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

How can u tell the month ur phone was made?? R u running the newly released 6.1 beta 3???

There's a website you enter your serial number. Google iPhone build week. It's the second one down I believe posted on a message board. And yes, I am 6.1 / 3 .. You?

This is definitely a software issue. i bought my phone on launch day and had horrible battery life. Then after a few weeks my battery improved tremendously. Then my battery went to crap again. Then just yesterday i got the best battery life since i had the phone. (see pic) I cant understand this for the life of me. it has got to be software related.

I agree......   Sort of........

I'm thinking it's that firmware used to manage the dual antenna system in the i5.   It appears that this software is in use, even in 6.01 installs on i4 and i4s phones.   Now, that software is designed to manage the new antenna design and is causing the battery drain (my opinion).   Is the problem solvable with software revisions, or is the dual antenna design a problem that software cannot solve?    Only APPLE Engineers know for sure.

I'm guessing we will have a solid answer when iOS6.1 is released.   If the batttery drain problem is not solved with that, it will never be solved.   I still believe this will be the case and we will have to wait for iPhone 6, to be released next fall, with more battery capacity!

I believe something is wrong with either the wall chargers for the iphones and ipads in compatibility or the usb charging cable being reversable in that it doesn't matter which side you insert the small end into your phone. What makes me believe this is try charging your i5 in a computer usb port or laptop, a full charge meaning even after you see the little plug icon continue to charge it about one hour longer after seeing that and see how long your battery will last. My results were significantly longer than using the wall chargers on several tests. Also ive noticed using my wall charger over night and unplugging my i5 in the morning with little use my battery would immediately drop 100 to 99% within a few minutes of use and the. 98 but if i hard reset the phone it would pop back up to 100% and stay there for about 45- 1hr of use. But never noticed this when charging from computer usb port. Next test i will try is marking one side of my lightning cable end that plugs into the i5 and seeing if for some reason one side charges better than the other due to a bad wiring scheme in that apple says the cable doesn't matter which way it goes into the phone it will charge it both ways. Im thinking there may be an issue here as well and that it only gets a good charge by inputting that cable connector in one way. I may be on to somethin or on somethin ;) let me know what you think...

Oh and i forgot to add i still believe like the otheres above me the issue with the cellular antenna exists as well so my tests will prove itself more over using your phone on wifi most of your day or with a strong cellular signal like 3-4 bars.

The only change I made was the update to 6.0.1 and possibly loading one app.  All previous apps and use of the phone remains identical.  I've not changed locations or gone from Wireless to Network usage.  The battery is draining while the phone is locked and unused.  I've since charged to 100% and removed the single app and will continue to monitor.

Jameson - I totally respect you and your opinions as I know you are a smart guy.  I just don't really know how you can speak with such authority about the software?  How do you know that they are aren't working hard to fix this, but will release 6.1 before it's fully fixed, and actually fully fix it in another update after that?  I just don't get why you believe this, if none of us don't really know ANYTHING about what they are doing over there.  No disrespect at ALL.  Do you know something we don't?  you know i'm saying?

Where did I speak with authority?   My post is filled with "I'm thinking", "I'm guessing", IMO........    I have been watching how this developed since the original release date and have developed some opinions, based solely on what I've seen.   Frankly, I hope I'm wrong and 6.1 solves everyone's problems, but I am skeptical.......   IMO, if there were a simple software fix on the horizon, APPLE would have mentioned the problem already.   The fact that they are totally silent on the issue, tells me they have no fix, so will never acknoweledge it.

Sorry buddy. I read this and thought it sounded a little "authoritative". I totally understand though. Thanks for clearing up

I'm guessing we will have a solid answer when iOS6.1 is released.   If the batttery drain problem is not solved with that, it will never be solved.   I still believe this will be the case and we will have to wait for iPhone 6, to be released next fall, with more battery capacity!

Those are great numbers but your phone was plugged in between so how do we know what it was like without charging it in between?

Try using this app called 'Battery Doctor'

It helps

Jameson! wrote:

 

I agree......   Sort of........

 

I'm thinking it's that firmware used to manage the dual antenna system in the i5.   It appears that this software is in use, even in 6.01 installs on i4 and i4s phones.   Now, that software is designed to manage the new antenna design and is causing the battery drain (my opinion).   Is the problem solvable with software revisions, or is the dual antenna design a problem that software cannot solve?    Only APPLE Engineers know for sure.

 

I'm guessing we will have a solid answer when iOS6.1 is released.   If the batttery drain problem is not solved with that, it will never be solved.   I still believe this will be the case and we will have to wait for iPhone 6, to be released next fall, with more battery capacity!

Wishful thinking with the iphone 6 with more battery capacity... Every iphone as far as i can remember is the same size or thinner... My guess we will be able to sequence DNA with the iphone 6 but the charge will only last 10 min at a time

LOL!   You are probably right.........

A420TuRbO wrote:

 

Jameson! wrote:

 

I agree......   Sort of........

 

I'm thinking it's that firmware used to manage the dual antenna system in the i5.   It appears that this software is in use, even in 6.01 installs on i4 and i4s phones.   Now, that software is designed to manage the new antenna design and is causing the battery drain (my opinion).   Is the problem solvable with software revisions, or is the dual antenna design a problem that software cannot solve?    Only APPLE Engineers know for sure.

 

I'm guessing we will have a solid answer when iOS6.1 is released.   If the batttery drain problem is not solved with that, it will never be solved.   I still believe this will be the case and we will have to wait for iPhone 6, to be released next fall, with more battery capacity!

Wishful thinking with the iphone 6 with more battery capacity... Every iphone as far as i can remember is the same size or thinner... My guess we will be able to sequence DNA with the iphone 6 but the charge will only last 10 min at a time

I have updated to 6.1beta 3................

STILL THE SAME BATTERY PROBLEM!!!!!!!!

STILL SAME WIFI ISSUES!!!!!!!!!!

This is my 4th replacement phone and none of them worked correctly.

As I stated in my earlier post(attached to this post), when you restore "as new phone", and use as is from factory settings the battery is perfect. Add some apps and music, battery still great. Add icloud, battery still great. Add a mail account and bam, battery *****!

I was really hoping that 6.1beta would solve these issues and still nothing Apple is doing is helping matters.

I have been a loyal Apple customer for years and would never even think aof switching to another device, until today. I am seriously thinking of getting a full refund from Apple and moving on.

This is completely unaaceptable and needs to be fixed immediately.

After weeks of troubleshooting and profiles installed on my iphone 5, Apple and I couldn't figure out a solution. They are aware of the issue and the engineers are working on a fix.

 

The power management profiles they had me install showed a drain but coulnt pinpoint the cause. I was getting a 1% drain every few minutes and my battery would last about 5 hours of usage before dying.

 

The apple rep states the only way to figure out where the problem is coming from is to start from scratch and restore the phone and only use the stock phone at first. Then slowly turn on one feature at a time and add one app at a time until we noticed a change in battery life.

 

Well, a fully restored phone with the following setup has AMAZING battery life:

 

Full restore, set up phone AS NEW

Sync your CONTACTS ONLY!

don't install any apps

Don't add any mail accounts

Turn off and delete all iCloud accounts

LTE off

Location services off

Bluetooth off

Push off

Brightness 50%

WIFI off

Siri off

 

Of course the downside was not being able to use pretty much all the best features of the phone lol. This was very hard to chew, but I realized it needed to be done to really see if it was software or hardware.

 

The phone had great battery life until I added a mail account. Once I did this, the battery life went back to dropping 1% every few minutes. Charged the phone to 100% and went to bed. Didn't use the phone at all the entire night and when I woke up at 8am the battery drained to 81% and said close to an hour of usage time. Funny, I was sleeping the whole time lol.so, something seems to be problematic with the mail app.

 

My suggestion (even though it's a pain and we shouldn't have to) is to restore your phone and set up like I did above and watch how great the phone is. Use the phone barebones for a day or two.

 

Then, turn ONE thing back on and monitor. Maybe you try LTE first. Everyone will be different.

 

If everything still seems good, then turn on another feature and monitor again for a few hours and see how it goes.

 

If the battery is still going strong, turn on another feature, or download one of your most used apps. Test, monitor, take notes (screenshots)

 

Continue this process until you find the culprit. My personal experience says its the mail app.