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

I plugged it in when I woke up this morning then snatched the cord out so that I could take a pic of the screen before it erased my usage.

PROBLEM SOLVED.

Attention to Cocktail and everyone else.

I believe I have solved the issue.

Cocktail, A month ago (maybe more) I posted on this thread that the culprit was mail, and that for some reason when mail was set to do anything BUT manual that the drain would occur. Since then I have had my mail set to manual and have had OK battery life. I too was hoping that the new software update would fix this, and tried to see if it would earlier last week but it didn't.

I went into apple store last week and they couldnt help me either, I grew frusturated and got a new phone and decided to turn on one feature at a time at a few hour intervals. I now realize that MAIL is NOT the problem. In fact its CALENDARS. If Calendars are set to fetch settings other than manual the battery will drain (weird yes, but I have found it to be true). And remember, this is ONLY when you are using data, on WIFI your phone should be great.

SOLUTION: Since its important to me to have mail fetched at timely intervals I decided to add my calendars via the microsoft exchange account and set those settings to manual while having my mail (through gmail) fetch every so often.

I easily get 8-10 hours of usage over the past three days assuming I don't play games too much.

This solution is still being tested out, but I hope its correct. Something that is reassuring is that the main cause of the drain: dataaccessd (from the diagnostics log) has stopped.

Hope it works, ENJOY =]

EDIT: As an alternative solution you could just delete calendar synchronization as well if you rather not use exchange.

@dmarwha how do you actually set your calendars to manual?

You can't set calendars specifically to manual. But you can set a "mail, contacts, calendars" account to manual. To do this:

1) First add the account you need for calendars through exchange...so if its google calendars add your google account through exchange.

2) Add your mail client through a different option...if its GMail add it through GMail.

Then go to settings >mail, contacts, calendars > fetch new data > advanced > and you can now set different fetch settings for each account.

If you find that calendars is not the problem, then it might be mail. In such a case toggle around what you set to manual and what you set to fetch (or push) to find out what is causing the dataaccessd bug.

I have been working with a rep from Apple for weeks now on this issue. We tried a couple weeks back setting everything to MANUAL.

BUT, that didn't help the issue at all. My phone had awesome battery life when I restored and set up as new with no mail accounts set up on the phone at all. I got like 8.5 hours of usage and over a full day of standby.

I have 8 mail accounts on my phone too. I NEED them fetching as I run three businesses and get many emails

Never had any battery issues with my 4 and ran the exact same setup and apps.

@Cocktail

That is really interesting. When you go to your diagnostics and usage data (under settings, general, about) do you see dataaccessd as a common report (first make sure you have your phone set up in a situation where you are losing battery at a rapaid rate).

I understand that you set mail to manual. Did you add calendars along with those mail accounts? Perhaps you might want to try just adding all your mail accounts w/o calendars. And then vice versa as well.

I've always had all my mail accounts set to manual and still had the battery drain. The other day I had 20% battery left so I turned off cellular data and had a few back and forth text messages and battery would still drain fast until it was at 1% an hour later. It was about 1% drain each text. For me this has nothing to do with network or leaving radios on.

Looked through my crash logs and can't find anything that could be the culprit. I need to find that one process that keep on running to drain my battery.

Does anyone else find that battery drain isn't linear? For me it stays at 100% for a long time to give me the false hope the battery is better, then drains pretty slow until 80%, then speeds up. Once it hits 50% it just drains a heck of a lot faster. Anything below 35% and I don't even want to touch my phone as I see the percentage dropping while scrolling through menus/apps.

Just to add I closed all running apps and streamed an NBA game over WiFi with full screen brightness just then. It stayed at 100% for 15 minutes, then dropped 1% every 4 minutes or so. From 5% battery I've gotten about 30 mins of streaming (including a 2 minute call and an iMessage).

Seems like the battery is holding up well while all background apps are closed. Anyone else find this? (Meaning it's definitely not a hardware issue)

@dmarwha

I only have my iCloud calendar set up. All my mail accounts are IMAP only and don't sync notes or calendars.

I have checked the diagnostics as your requested and only see two things there:

Mobile Mail - 12-4-2012

Mobile Mail - 12-4-2012

Any suggestions or ideas?

@mdarwha

I just set all mail accounts to Fetch 15min and set iCloud to manual. I can't be without my calendar and don't feel like using google calendar again.

We will see if that does anything.....

While anywhere using wifi my battery life is ok, it is only when it switches to the LTE that battery life becomes a problem. Even on standy the battery drains in less than 3 hours and I have noticed the temperature of the phone increases

Holy Moly, something good has happened to my phone!

0:47 usage

4:23 standby

99%

NB. I have had mobile data switched OFF the whole time as I've been on wifi except for 10 min cycle ride to work. But I've done this before and at this stage of the day I'd be typically at approx 80-90% depending on usage. Also, as you can see I've hardly used the phone except for a 5 min call and some brief email checking.

However what I did last night which might have made a difference is to change my Gmail Exchange account from "No limit" Mail days to sync to "1 day". It's still set to push (though I might change this*). I've also turned off all notifications for this mail account.

I did this because I've now downloaded Google's newly updated Gmail app (which seems much better now) and so no longer need all my Gmail emails in the Mail app. However I didn't want to delete the account entirely as I still want to be able to easily email photos from the Photos app using that account.

This still leaves me with my work Exchange account (Push) in Mail, and another work related Gmail account (15 min Fetch). My two iCloud accounts (calendars, reminders, notes etc) are on 15 min Fetch too.

* I've just changed my 1 day sync Gmail Exchange account from Push to manual and am going to leave it in this configuration for a couple of days to see how it pans out (using Mobile data only when necessary). Then I'm going to see how it fares with Mobile data left on when on wifi.

Dunno whether this will be of any interest / help to anyone!

Tim

Hallo everyone,

Bought Iphone 5, 4 days ago. Having major battery problem! Overnight 25% battery drain with all apps closed 3G OFF Bluetooth OFF. I sleep for 8 hours and the battery goes from 100% to 75% ... without touching it ... this is not acceptable !!! I can't charge my phone during the day and i need it a lot. Mailing, taking pictures, like to read RSS in the break, facetime calls, normal calls, .... things a SMARTphone are made for ... but i'm just anxious to use this since battery isn't making it till the evening!

Apple sells this phone telling it has a stand-by time of 225hours but if you do the calculation my phone only lasts 40hours standby... when in use this phone isn't even capable to make it trough the day... And i'm not playing games not watching movies or video's, ....

What troubles me the most is the fact we're discussing what each of us have done to troubleshoot this issue. None of the efforts being made are the same and results vary. I'm not buying it. I didn't do anything other than an IOS update and my battery issue started. I made no changes to Apps, Notifications, Email or Calendars settings, WiFi or Network and no change in usage. NONE.

Went yesterday to the local Apple store and had a Genius check my phone. Running their diagnostics showed no issues regarding battery or otherwise. FB had crashed at some point but that was it. While there I watched the battery % starting at 69%. After diag the Genius said he'd make notes and I could return if things continued. Well that's what I love to do occasionally is hang out at the Apple store, NOT. While he was typing I noticed the % had dropped to 64% within the 10 minutes or so and I brought that to his attention. We watched and approximately every two minutes it was dropping 1% with nothing running. That prompted a DFU. From there I was informed not to restore a backup as that could potentially bring the issue back if it were something corrupt code or the like. I was ok with that thinking my iCloud services would cover things I needed. Battery was up to 67% after the DFU (charging while updating) I used the phone with only my email and a couple of Apps the rest of the day until I could Sync at home. Battery was fine, not dropping below 50% after 4 hours.

But that's when I realized my sync hadn't recovered all of my data so I chose to restore from the last backup. This morning after charging all night my charge lost 8% in an hour. It seems whatever the issue is might be with something corrupted.

I will continue to play around and try to keep the details on what steps I take but I don't think iPhone users should be stuck with finding the cause! There is an issue and if DFU/restore or Apps/Network has anything to do with this Apple should track that down and provide a solid resolution.

Anyone know of a "sniffer" or process viewer for the IOS?

Just to clarify with users with 7hrs of usage.

Could you elaborate more on your activities throughout this 7hrs as in web surfing, gaming, checking of mails, messaging etc.

I had best 5~6hrs with very very extremely light usage, just curious on how people can actually achieved 7hrs of moderate usage.