Q: iPhone 5 battery life is way worse than iPhone 4

As said prior, Apple have to be compiling reports and bugs on the batter life which they should have improved hardware side in rolling out the Iphone 5. This leaves power management, which they must be looking at and we will see in a firmware update. What I like about Apple and problems, is they will keep you waiting until they have a fix that works well. I dont mind waiting on qualify fixes as its a one time deal, not two, three or four time deal like some compeditors I experienced.

I would also review the apps running on your phone in the background, some members advised turning of push mail greatly saved on battery life. My phone is on order, so I cannot give you any 1st hand insight on power saving protocals. I would say however, that screen settings (light/time to power down/etc) should be looked at, along with the set up for unneccessary apps on your phone and especially those running in the background. Hard resets were another thing (power button & home button for 30 seconds until the apple logo comes on) that were tried with varying levels of success.

Hope this helps Smitty...

Best Regards

John

My replacement phone gave me pretty decent usuage. I fell asleep streaming pandora before I can take a picture at 1% but when I turned it back on this was a quick shot.

LTE drains my battery very quick. 4G is a little better but not all so much, using wifi has given me my longest.

I agree.  My new iPhone 5 had terrible battery performance.  Terrible.  Not even close to the performance guaranteed by Apple when the phone was introduced.  And much worse than my iPhone 4.  I finally took it in to the Apple store, they ran a test, and said the battery was defective.  They gave me a new phone on the spot.  I was really impressed.

Problem is, that phone performs exactly the same.  I read the other postings on this site, and saw that they reccomended setting it up as a new phone, not updating from the previous.  I did that. 

This is really bad folks.  Every time I use the phone for anything, I see the battery drop.  Text message?  It drops 1 percent.  Phone call?  One percent.  Siri inquiry?  Bloop...one percent.  I can literally watch as the battery drops before my eyes. 

Streaming video from netflix:  It was a 20 minute episode of "The Office".  Dropped the battery by 11%.  No way you could watch a real movie on this phone. 

I have yet to do ANYTHING on my iPhone 5, where I didn't see the battery drop.  Read an email?  battery drops.

Does Apple read these?  This really needs to be fixed.  I have had iPhones since day one of the first one.  This is far and away the worst.  And I will absolutely return this phone if they can't assure me that it can be fixed.  REALLY disappointed.

I am an Apple lifer.  I have never owned a Windows computer.  But I am SHOCKED at this.

Just a general battery usage update.

25% loss after 3 hours 20 min

40% loss after 5 hours 13 min

46% loss after 5 hours 50 min

48% loss after 5 hours 54 min

49% loss after 6 hours.

50% loss after 6 hours 1 min

My usage is pretty heavy and almost all LTE. First 30 minutes were WIFI.

Feels like the loss rate increases at points.

I have a 64GB white Verizon iPhone 5

You do realize that using the phone requires power, right.   At 7 hours of steady use, the battery will drop 15% or so per hour, which is 1% every 4 minutes.   Watching videos is faster, but the screen on uses significant t power.  Try the airplane mode when watching a video and it will save some power by turnin off the cellular radio.  

I think the phone 5 signal settings along with the network permissions should be looked at. I would ensure that your carrier is "Iphone friendly" with no issues causing the battery to use more energy that it should. Good example is LTE switched on in an environment that is no LTE coverage is present.

Resetting the phone from factory setting creating a new Iphone setting rather then restoring the old one is also an option with mixed success rates from what I can see.

I have some other comments above which I reccomend you take a look at also..

Hope this helps Phil...

Best Regards

John

I too am losing 1-2% just using the phone a minute to search something on the web, and or going into apps.

My Iphone 4 battery lasted much longer. I would stay well over 90% with some light use all day at work until 5 p.m.. Now I am at 81% at noon with light use

FYI - I have Sprint and no LTE here in Miami, so its is off

Assuming you have other applications running in the background and regularly interacting via wifi or 3g for updates/refreshers/etc, then your battery usage from what I can see is normal. Its a fact that the Iphone 5 battery is no better or worse then the Iphone 4 battery, but the power demands on the Iphone 5 battery is higher due to the increased functionality. What I would say in addition to my above posts would be to ensure that what is on and running on your Iphone is what you want to be on your phone and running. Anything else I would remove to optimize the battery power and theres a few things that are power hungry on the Iphone 5 but provide value to the user for what it does.

Hope this helps

Best Regards,

John

Any chance the battery life issues being faced by many might be related to the abnormally high data usage bug that some have experienced?   Those with battery draining issues might take a look at data usage to see if there is any correlation.  Probably not the case but just a thought.  Here's a link to the high data usage bug discussion.  https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4348072?start=0&tstart=0 

Jameson

You say 7 hours of steady use.  Does steady use include when the phone is locked and dark?  And it's hard to use airplane mode to watch a streaming video, which is one of the things apple boasted about when it introduced the phone.  Something is wrong.

Thank you

Streaming over wifi is easily done in Airplane Mode.   I cannot imagine streaming a movie over 3g or LTE and using up half my data plan for the month in 2 hours.   APPLE may boast about streaming video, but the carriers will make that cost you dearly.

I was responding to this from your post above:  "I have yet to do ANYTHING on my iPhone 5, where I didn't see the battery drop.  Read an email?  battery drops."   Which mentions nothing about when on standby and dark.

Interesting Texas, I would say however that in my mind, the bugs would only drain power excessive if they are not regulating the power outage on signal boost requirements in poor coverage areas, or applications are excessively using signal mediums like 3G, LTE or wifi to interact on refreshers/updates/downloads in an energy unfriendly manner. This is down in my mind to power management and Apple must be considering this in my view for the next firmware update of IOS6. I personally think the problem lies in these areas.

I have a feeling this is related scrictly to power management and how the OS is handling apps paused in the background..

like everyone i have experienced battery usage numbers in the 3-5 hour range.. best at 6 hours 40 minutes..

Today, i do not have LTE on, nor did I use bluetooth on my way to work.. (we already know both these are power hungry)

what have I done differently today? EVERY SINGLE TIME i am done with an app, i actually kill the app in the background..

I am at 2 hours 4 minutes usage and 64% remaining... I don't know what changed today, but from 100% down to say 70-75% the usage was great, but now it's dropping quicker..

i really have no answers, nothing seems to work.. apple needs to get this sorted and quick.

As I suggested way back many pages ago in this thread.......   I believe that when you set up, restore, or do resets on the phone, it results in some heavy background actvity for some lengthy amount of time.   When I first got my i5 and set it up, I had 2 days or terribly battery life, but by the 2nd day, began to see improvement.   Now, after not tinkering with settings, restoring it or resetting anything since, everything appears to have settled out nicely and I get better battery life than I did with my i4s.

AND, I have not disabled any significant number of features.   Everything exctept for Siri-lift to activate is on, including BT, wifi, location services, notifications, diagnostics, iCloud, music match, wifi sync, etc., etc., etc.....  I am easily making it thorught the entire day, but granted I am not a HEAVY user.   Id suggest more moderate........

John Mul wrote:

 

Interesting Texas, I would say however that in my mind, the bugs would only drain power excessive if they are not regulating the power outage on signal boost requirements in poor coverage areas, or applications are excessively using signal mediums like 3G, LTE or wifi to interact on refreshers/updates/downloads in an energy unfriendly manner. This is down in my mind to power management and Apple must be considering this in my view for the next firmware update of IOS6. I personally think the problem lies in these areas.

Unlimited data plan with Verizon. Full price phone>data overages