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iPhone 5 battery life is way worse than iPhone 4

I just got an iphone 5 and I restored a backup from my iPhone 4 so I have the same settings. But the iphone 5 drains way faster than my two year old very well used iPhone 4 which is running 5.1.1. Is it because of IOS 6? Just leaving it sitting overnight lost about half the battery. My iPhone 4 hardly uses any battery while it sits overnight.


Or do I have a bad battery on my new phone?

Posted on Sep 22, 2012 1:41 AM

Reply
3,614 replies

Jan 4, 2013 3:24 AM in response to steve19800

I posted earlier that my % battery decline seems to be slower when starting at 100%. Now I also have data showing that it declines real slow from 3%. I'm actually getting real close to the 9 days of standby that they advertise. However, nearly 12 hours was at 100% and another 12 hours from 3% to 0%. So how does one decide when to recharge?


Anyone else notice this oddity?

Jan 4, 2013 5:14 AM in response to paulfromhere

9 DAYS?????

paulfromhere wrote:


I posted earlier that my % battery decline seems to be slower when starting at 100%. Now I also have data showing that it declines real slow from 3%. I'm actually getting real close to the 9 days of standby that they advertise. However, nearly 12 hours was at 100% and another 12 hours from 3% to 0%. So how does one decide when to recharge?


Anyone else notice this oddity?

Jan 4, 2013 8:29 AM in response to paulfromhere

Are you freaking kidding me 9 days? do you even have a sim card on that phone or even use it..do you charge your phone before it even fully charges?.. Cause the stat's only resets when its fully charged or close to it... 9 day's just sounds too unrealistic, while majority of the people either have bad battery drain or getting a full day use on moderate or close to 2 days light usage.

Jan 4, 2013 10:56 AM in response to epphllps

😠 It appears 6.0.2 absolutely kills the battery in a large number of iPhones. My battery dropped 40% in 4 hours after the update to 6.0.2 ⚠ (from 6.0.1 where it was fine).


For me simply disabling WiFi and Bluetooth and then doing a full restart fixed the battery issue temporarily as long as I keep WiFi OFF. But its insane to NOT have WIFI!


My colleague has NO issue with his iPhone5, so i suspect there is a collection of WiFi chips/hardware out there that has technical problems for their specific build. On my phone battery issue was unbearable both in 6.0.0 (out of the box) and in 6.0.2.


Then it was temporarily fixed in 6.0.1 (though WiFi performance in 6.0.1 was spotty - but at least the device then worked like a 'normal' phone).


But from the thousands of views of the issue it would seem Apple is tone-deaf on this problem with no formal announcement.


At minimum Apple should actively encourage 6.0.2 users with a problem to downgrade 6.0.1, instead of sticking to the insane policy of not ever allowing a downgrade. So far 6.0.1 seems to be the only version of the firmware where troublesome phone at least behave more sanely.


I guess we all should have gone with a Galaxy S3 instead.... (but I love my iPhone and wouldn't want to leave).

Jan 5, 2013 10:13 AM in response to holdrege

Dear All, thought I would share my solution. I too suffered unbelievable battery drain after upgrading to IOS6.0.2.


I took advice from several of the post on here and did a 'clean' install using the dfu method. I then set the phone up as a new phone once this was done I then restored from previous saved restore.


Totally worked. I have no idea which process was constantly on but before the dfu install my phone had exact matching usage and standby. The phone would discharge its full battery in approx 4 hours and would get pretty warm.


My feeling is that the option to upgrade the iOS over wifi leads to software issues. It's a pain doing the dfu install but worked for me.


Hope this is helpful as I nearly threw my phone out the window!

Jan 6, 2013 6:02 PM in response to surgicalspirit

surgicalspirit and holdrege, I have to concur with this resolution, and I'm frustrated as to why it worked!


I was so ready to look at other smartphone providers.


We don't have LTE in NZ, so I knew I didn't have that specific issue, I tried turning on and off everything that has been mentioned in this thread and nothing seemed to solve the issue.


When I purchased the iPhone 5, I set this up as a new iphone 5 (although I can't remember whether I had 6.0.1 or 2). But, I did restore everything from icloud from my iPhone 4.


Anyway, last night I had had enough. I decided to do a full restore (Erase all Content and Settings), set the iphone up as new, and only use my apple ID to sign in and activate. Did not use iCloud as part of the activation process. As soon as the phone restored, I deleted the icloud account that was setup as part of the activation process which was my apple id (I use an *Me.com icloud account, but a @gmail.com apple id).


After it was setup, I then synced all my apps again from iTunes (connected). And only then did I activate the correct icloud. I also set iPhone Backup to Computer, NOT iCloud like I has my phone set to before.


I am at 77% remaining and my usage today was very typical of what I use to do on my iphone 4.


No doubt about it, iPhone 5 is going to use more juice because of it's capability. But, I am really at a loss for words as to why this full wipe and setup "as new" worked. But it worked. And it worked exceptionally well, and like others, this has solved the badly overheating battery issue....


And I am one very very happy apple user again today...! 🙂

iPhone 5 battery life is way worse than iPhone 4

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