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

fsuman110 wrote:

 

I'm asking this because I thought I was fine just keeping Cellular Data off, but then I realized that I cannot receive SMS messages that are not sent by iMessage. This is kind of a problem as I use the Messages app a lot for work. At the end of the day when I went into town and turned Cellular Data back on, I was bombarded with all of the SMS texts I had missed throughout the day.

 

I can send and receive SMS messages with cellular data off. Odd that you can't...

Tim

I have not used my phone today.  At all.  Unplugged it from the charger and got on the train and came to work.

100% when I left the house. 

97% now.

No calls.  No emails.  No texts.  No web browsing.  No GPS.  Nothing.  Never even unlocked it.

97%.........................and draining.

@Phil

Now power it all the way off then turn it back on and see if the percentage goes up towards 100%

Ramone

I tried it.  It went up by 1%

That's happening to me, as well.  It went down to 96% and I shut the phone off, turned it back on and it's at 100%

This is a long thread, and I certainly haven't read most of it, but I thought I'd lend my voice/vent.  I was quite happy with my iPhone 4 (not 'S'), but the battery life was started to ebb.  I'd say it was at around 60% of where it was when new.  So, looking at the cost of a new battery and the going rates for the 4 on ebay, I decided to upgrade to the 5.  The brand new 5 is clearly worse than my 4 after almost 2 years.  If I don't remember (or don't get the cable all the way in) to charge the 5 overnight, it will die on me the following day.  That is with no GPS usage and minimal (if any) LTE/mobile data usage. 

Did the battery drain start happening after you updated your phone to ios 6 on your Iphone 4?  I have the iphone 4, as well.  The second I updated the software to IOS6 was the second that I saw my battery draining before my eyes.  99% chance that there was absolutely nothing wrong with your iphone 4 battery (mine was perfect until the update).  So, you could return the iphone 5 and use your iphone 4 until this problem is fixed (if it's fixed).  Apple isn't saying a peep about this problem so we just have no idea.  If I were you, i'd return the 5, use your iphone 4. If there's a fix, great! You can buy the iphone 5 again.  If there's not.... well, you didn't waste any money on a new phone, and your iphone 4 battery life ***** just like all of ours. yuck

No, it happened gradually over the life of the phone; similar to what happened to me 3G, but not as steep a drop off.  I never put iOS 6 on it.  My guess would be that it was mostly the natural decay in modern batteries. 

I already sold the 4, so I can't go back.  If I still had it, I probably would return the 5; with my uses, the only advantage I see over the 4 is the improved camera.  Siri certainly isn't worth changing phones for...

Oh yea. Just the battery then. Hope this is fixed soon...... Apple.. Come on. Lol

I'm not laughing out loud!  I was just leaving work, read two emails and made a quick phone call.  Forwarded an email as a result of that call.  My battery dropped by 5%

I know Phil... I'm very over it right now. It's just absurd.  It's been over a month and they still are acting like it's the first that they have heard about it.  Just hope that 6.0.1 helps us.  If not...Well then I don't really even know.

If it doesnt work...Do what I will be doing. Telling eveyone I know!. I will be hitting up facebook and letting my friends know. Tell everyone and their sister. If Apple cant come clean and admit that there is a problem then they will no longer have my buisness. Right now, this will be my last Apple product I buy. I cant belive the false advertising going on here.

Hey everyone. I posted in this thread a few weeks ago. I got my phone on release day also had battery life issues since day one. Compared to my 4, it was really bad. My phone would last until 5pm and would need a full recharge. If I took the phone off the charger at 10am, with barely any use, at noon it would be about 70%.

I went ahead and did full discharges and cycled the battery to no avail. Restored the software and set up as a new phone didn't help. Switching things on and off didn't work.

Mind you, I was also experiencing the WIFI problems many others are having.

So, I went to my apple store and got a replacement phone.

Set up as new phone, discharged battery and did full cycles, same thing. Battery was just as bad as the first phone.

So two phones with both the same problem, I'm thinking software issue and a fix is right around the corner.

Days after posting my first post on this thread, I was contacted by and apple employee in reference to my post on this forum. He was very polite and you could tell he was sincere about his work and wanted to help get to the bottom of this.

He had me install some profiles and track my power usage over the next three days, sync, send him the file, done. He said if he heard anything he would get back to me.

I received a call back from the same gentleman about a week or so later. He informed me that the engineers took a look at my power usage and said to ship me a brand new replacement phone.

I received my new phone today, direct from the factory. So, I'm assuming that if this one still has battery problems, then it's definitely a software issue. Most of the hardware bugs should've been sorted out by now if there were any.

Well, I hate to say it but, this brand new phone has the same horrible battery life.

My phone just went from 40% to 33% typing this post.

I took the phone off the charger at 2:52pm 100%. It's now 8:01pm and I'm down to 33, no wait! 32%

My usage time is 3hrs 42min

Standby time is 5hrs 12min

I really hope 6.0.1 fixing this widespread problem.

Wait, 31%. :P

coctail5555,

Just curious,

Who is your telephone service provider. Are you using wifi,3g or LTE? Can you discribe how good your signal is?

ie. How many bars of strength? Does it switch back and forth between LTE and 3G?

I have noticed that most users here are getting about 4-5 hours of data on a full charge using 3G/LTE. This is also what I am getting.

The ilounge review that was posted here also showed about a four hour battery life. Ilounge attributed this to differences in cell signal strength.

The 64 million dollar question: Has anyone here been able to test their phone in a pure LTE high signal strength environment to see if battery life improved?

I personally have noticed that there are certain sweet spots in the center of town or by freeways were signal strength is high and my iphone is blazing fast. In other places were I use it more often, the phone is very slow. It constantly hangs up and switches between 1x, 3G and LTE on Verizon. I think the phone would have better battery life in one of these sweet spots, but I have never been in one long enough to be sure.