iPhone 5 battery life is way worse than iPhone 4

Yes, my phone was in airplane mode yesterday and it was getting pretty warm on the back.

Ben

The way this company handles this issue is a complete joke! I can't even believe the inconsistency between all the different people that I've talked with at apple. Some of them were straight up RUDE about it. Telling me my battery numbers are perfectly normal. WHAT? It's an absolute joke. I talked to ONE person who was extremely helpful trying to

Figure out what the problem is. Is there policy to exchange the phone no questions asked in the first 30days? At first they were sending me a replacement once they got mine. Now they are telling me they have to go into my phone and do tests and stuff and I very well may get

My exact phone back. What???? I have spent so much time trying to fix a problem that I didn't create.

I am not happy about any of

This.

You think it's a complete joke? I worked with Apple when they called me regarding this issue yesterday, I've never seen a company reach out because of a post on a forum before.

I really hope the data the logging tool they installed helps us all out.

I'm glad apple is working with us to figure this out.

@AlwaysLookin4Answers what are the numbers that they are claming as normal ? be specific...

That is why I said I talked to ONE person who was EXTREMELY HELPFUL.

They are making a exchange very difficult for me. All I want to do is send my phone back and get a exchange. That was originally the deal. Now, I am being told that they have to run tests on my phone and its quite possible that I will just get my phone sent right back. Why can't they just do an exchange like originally promised? That's what is confusing to me. If they do tests and the battery looks fine to them(as the apple store has told plenty of you that are having problems) they are just going to send it back? I can't get to an apple store and this is my only option. I just don't get why they won't do an easy exchange. The time I have spent dealing with this and the hassle its been - their response just doesn't add up. EXCEPT FOR THE ONE PERSON I KEEP SAYING HAS BEEN HELPFUL!!! That's all... And yes the inconsistency within such a huge company that I have been getting is a joke.

My usage was 3 hours and change

My standby was 10 hours? (30% Battery left)

Correct me if I'm wrong but..... that's not right for the battery life

I agree that is terrible battery.

My worst is about that, my best was 6 hours 40 minutes. ( usage)

I seem to average around 5-6 which is still terrible.

If I can't make it to work and back home (8+ hours) on a single charge, in my eyes the product is a failure.

In mine too, Spyd4r. Please forgive me for taking my frustrations out and venting on this forum. It's "only" a phone but when money is tight and the phone is supposed to be something that it's not... it gets very aggrivating. Thats all.

i think that the battery in iPhone 5 is the worse battery. every 2 min the perecent drain.i hope that this is iOS problem and not hardware problem.

i hope that someone from Apple really listen to all those posts about the battery issue

I Agree with you. Apple ? Tomorrow is sunday as soon as Monday comes we are going to start collecting people name and email addresses and have those sent to apple, this has got to be fixed or i want my euros back thats for sure.

i hope so SandroD. i am from Israel, The iPhone 5 not yet released here. so here no one can help me with this problem. only the forums and google about this issue

Griffin800 wrote:

Hello everyone!

I posted back when this thread only had 5 pages and about 7,000 views. Now it has ballooned to over 30 pages and 30,000 views...

I havent read all the new posts since I've been gone, but I scanned over some pages and get the idea that more people are having this problem.

It's amusing to see a lot of mis-information flying around from other users... but it's sad that apple of course hasn't officially announced anything as being wrong with software or hardware, (as far as i know).

SO...

I have the original Iphone5 that i bought at a verizon store on the 21st.

I had battery issues at first but i DO NOT have them now, and i DID NOT get it replaced.

I DID have a problem at first and the charge wouldn't have been able to last more than 5-6 hours tops.

i was VERY close to bringing it to an apple store and having it exchanged if possible, but i decided to make an attempt at troubleshooting it on my own.

It has now been a week. For the last few days I have been using my phone as normal and not having any issues at all. I unplug it at 9am on my way to work, use it all day long and 12 hours later still have a charge... sometimes more than that.

Some of these things in my fix may be controversial... but... i'm seriously not having any issues now...

If you haven't tried this already, do the following...

1. restore phone from itunes with fresh download of ios6.

2. setup as a new phone...DO NOT RESTORE FROM ANY BACKUPS ANYWHERE

(don't argue with me about this LOL, I know it kind of blows, but just do it and see if it fixes the issue... some people cry and cry about this and waste DAYS more time complaining than it would to just see if this fixed the issue)

3. make sure diagnostic reporting is ON and enabled... apple will never know about our problems if they're not friggin reported. 😉

4. if you must have some contacts on your phone, only downloaded contacts from icloud. Contacts and photostream and find my iphone are all i use of icould services.... i didn't have to do anything special for my contacts to be there, i just signed in and they were there.

5. i left almost ALL other settings default! I didn't turn any major services off! I didn't go through and "gut out" the functionality of the phone. I even have location services, LTE, wifi, and diagnostics turned ON... siri is ON... everything is on except blue tooth... which i don't use...

6. I let the battery drain to zero THREE nights in a row.. and each time i used an APP called "Battery doctor" which is a 99 cent download... and it charged the battery to max... without interrupting the charging process. (there is a maintenance function in the app which tells you the total time for the battery to be charged. It's highly rated on the app store and i recommend it too)

___________________________________________________________________

CONCLUSION...

I'm a network operations analyst for a major multimedia corporation in the US. I come across problems with other members of my hardware / software teams that cannot be easily tracked down, but it is MY JOB to give a "best answer" to our management team who are not themselves technicians in some cases. If i was being paid to explain this iphone situation at my job... it would be this:

This perceived battery drain issue is a combination of a software bug from iOS... MIXED with a battery manufactuering issue.... nothing major... just batteries which appears to have not been properly cycled from the plant...

Explaination of batteries:

How many folks out there have ordered a replacement battery for a laptop or a cell phone, gotten it in the mail, plugged it in, and plugged it in to find that had it been pre charged to 50%?

Ever wonder what kind of power conditioning was done to that battery to give it a 50% charge that held up in the mail to you? That's because Lithium Ion batteries keep their capacity best when stored at 50% charge. Companies know this and follow the procedure. They also follow other tricks at conditioning these batteries when they're first made...

Personally, I think that many of these iphone5 batteries may NOT have been conditioned correctly in a rush to get them out the door fast enough to fill these orders...

but people, this conditioning is something we can do ourselves...

just let it drain down to zero, let the phone charge back up to max overnight... and then do it a few more times...

the capacity will increase, and the phone software SHOULD learn that the battery now has what it "sees" as "more capacity"... this making the battery percent meter drop more slowly, and read more accurate...

that's the only hardware error i think is happening, for me, personally.

If you've ever downloaded an app called "coconut battery" for your macbook pro, you'll see that it shows you the "design capacity" of the battery you have... COMPARED TO the "current max charge capacity".... which will most times be LOWER than the design capacity... which means that battery could have lost capacity over time due to age... however... My guess is that these batteries were never fully cylces and thus... off the factory line may not "know" their max current capacity... even though they have the cells to charge up to the advertized 5.3 watt hours, or whatever the specs are.

so... that's my input on that...

now software? I have some crashes... and even have a "low battery" error log, however i don't know what that was about or where it was from..

I think iOS6 may have some sort of problem that causes the usage time and standby time to be the same, i think that happened to me... somehow it's being used all the time as it's got something running...

but again...

a simple restore from scratch only took me maybe 3 hours...

I wasn't banging my head against a wall...

it wasn't as bad as dental work or anything...

it just had to be done...

*should* it have to be done that way with a new product? No... apple may have needed more time to iron out bugs...

but everyone on here knew the cost of being early adopters...

i say... either be willing to troubleshoot yourself... or wait for a fix from apple.... or... return the thing and get a samsung galaxy s3 or some other android phone... because apparent in the minds of some... android phones don't ever have any problems ... (sarasm)

so...

I don't know how many people will read this...

but restore from scratch... and drain/charge battery complete several times... and i PROMISE you will notice a difference...

I am so happy with my iphone5 now I am not going to see a replacement at all...

perhaps in 6 months or so i will bring it in and have the battery life judged by a genious just out of curiosity... but honestly... truly... it's livable the way it is right now...

and i use my phone A LOT... and make a lot of calls...

good luck everyone... i wish this post could have helped everyone but... it may not....

Some of you may disagree with what i had to say... and i'm sorry. I'm using my iphone 5 and enjoying it now... not regretting buying it at all...

HELLO... AGAIN... 😉

I see this post has doulbed in page views, AND number of pages of replies since I last posted this...

Seems like people aren't getting the advice...

I consider my battery problem FIXED.

I am getting 7 hours of Heavy usage... gaming....browsing over LTE, Maps, Calls, Texting... everything... with all options default except for bluetooth...

and...

25 hours of standby...

on a single charge.

Start cylcing your battery down to zero until the phone turns off on it's own... then charge it up to 100%.

Do this as many times as it takes to get the battery to start behaving normally.

Also, if you have a battery doctor app... or "BOOST MAGIC" battery app, which is iphone5 compatible...

then run that app while you charge back to help it get the maximum charge. I don't know how helpful the app really is but for 99 cents, its worth a try.

for those of you SMART enough to leave diagnostics turned on... you'll notice that everytime the phone shuts down from a drained battery, it creates a "low battery" log file, with the date and time in it...

and it sends the file to apple. If you don't believe me, try it for yourself, and check the diagnostic logs.

Apple might start being able to identify battery life issues easier if more people were draining their phones to zero and letting them see the data in the report, which includes usage and standby times... as well as other info i'm sure only they know what it is...

Stop being victims of this horrible "tragedy" and start cycling your lithium ion batteries people 😉

(i'm being light hearted about this... i know a lot of people are upset.. i was too... but this problem isn't that hard to solve on your own...)

I worry a bit about folks taking Griffin800 seriously -- sounds suspiciously like a snake oil salesman. iPhones have lithium ion polymer batteries and, consequently, do not require conditioning like the older style NiMH batteries. Please see this article on how to get the best use out of a lithium battery:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-tips-for-extending-lithium-ion-b attery-life/289

In fact, running the battery to zero can actually shorten its life. Definitely good to use the battery and move the electrons, but there's no battery memory or conditioning requirements. The main reason to run the battery to zero, on occasion, is to calibrate the meter. Apple recommends doing this about once a month, not day after day as stated in some of the posts above.

gmansc1 wrote:

I worry a bit about folks taking Griffin800 seriously -- sounds suspiciously like a snake oil salesman. iPhones have lithium ion polymer batteries and, consequently, do not require conditioning like the older style NiMH batteries. Please see this article on how to get the best use out of a lithium battery:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-tips-for-extending-lithium-ion-b attery-life/289

In fact, running the battery to zero can actually shorten its life. Definitely good to use the battery and move the electrons, but there's no battery memory or conditioning requirements. The main reason to run the battery to zero, on occasion, is to calibrate the meter. Apple recommends doing this about once a month, not day after day as stated in some of the posts above.

Now now... no need to call names... I'm just trying to help 😉

I'm a network operations analyst for a major multimedia corporation in the USA...

I don't know everything about everything... and I'm not the self preachy type...

I'm just a happy iphone 5 user who found a way to get proper battery life out of my iphone...

I found something that works for me...

that was easier than driving far to see a genious or swap out my phone for a new one, when new ones aren't available in my area... or any area... now that production is falling behind due to riots and strikes and such at foxcon...

anyways....

everyone feel free to do as you like...

i'll just keep enjoying my phone.

I did maybe 3-4 full cycles on it... after a doing a full restore...

To me... the battery life seems completely accetpable.

I have nothing to "prove" to anyone... but...I can post daily screen shots of my useage and standby time at the end of my day if you'd like...

🙂

I have set up an exchange. I'm sorry that in a frustrating moment I bashed apple. Obviously I love apple and their products if I didn't would've just given up a long time ago. I hope everyone gets their issues fixed. I'm signing off this board. Thanks to all

I'm not sure how this stacks up but my typical battery life is 4h 48mins usage and 17h 1min standby on 99% battery life. Seems pretty bad I cannot even get one days worth.