iPhone 5 battery life is way worse than iPhone 4

Here's the problem. I last time I used a note. Nvm restore from update b4. Lets just hope it's an iOS 6 problem.. If I call Singtel is possible to get a change of a new iPhone ? I got this one only last week

@iphone5rocks

It is apparent by your chosen screen name it's going to be hard to convince you that the iphone doesn't "rock" - LOL.

Maybe you missed it. Myself and countless others have restored from DFU mode (there IS no cleaner install), and then set up 'as a new phone' and STILL continue to have the same battery drain. You need to read apple's proclaimed battery life chart on the iphone 5....3 hours and 10 minutes of use OF ANYTHING THE IPHONE CAN DO should never put the battery at a 24% charge. Period. Apple gives the battery a rating of 8 hours of LTE usage....which would be at the top of the list for battery use. Check out my earlier post showing my usage after my phone sat overnight (yes, untouched) until the morning....it showed approx 2 hours of actual usage....and 8 hours of standby....Yes....that was after the restore.....Yes, that's right....the phone was never "in use", so how did the phone register any "usage"??? Check it out. I'm testing the 'new sim' idea as we speak.....not looking good either captain.

BTW: The 60+ year old person with the phone had two apps on the phone, because he said it "doesn't get much use"....so the maps/nav/traffic idea wouldn't work.😉

Hi all,

I've been reading some of the posts and I've already done everything I could to save battery drainage - turn off the notifications u don't need, push mail manually, dimming bightness, etc. etc. but my battery is still draining like crazy. I was just browsing facebook and doing some whatsapping (the normal usage I would do with my 4s previously) and battery dropped 15% just doing that. I mean what good is there w/the iphone 5 if the battery can't even last a full day. I've been carrying my USB cord with me everywhere in case my phone runs out of battery completely. It seems that it's draining even when it's just sitting there doing nothing. My phone gets really hot at the back too when I use it to browse the internet or just when the screen is on for a few mins. I've been using my 4s on iOS6 and it does not hv this problem at all. The battery lasts way longer than my iphone 5!

I've reset all settings, erase all content and settings and setting up my phone as new phone. I've also let my battery drain to 0% as in it turns off by itself and then charge it back up to 100%. Still doesn't work - the battery drains so fast...it's ridiculous.

Please HELP~!!!

I did some testing today on my battery. I tracked the exact amount of time I spent on my iPhone 5 since the last full charge and guess what, I spent 1 hour 22 minutes and 56 seconds using the phone but the usage statistics says I spent 7 hours and 27 minutes on the phone! Whoa that doesn't sound right at all and is probably why I loose battery rapidly in standby. Hope Apple has a fix soon; I had my 4S and iPad 3 on the iOS 6 betas and they got way better battery life back then compared to now...

This is why I loved my Blackberry. The iPhone 5 is a fantastic gadget but it is not suitable for work. As far as I remember none of my mobile phones have had such a lousy performance as the iPhone 5 over the past 6 to 8 years. There is no way to survive even half a regular business day talking on the phone and working on mails without being hooked up to a power outlet. How retro is that??

Given the incredible margin on this product I am surprised that Apple's management does not spend more on R&D for a state of the art battery. But then again - why would they? It's finally up to us consumers to make Apple understand they need to take our complaints seriously, by not buying their stuff for example until they change something.

I too wonder if the new A6 chipset has something to do with the poor battery performance. It runs much faster than the earlier 4, not sure about 4s, and has a higher spec. However despite that, Apple has claimed a higher battery life even with the increased specs on the chps so something doesn't tally. Pehaps the software hasn't been optimised well enough to maximise battery life? Software-hardware interaction is also quite complex from what I have heard. I am no expert in that area though.

As for number of users, we have 770 replies on this forum and a related one "iPhone battery draining very fast" has 400. (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4328959?start=390&tstart=0). Lets say 1200 in both and also that all of them are unique individuals with a iphone 5 battery problem. Lets also assume these 1200 people make up 1% of all iPhone 5 users around the world (as you said, not everyone wordlwide will be on this forum) experienceing poor battery life. That's 120,000 faulty phones, let's say 150,000. 5m were sold in day 1 (that number would have gone up by now), but on the basis of day 1 sales, the number of faulty phones represents 3% of the total.

I don't know what the statistician will say about that. It certainly is no 6 Sigma quality here (but Apple never claim that) but neither is it one to warrant a recall. Apple will probably come up with a sofware update soon and we can hurry that process on if we vote with our feet and head back to the store and return our handsets.

That thread is for 4S upgraded to iOS 6. But sure, I agree there are other forums discussing the same problem, which is why I am saying that the two forums I have consideredd represent only 1% of all iphone 5s with a battery problem. This is a simple back of the envelope calculation to get sense for the possible numbers, and one can always play around with the assumptions to suit ones own bias and estimates. I think the numbers here may well be in the correct ballpark.

Personally I think 3% for Apple is too high as it is, especially with the competition out there. Even though many Apple fans and iPhone users may not wish to willingly change to say a Samsung Galaxy, if they did and were satisfied with the Galaxy, that would turn the tables on Apple. I hope they don't wait for that to happen.

Well the assumtion that the 770 posts or whatever in here are from unique individuals is completely out of tune with reality. I have written 4-5 posts in here and I am not even the most prolific of the posters. There are people with 5-6 posts in a couple of pages so I would be surprised if more than 150-200 unique iPhone users are posting here.

I think that even if 50k unique users have a problem with their phones, which is only 1% of all iPhone 5 sold in the first weekend - so am assuming that could well be double by now - you are talking about 0.5% of people with problems.

Having said that my second iPhone 5 is not even close at the level of battery life of my iPhone 4 but and that is a big one it is much much better after one full cycle charge. I am wondering if the battery needs bedding in/ conditioning for a few days first before it can give a proper battery life. So I am planning on cycle charging it as often as it needs for the next week or so and see how the battery life does. If it improves I am keeping it if not then I will rever to my iPhone 4 for a few more months and get the geeneral consensus then in which case if things are still bad I might just buy a 4S.

@atlantis79 - you are absolutely correct. My assumption of every post coming from a unique user was to give me a worst case scenario. The reality is as you point out likely to be about 200 or so. However, the fraction that this forum is of all users with faulty phones (the 1% figure) is the real unknown. But I am quite willing to believe that your estimate could well be more in line with the actual and not as high as I calculated.

I also think there is something about the battery conditioning that could help. I have done that now for a few days and it certainly is better than when I started off, with pattern of phone usage being more or less similar each time. Whether this will universally help is another matter but then again, I doubt there is a one-size-fits-all solution here. There are far too many variables for that. When you do your conditioning, you might think about monitoring battery life and data usage with time and if possible baseline it against the before conditioning performance.

so i DFU retored my iphone 5 last night, setup as new phone, didn't sign in to icloud, didn't setup any email accounts except carddav for google contacts, downloaded a few songs from itunes match and a few apps such as facebook and speedtest. left my phone unplugged at 49% overnight for 7 hours in standby(screen off the whole time), woke up at 7 this morning and had 45% left. that's a 4% drop in 7 hrs compare to 1% per hour so there's definitely an improvement, but still no where close to what apple is advertising, 225 standby hours. i only get 175 standby hours in this case.

i m going to go ahead and setup emails, graduately adding more stuff back and will report back soon.

Yes I totally agree it is not just one thing, I believe bedding in of the battery is part of the problem, erratic use of iCloud/Syncing is another, I also have heard of faulty radio chips that transmit a lot more often than they should.

Any way you see it it is a rather poor showing from Apple on their most important product by far, in a period when the competition is as strong as you get. Which is quite a shame because in every other respect it is a fantastic device.

Actually 25x7175, if that is on an unconditioned battery you are awefully close...

I might sound like a broken record but my MBA 2012 kept creeping up on useable time for the first few full charging cycles until it eventually hit the 6 1/2 - 7 hour useage which I get now.

So your 170-180 hours on a brand new battery is not bad and if as looks likely part of it has to do with iOS6 on iPhone 5 an update will further improve it. I wouldn't be complaining if that was my battery life problem is my first iPhone 5 was losing 20-25% overnight....this one lost only 5-6%

I haven't posted in this thread but I have had the quick battery drain and battery drain while on standby. Last night, I used the do not disturb feature. I left it at a 100% charge and woke up to 100%. As soon as I turned it off, the depletion of the battery continued while on standby. Definitely sounds like a software glitch. I also notices that if I'm reading an article in safari, the little loading Icon comes on intermittently as if it were downloading extra data. After all that, I managed to get 8 hours and 15 minutes out of a charge. I played a game or 2 for about 30 minutes, used facebook and refreshed the browser occasionally. Moderate use at best. I also noticed that when the battery meter got to 1%, it lasted about another 30 to 40 minutes of continuous fairly heavy use as I was trying to get my phone to shut off.