iPhone 5 battery life is way worse than iPhone 4

My problem was/is similar to what I'm reading here. Very limited use - huge power drain. I use a bluetooth headset, and while I wasn't actually making any calls or listening to music/videos, they were connected and my iphone 5 was very hot and draining about 30% an hour, again, with very limited use (checked 2-3 emails in that hour).

After I turned off bluetooth, it cooled down and the power drain seems to be normal now. I don't know if that's a coincidence or whether I've narrowed the problem down to bluetooth drain. As I recall, iOS6 is using the latest version of bluetooth, right?

That still doesn't explain the massive power drain, as there's no way that should be normal, but perhaps it's a software glitch related to bluetooth?

I've been running on wifi almost exclusively since I got my phone on Friday. LTE and Bluetooth are turned off. Not making any difference on the excessive drain.

My husband has an iPhone 4 running iOS6 and he has just noticed a ridiculous drain, as well. 100% this morning, down to 75% in a couple hours with no usage whatsoever...

Hey Blackout, good call not sure why I didn't think to check the actual times..

Looks like my timing was off by 2 hours, I forgot that I had plugged the phone in to sync over an app I was getting ready to submit to the store for update, I guess in that time it must have hit a full charge.... anyway, the info as of right now:

Usage: 1 hour, 46 minutes

Standby: 21 hours, 54 minutes

Battery Level: 66%

My usage was a mix of WiFi and ATT's "4G", screen at about 75% brightness, bluetooth off, LTE was off for a few hours then I turned it back on to see if drain increased (with no LTE coverage, didn't seem to).

Update - nipped to Apple Store in Sheffield to ask the genius guys if they could run tests on my iPhone 5 as again today the battery drained so fast. (1-2% drain opening applications, 1% drain sending or receiving iMessages, 2-3% drain every 5 mins on standby, and a massive problem with Auto Brightness)

So the guys ran the tests and said they could find no errors or faults with the software or hardware but warned that they would have liked the phone to be at least 2 weeks old so that the information it collects would have been something better to look at.

So they put the phone into DFU mode and restored the iPhone while I went round the shops, when I got back they told me to check it over the next few days and if anymore problems to book another appointment for the Genius Bar (great they think it should be ok) NO it wasn't, I went to turn the features back on and download my contacts from iCloud whilst walking out of the store but the phone would not turn on (battery had died even though they had it plugged in).

So walked back up to the Genius Bar counter and asked them what I was meant to do now???

All I got for a response was "since you bought the phone from apple online you need to contact them to get it exchanged for a new one"

Well thanks Apple I now have to ring you up and explain the problem - return this phone and wait god knows how long for a new one

Going to have to use my 4S for next few weeks

Hey peppersdad,

I'm not entirely convinced of the dfu restore helping, as more people would need to try it to see if it actually helps them as well...

As for reasoning why it *might* work I can think of a couple. First, for the iPhone 4, the upgrade was just that, an upgrade. Never know if anything is "left behind' that may cause issues. During the developer preview period I was running the beta on my 4 and I didn't notice any real battery issues. It didn't last as long as it did on 5.1, but it wasn't draining at anywhere near the speeds I've seen people reporting (or at the speed my 5 did the day I got it). The previews are installed via restore and not upgrade, so I never actually upgraded my 4 from a previous release.

As for why it *might* help a 5... we don't know how the OS was preloaded onto the phones. The version of the software may be exactly the same as what we download when doing a restore, but you never know if when it was initially pre-loaded if there was something wrong with a few of the images. You would think that if there was a serious battery issue (with either the 5, or iOS 6) then it would have been reported in the "media", but all the initial reviews claimed great battery life. I'm sure that on ZDNet there would be no less then a page full of links to their blogs and "articles" about iPhone 5/iOS 6 "Battery Gate" or something.

Anyway, this is mostly pulled out of thin air reasoning as to why it *might* help. I'm used to doing restores often when running preview releases, so it wasn't anything I wasn't used to already doing.

Ok an update.

I have a 4 and a 5 both using iOS6. Charged both fully, and opened TomTom app which is fairly power hungry. After about an hour both were down to 65% of charge, so it looks to me like a software issue with iOS6. I only upgraded to iOS6 on the 4 on Thursday and the new phone arrived on Friday, so I didn't notice any excessive power drain on the 4.

The 4 is two and a half years old and has been through many, many recharges! Hope this gets fixed soon. BTW, in the UK so no LTE/4G coverage here (yet)!

My battery life is aso unacceptable. I did not restore from backup, set it up as new. After first charge, 22 hours of standby, 2 houra of use, 7 muntes of calls. No LTE, wifi, GPS, or push. My wifes iPhone 4 (iOS6) came off the charger at the same time yesterday, same settings (except LTE), it still has 90% battery.

I let the phone shut itself off and im doing a full charge. If it doesn't improve to the way my iPhone 4 battery usage, it's going back to Apple. I travel extensively and have to have better than 2 hours of usage.

- unplugged my iPhone 5 at 9am this morning

- was at home on WiFi

- left home at 11am with 96% battery life

- LTE was on while out

- returned home at 11:45am with 72% battery life.

- back to WiFi while home

- at 4pm battery life was at 31%

since 9am twitter, camera, and instagram apps have been open. i took one photo with camera, refreshed my twitter feed 6 times, sent one photo via messages, and set one reminder with siri. settings were also briefly open.

This is what I'm seeing on my iPhone 5 and this is on its first charge.

I find it hard to believe after all these reports there has been no official Apple statement on the subject..

I must be lucky though, my iPhone 5 is at 62% after 10 1/2 hrs being unplugged after charge.

However it's not had a lot of use today but re-reading this post I have seen battery life drop 3%... I can't say I ever actually saw my battery life go down on the iPhone 4 whilst using it, just over the period of the day.

There's definitely something up!

*make that 4% down, just dropped again when I pressed reply!

Oh dear :(

ok, i'm doing a step by step process here, to find out the cause, yesterday i've turnned off LTE setting, to test, same thing, very light use unplugged the phone at 8am, did my normal use, a lot less calls as it was sunday and i wasn't working, but same thing, about 6pm my battery was already screaming warnings of 20%, and on red. So definetelly not LTE problem, my LTE reception here on the Gold Coast with Telstra (AU) is average, some places there is no LTE and some places the reception is really good, when i had LTE on, if there is no reception it just switches to 3G, 3G reception is always good, but as i mentioned there is no problems there, battery drain was exatcly the same with LTE on or off.

today i'm going to do the restore thing which i believe it won't change anything... i'll report tomorrow...

hard to believe Apple after 6 pages of posts of people complaning about this, there is no words from them yet...

just on a note, unplugged my phone exactly 1 hr ago and it's already in 98%

*awaits iOS 6.1*

Try this. It worked for me.

settings>general>about>diagnostics and usage>dont send