iPhone 5 battery life is way worse than iPhone 4

Wow is this forum tightly moderated. You can't say anything. Every posted is being deleted.

To the person who made the suggestion of dimming your screen and turning off features.

Why did I buy a smart phone that isn't smart and I have to disable features?

I can't understand the people defending Apple, asking what type of apps we use... if we search for emails in the iphone... for how long do we listen to a song... c'mon guys! It's an iPhone 5! The most advanced and smartest phone in the planet!

Yesterday night I left my home with 23%. I checked a few emails, checked in in Foursquare, looked for a name in Google, and I was already at 3% after an hour. When I wanted to make a call it died.

NOT GOOD. Not my fault. Apple, please improve the batteries or finally CREATE THE ENERGY SAVER ICON!

All this great features that are developed in each iOS version to not use them because your phone will died very soon. Please at least make it easy for us to save energy withouth going through 25 clicks. Just an icon, please?

i can leave my house at 100% after charging all night so no drain prior to leaving the house... spend 1 hour driving, 2 hours using the phone for basic texting, facebook, and foursquare checkins, and browsing.. closing the apps behind every use... and it won't make the hour drive home...

so my $1000 iPhone 5 64GB won't last 4 hours... with iOS6 or iOS7..

never again will I buy an Apple phone.

As expected from the beginning the iphone 5 battery life was fair/poor then and it is almost unusable now unless you are next to an outlet or buy a brick of a battery case. If I switch the SIM to my 3 year old iPhone 4 on ios5 it will last twice as long. No way I'm upgrading to a 5S with more features and a marginally bigger battery.

IMHO the only way Apple can make up for this is to bring a larger iPhone to market or to invent new "magic" battery technology (Not happening). There are way too many features in phones these days to go smaller and smaller something has to give and I bet Apple knows it but wont admit it.

They should go the way of the Macbook next year there is NO MORE ONE SIZE FITS ALL. The 5S body should be called the iPhone Air (fitting for both weight, portability and battery life) and the iPhone 6 should be an iPhone Pro either same 4 inch screen size and just thicker for larger battery or increase screen size (maybe 4.5 - 5 inch) and you have room for a larger battery while maintaining thinness.

Rest assured and get the 5s.

I was one of the first posters on this thread a year ago because my iPhone 5 battery was being discharged 1% every 5 minutes. It was truly aweful. I traded in at the Apple store twice and finally the third was the charm. It's still holding charge very well.

That one was given to my wife(bless her heart) and I now have 5s. My cousin also got 5s and both of our units show no problem at all. The battery life is actually better than 5. I don't know if it's the slightly larger battery, iOS7 or both.

It seems Apple has fixed its battery woes.

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the battery woes. I think anyone that's not in an outstanding coverage area is still going to suffer horrible battery usage. All of my iPhones had an OK battery when I first purchased them but after downloading a few apps and a couple months worth of wear I'd imagine your opinion will have changed. JMHO

I only have had my 5 for around four months now. I was on the Internet searching for a fix because no matter what I do the battery on this thing lasts a little more than an hour. I can't even let it just sit there powered off and not in use. It still dies within an hour. It also has some sort of glitch that is NOT battery dependent of going really, really dim. It is so bad sometimes I cannot read the screen since it is just shy of black. Sometimes I even need to boot it up several times to get it back. I normally love my apple produces but this is so annoying. I just hope my warranty covers it. Even if it does I can look forward to a refurbished used phone instead of a new one. I can't tell u how excited this makes me! Anyone come across any reasons why these phones are so much worse than their predecessors? I deleted a bunch of apps even in my attempt to increase the battery life to something usable.

I suppose if I want to upgrade out if this mess i will have to pay to get out of this two year contract and then buy into a new one or pay full price for a useable phone??

BTW I tried to buy my new phone from Apple directly but because I swapped my upgrade to a family member I was forced by AT&T to purchase from AT&T. I am not looking forward to the total label of support I am going to have from them either. Oh jeez. What we pay to have tech.

I have an iphone 5 and i admit ye battery is draining fast and turned off location service and etc did all that lasted me for about 7h of full time usage.

now i noticed one more thing, dont keep the phone near your body (in your pocket, etc) it drains more battery that way i dont know why but yea i tried it and it works for me, just keep it in your bag not in your pocket you'll see, it will last morethan it used to be.

Just got back from the Apple store to find out my iPhone 5 needs a new battery. Not very old but out of one year warrantee. Battery problems started becoming more obvious ( rapid drain 65% to 3% in 20 minutes ) since IOS 7.

Apple wanted $79 + tax to replace. I refuse to reward their lack or loyalty.

Goodbye Apple. There is a reason Samsung is taking off.

Hi sabsam,

That is really bad. I'm using a iphone 5 with ios 7. I realised it was the apps on my phone that was messing my battery. I get 1 day and 12 hours on standby and 5 hours of usage

It really is not the price but the lack of stepping up to the plate that the company has exhibited in refusing to show accountability with this issue. If I knew this would happen when I decided to buy the phone I might have chosen another phone. The tech person at the Apple Store diagnosed it as a bad battery but offered no other choice than replacement of the battery at $79.

As these issues become more obvious to the consumer it will be harder for Apple to keep loyal buyers of their products.

Jaazwaaz- I have an iphone 5 on Verizon that shipped with ios 6 and I get roughly a day or more of standby and 6-8 hours usage, usually closer to 8 if I'm on wifi most of the time. Very happy with that, so i have been reluctant to upgrade to ios 7 bc of battery drain horror stories, especially for the iphone 5 and for Verizon in particular. There is a graphic out there that shows battery life test results after ios 7 upgrade and the 5 took the worst hit of all the apple devices ! Plus you can't go backward now so ur stuck with 7 if u take the plunge.

Anyway my questions are:

1. Did your phone ship with iOS 7 or did you upgrade to it from 6?. And if you upgraded did you do a New setup, restore from backup, or sync contacts etc only?

2. If u upgraded, is your battery life about the same as u were getting with ios 6?

3. Who's your carrier?

Thanks! I have a feeling that an iPhone 5 that had good battery life with ios 6 will also have good battery life with iOS 7, but I have no evidence to back that up. In other words, there is a ridiculously high percentage of faulty iphone 5 out there, although I have been one of the lucky ones so far.

Dmilazzo, that is pretty good. Before I answer your question I want to tell you that I always drain my battery out till it switchs off and I try my best to always have it switched off for 2 hours and half. What I realised is that the apps in AppStore aren't compatible with ios 7 so after deleting the apps my phone usage went high and standby. I'm actually a light user so I'll use wifi, twitter, message and whatsapp also phone calling but I don't all of that at the same time I do it bit by bit.

1) my phone came with ios 6 and I upgraded to ios 7. I did do a full back up but I never had to do restore, the update never touched or moved, deleted anything on my phone. It's always good to have a back up just incase.

2) it's not the same but that's because their so much going on in ios 7 but I really like ios 7 much better and lively.

3) my carrier is orange, I'm in the uk.

Your welcome

Thanks for the info, that's good to know. I've also noticed that I seem to get better battery life if I let it discharge completely Even though that's not necessarily the way u are supposed to do it. Most of what I've read suggests that you completely drain the battery only about once a month. But it's hard to argue with better results.

HA I have one worse. My battery in my 3 month old phone was lasted only 6 hours max even if it was just sitting there. No texts, no talking. Apple rep I got to speak with informed me it must be something I had on the phone!! UHM right. she wanted me to run some diagnostics while driving down the road. If I didn't want to run through her little on the screen in front of her spiel then I should waste another hour on the phone and call back when I had time. Finally I am so fed up I just ask to speak with a supervisor, after waiting like 27 minutes some other bimbo who also doesn't have any way of identifying herself other than her first name!! HUM lets thinks about that for a minute.... right at any rate they replacement 'supervisor' still insists that her girl was correct and that it is something I am doing to the phone. The tell me to take it back to where I bought it. So I do. ATT says **** no we wont do a warranty replacement you have to drive to apple. OK so apple is another hour away. Nope my phone isn't backed up and they cannot change it our either. I can wait another 40 minutes or so and speak with one of there tech people to see if the battery is really the problem. By this time I am really to just nuke the lot of them. So I leave to go and back up my phone myself. Then I call the Apple rep yet again and say hey instead of me driving an hour or two depending on traffic cant you just mail me one?? No she wants to go through a bunch a crap too. So I patiently listen and do everything she tells me too. yup battery is bad! Wow go figure.

Then I need to leave for a business trip. On the way back I set my phone down on my cart in a Marshall's in Harrisburg PA. Had been in the store over 45 minutes and spoke on it for around 5 minutes. down to 3% when I set it down. Someone there (we think a store employee since they have been having a rash of stolen cell phones) steals the phone even though I have find iPhone on and active and I also have my iPad right there with me. I within two minutes ask my phone to make a sound. NO such luck battery dead!

I certainly hope the thief has better luck with the **** thing than I did. Certainly saved Apple of replacing mine!!