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

As I have posted numerous times already in this thread......  

I am fortunate to have wifi access for a large part of the day.   Both at home and in my office.  

When out and about near my office, I have solid LTE service.   When out and about near home, solid 3G (AT&T faux 4G) service.   

During my 1 hour commute, I spend about 50% of the time on LTE and 50% on 3G.   During that commute, I have BT on and my phone is connected to both the car's handsfree system AND my radar detector.   With the radar detector I have Escort Live APP running, using GPS, APPLE MAPS and the screen remains on.   Because all this would be a huge drain, I usually employ my car charger.

On weekends, I have left the phone off the charger all day, with still much wifi time, but more 3G/LTE time as we are out and about.   I have not seen the crazy battery drain that many others are seeing, so I consider myself lucky.   I have nearly everything on.   Location Services, iCloud, iTunes Match, Push for Exchange and Yahoo Mail.   Fetch for Gmail and Comcast Mail.   Notifications are on, BT on, wifi, on.  

I just got off a 50min phone call using speakerphone and am at 82% with 1hr 20min usage and 4hrs standby, which puts me on pace for 7.4 hours usage with heavy calling right now.   I'll take that.

My experience is not to suggest that others are not having real problems, as many clearly are.   I'm just posting to show it's not everybody.   I'm sure lots of wifi time helps, but I don't see the crazy draining like many other see, even when away from wifi.

iphone5rocks wrote:

 

@Jameson,

 

How are you using your phone during your 8 hours? Are you using wifi, 3g or LTE? How is your signal strength. What could account for the improved numbers you are getting relative to others here?

It would be interesting to see if you turned off wifi and just used pure cellular for one cycle, how well you would do.

Well, I've done that already as well, if you look back in the history of this thread.   I only got a couple of hours worth of data with wifi off, but the numbers looked fine for that short test........

it does perform better on wifi,true,but on cellular mine loses 1% per 2 minutes usage,and thats very poor in any setup.still on my first ip5 that i've had since the release,wonder when 6.01 is coming...

@keja3600

I'm getting the exact same performance over cellular. 1% drop every 2 minutes no matter what I'm doing or the signal strength. This is my first ever iPhone and in regretting the decision to buy it. Just pathetic battery life.

its my fourth iphone and i've always had great battery life...its an amazing phone but this is truly pathetic performance..still hoping this is a IOS issue(pretty sure of it though) and if not then i'll exchange it untill i get a good one i guess.i just wonder why,since in my opinion this is way worse than "antennagate",nothing is said about this in the media?? ever tried a "iphone 5 battery problem" search on google?very few results eventhough it is a widespread problem....we're being left in the dark,not a single word on it during their keynote...really bad customerservice apple!

With cellular data off and wifi turn on i got 7 Hours usage and 2 day stanby , but when cellular data on i only got 4 Hours usage and 15 Hours standby no LTE , i think this is ios issue

So i will try to respond.  I am no expert, but am somewhat OCD about this stuff

First of all, on my2 year old  iphone4 id get about 6 hours regardless of location, granted that was AT&T.

Usage was 1+ hour jogging/biking every non workday so GPS cyclemeter/strava tracking programs.  Except for that duration, Location ALWAYS OFF. WIFI ALWAYS ON. PUSH and most all notifications ALWAYS OFF. Brightness MEDIUM.

USAGE was mostly text/email/games.  Music insignificantly drained battery

IPHONE5. Owned 1 week.  Switched from ATT(****** home cell svc) to VERIZON (much better cell svc). WIFI ALWAYS ON

LTE on/off.  Been experimenting.  Same type usage in fact i just got bak from ride.  Closed down all apps upon completion and switched Location OFF.

As i type this, i am 65% 3:00 exactly.  THIS IS SIGNIFICANTLY better than first cupple days.  I DID make some changes.  I reset settings and drained batt at work last night (approx usage-8.75 hours (like i said.  The 2 days at work MUCH better usage) and turned ICLOUD OFF.  I turned LTE ON for this whole day.

I have no idea which change increased usage.  I did NOT DO NEW RESTORE.

I will beecstatic if i can match my iphone 4 battery life and it seems something helped!!!   Much better than the 4 hours usage 9hours standby last time i was home!!!

If any one could explain ICLOUD and RESTORE to me as i i were a 3rd grader itd be greatly appreciated.  I own a origional ipad and have itunes on a non-mac laptop. Thx.  Bob

Oh and also.  Does anyone else have prob connecting to wifi sometimes???   My ipad ALWAYS GETS CONNECTED.  IPHONE5 is hit or miss.  Thx

It's me again.

I once again have to take issue with the above postings which say "turn this off, turn that off".  I did not buy this phone to turn off the features which the company says make it a great phone.  Turn off enough features, and you have a Motorola bag phone from 1990. 

I bought a phone with a Retina display.  I don't want to have to turn it to 50% brightness. 

I bought a phone with LTE and bluetooth.  I'd like to use both of them, not turn them on whenever I need to. 

I bought a phone which can give me push email, which I need for my job.  I don't want to whip out my phone and check it for email every five minutes. 

I bought a phone with a web browser.  I'd like to use it without watching my power drop every time I type in an address. 

And God help me if I use the camera, which Apple told me is such a great new camera which takes beautiful stills and panoramics, and HD video.  They didn't say...."but bring an extension cord!"

Either this is a software glitch.  Or it's false advertising.  I hope it's the former.  I happen to like this company.

Uh.  Sounds like youre really frustrated...but its not false advertising... "Up to 8 hours talk time "

"Up to 8 hours browsing"

All bells and whistles require power. Some more than others.  Accept it...   Believe me, the grass is NOT greener on the droid/razor/etc side of the pasture.  Cant believe im now defending apple...NOTHINGS perfect.  We have gotten spoiled... I think back a couple years ago to my palm pilot in awe...

On 3G, disabled push mail, set to hourly updates. Otherwise all as normal and doing pretty well.. Although I've only been using Facebook and reading Flipboard plus some Whatsapp. http://m.flickr.com/#/photos/justanut/8126957927/sizes/o/

its really simple,either its a software issue or this phone just ***** a*s.i've always been a huge apple fan but this is driving me crazy.......as i've said before many times: with steve jobs this would not have happened !!!! he had the balls to throw the phone in the garbage and make em start over.tim cook is a ceo without steve's passion for making great products.sad day for apple,sad day for apple fans,great day for the competition.wonder when the first samsung ad will air that makes fun of this pathetic battery...it will be a sad day for all of us then...

@godzilabob

Apple can't hide behind the "up to" nonsense. It's one think if people were getting 6-7 hours, but multiple people, myself included, are getting 4 hours of useage over cellular. That's not reasonable or acceptable. Apple can't say "up to 8 hours" and then deliver 4 hours.

Maybe should of posted the details in here, but anyway I've put some sort of a summary of how I resolved my battery issues in another post. Link is below:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4472476?tstart=0