iPhone 5 battery life is way worse than iPhone 4

The problem is LTE.

Everything I have posted so far is true and will help. However, after visiting Apple, I was told to try shutting my LTE off for a day. I did this and surprisingly, my already decent battery life doubled. I called AT&T and they said even though LTE is available in my area the signal is weak.

If you LTE is enabled, your phone will always search for it even if it is using 4G or 3G or E or whatever is displayed on the top of your screen. That is why it doesn't have the drainage issues on WiFi. It is not looking for the LTE.

I did the resore from iTunes, deleted and reloaded everything, conditioned my battery and got much better results. Now that I have LTE shut off, it's working better than my 4S.

Lol so you are saying the main new feature and probably the only reason why thousands of people upgraded to the phone is also the main problem for the phone and it should be shut off? I had WIFI on as well as LTE, why on earth would it need to search for it then? Glitch in the software, i can almost bet that we'll have 6.01 in about a months time with a fix to the problem.

The only problem is that if an update doesn't come within the 30 day window.....how many people will return the phone?? Mark me down as #1.

the problem is not (only) LTE.

i've had LTE off for days now and my battery life never exceeds 5hrs.

One week after I first posted for help (when my phone lost 25% in one hour with no use and I was about to follow the more drastic advice posted here), I see there are hundreds more comments and lots more suggestions. Now I'm actually making it through the day, albeit not with much voice usage, and there is appropriate divergence between "Usage" and "Standby."

So FWIW, I thought I'd offer my own update in case it helps anyone:

1. I charge the phone using the Battery+ app. I've no idea what it actually does, or what the difference really is between "100% charged" and "Fully charged", but it seems to have made a difference.

2. I also leave it charging overnight. I've read different reports as to whether this is good for the long term health of the battery, but, again, it seems to help for now. I like to think of this and #1 somehow "sqeezing" a little extra charge into the battery - whatever!

3. Turning off bluetooth has helped too. My BT headset wasn't working well (or so people on the other end of the calls told me). When I'm in the car and turn BT on, battery usage seems to get a lot worse.

4. Using the turn-by-turn navigation function is a battery killer!

5. Siri is another one - and a waste of time too!

6. I followed the various suggestions about iCloud syncing, location services etc insofar as I could without losing useful functions that were the reason I got the phone in the first place.

Still waiting for Apple to take responsibility and put out an update, of course, but at least I can live with the phone as it is. Good luck everyone!

I agree, LTE can't be the major culprit. My network doesn't even have 4G and there is no on/off switch for LTE on my phone and yet battery life has been patchy. Although improved a lot now, it does make me wonder what will happen when my carrier enables 4G/LTE 😮. Ah well...I'll blow that bridge up when we get there.

Guess mine is not too bad.

Wait till you get to 1%. That little bit goes forever, at least on mine anyway.

well forever is relative.

guys i need some feedback, i managed to tweak my settings a bit and i would like to understand if i am aligned to yours as battery life.

On 3G in standby my phone loses 1% every 18/19 minutes.

On 3g browsing it loses 1% every 2 minutes

On Wifi in standby my phone loses 1% every 37/38 minutes

On Wifi browsing loses 1% every 5 minutes.

how is your Iphone5 doing, is it close to the above ?

SingleMalt,

If you have iPhone 5, LTE switch should be:

Settings > General > Cellular > Enable LTE

Sandro that is not very good battery life but mine is only a little better. Before cycling charging it it was worse than that though so maybe stick with it for a few more days and see if the life improves.

ok thanks. i would agree with you something isnt right. there is way too much difference between standby and usage and also there is clearly something going on with the cellular. I have to yet do a test. flight mode + wifi on ( which makes cellular off and enables wifi only ).

i am reading a lot of posts on this forum and on the internet, nothing make sense. there is no magic bullet, i am guessing here but i have a feeling that apple has re-witten some foundation code from scratch which is way less efficient.

to add to that, stop disabling every single uselful service of this phone. its not worth it, even if i disable all pushes / location bla bla is not making a huge difference. enjoy what your phone has otherwise whats the point of having push emails and bluetooth 4.0 etc etc, they are all energy efficient, the culprit is something else and the magic bullet is not in our hands.

I noticed while on a flight yesterday that even in airplane mode my iphone 5 used 8% charge in just over an hour.

Since I charged it overnight, it is telling me My usage is 2 hours and 17 mins. What does this mean?. I've only made four calls totalling 40 mins only.

Ben

I setup my iphone 5 from new. Didn't want to inherit any problems by restoring from a backup of my old 3GS. But. I havehe battery drain problem. I think it's more fundamental than just setting up from a old backup.

Ben