me again.

and for whoever is still trying to figure out what is wrong, I will tell you what is wrong. There is a problem with the radios switching between wifi, lte and 3g. All too often, I drive through towns where the signal constantly changes and the phone continues to get "stuck" in a certain mode that it cannot change out of. For instance, today I drove through a 3g area that did not offer LTE but the phone still displayed LTE. When I texted someone it tried to iMessage them and stayed in the "sending message" state for almost 10 minutes before I put my phone into airplane mode and then back out; only to have it then deliver the message as a standard message - not as an iMessage.

Thee same thing is happening with other apps - email, maps, background processes, etc. This is likely why everyone's phone is dying. It's getting stuck with low signal and/or changing signals and the phone/ios doesn't know how to handle the transitions, outside of just "trying" to send it by ramping up the current to the radios to try and make the signal stronger (hence why everyone's batteries are getting hot).

As to why it's happening to some phones and not others, it could be many different reasons. It could be the area you're in, the carrier, the signals available. Instead of just saying your battery stinks, what say we start posting the town/vicinity and state along with carrier you have and let's see if there's a recurring pattern.

For me, it's Verizon and the problem is all over central NJ, regardless of what's showing as signal strength, but the Princeton area seems the worst.

Galos

My colleague and I sit in the same room back to back. Both with black 5's and we were getting different drainage battery. Don't think it's related to changing signals.

I have Att and live in Central Connecticut. My phone is a white 5s 64 Gig. My phone is great. I take it off the charger at 8am when I arrive at UPS and by lunch time arount 12:30 it's someime still at 100% but others 95% thats making a couple calls and maybe 3 or 4 texts. Ill top the battery off with a external isound unit I carry with me,cause sometimes im out delivering past 8pm and use navigation if im in a off area.

Most of my notification Apps are set to on including passbook and Siri. My LTE was kept on it didnt seem to change the drain on battery with it off.my area does'nt offer LTE. When I first got the phone the battery seemed terrible so I checked the settings and the Bluetooth was left on by IOS 6. I never use this,it must be a default setting,well if you leave this on and you dont have a pairing in range it is constantly searching for a match and draining your batteries.I also turn wifi off as i'm not at a wifi facillity most of the day and this is another thing that will constantly search for a hotspot. My email is set to manual as well. I hope this helps everyone.

turn off iP5 & be ok

I am monitoring the battery drain as you guys are doing and last night I left my phone offline in order to check wheter the usage counter will increase even if nobody is touching this phone.

All the applicatin were closed of course.

Here the screenshoots taken before going to bed and in the morning:

As you can see the battery percentage has more or less not changed (the phone was completely offline) but the usage counter has been incremented by 15 minutes. This 15 minutes could be the sign the the phone is doing something that it should not do and could have some kind of impact when the phone is online.

Can anybody do this simple test with a Iphone 4 or 4s?

Diego, good thinking! however it would of been more worrying if the usage had increased by like 3 hours, because all the usage is, is when the phone is lit up (effectively using it). Whic is what i dont get because if your phone was on standby it shouldnt have gone up at all, regardless of whether you had everything turned on or off! it shouldnt make a difference

Can i just ask you guys what do you think the battery percentage should be after 1 hour USAGE of watching a film?

What really anoys me is that when im on a train journey im thinking do i want to watch a film and loose 20% battery, or should i listen to music and lose 10%

I cannot wait until the future where either a new type of battery is released or a larger more powerfu battery is included so that it does NOT matter what you do on the phone, the battery only drops by 5% an hour unless on standby so that you can enjoy your phone and know that it will last all day!

APPLE! The battery just isnt big and powerful enough! i dont know how you can expect a 1400mah battery to power a device like this your next iphone should have enough power for 2 full days so that we know we can do what ever we want for it to last the one day, even if that means leaving every setting on and watching movies all day or browsing the web, the usage should be 24 hour, that way we can be sure to get one full day, this battery problem is driving me mad!!!

If the only thing you changed in the next iphone was to increase the battery life so it is incredibly powerful like 3500mah that would be good enough for me, if you can create a Retina display you are capable of doing that.

I purchased my brand new iPhone 5 on the very first day.  Shortly after purchasing I noticed that the battery life was draining very quickly.  It reached the point where the entire battery would drain between 8am and 5pm and the phone would shut off.  I carefully documented my activity and my battery strength for over one week.  Between 7:30am and 9 the batter would lost 20% of is power. 

I researched the support forums and tried many of the fixes suggest there.  At that point in time I contacted Apple.  What was interesting was that I was referred to a Senior Service Advisor almost immediately who was incredibly nice and tried to be helpful.  What I didn't realize was that over the course of several days I was going to spend over 3 hours on the telephone with him providing answers to a number of questions that Apple was interested in.  They were incredibly detailed questions about my usage.  How I set the phone up, etc. etc.  He had me install a battery tracking log so that Apple could determine if there was an issue.  After tracking my battery use for several days he reported that the battery was fine and that there didn't appear to be any issues and laid the potential blame at the fact that I streamed music through a bluetooth speaker. 

He didn't have any additional information that he could share with me, but that Apple senior engineers were closely watching this type of situation.  There was no hope for remedy other than perhaps some solutions might come in the future.  They certainly wouldn't replace my phone, but I free to see if AT&T would respond.  The whole situation was not transparent at all.  It was clear there was an issue and that they are closely tracking it, but tell people with problems there is nothing going on.

Now at this point I have a iPhone which has a battery life of significantly less than my previous phone that was over 2 1/2 years old.  I have had to cut back on using all of the features that I bought the phone for and now have to carry a power cord with me everywhere because my phone may run out of juice in the middle of the day.  Additionally, it is apparent that there is a issue with this based on the length of time that I worked with the Sr. Service Adviser and the type of questions asked.  However, Apple is being extremely opaque about whatever is going on.  This has left me incredibly dissatified and dissappointed with my Apple product. 

Thankyou for this information, it is very clear to see their is an issue with the battery life and it is very disappointing that Apple would not do anything for you except try and blame you for their mistake, very unproffessional, i just hope Apple will resolve the issue beause at present we have been ripped off and im getting more anoyed each day!

Well, I drained my battery till my phone died last night and let it charge all night. I left for work this morning and as you can see in the image, I'm on LTE with 100% batter life. On my commute to work, I remained in LTE coverage and did minor browsing, emailing and some SMS/iMessage (no images were being sent/received). I did not stream any form of media or watch any media on my phone. Less than an hour later, I'm at 82%... and it is still dropinbg... 78% as I type this and I have done nothing else on the phone.