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

I believe this as well.. Even with LTE disabled.. the battery drain can be crazy while the data connection is in use..

I remain convinced that this is a power management issue with the LTE/3G dual antenna system.   Whether or not firmware changes can fix it in my OPINION, is doubtful.   I think it would have been fixed already, if it were possible.   We'll know for sure soon, when iOS 6.1 is released.

I hear ya spyd4r!

I have refused to turn off any features I use, so most everything is turned on for me.   Instead, I bought a car charger and a lightning adapter for use in the office.   I use the car charger because I pair the iPhone with my radar detector (Escort Live APP) which has the screen & GPS on while driving.   This drains the battery very quickly.   I can't remember the last time I used the office charger.  Just very occasionally, when streaming radio.   

I charge the phone overnight while sleeping.   The battery problem can be a PITA when I'm out and about for longer periods of time, but on those days, I am careful charge it whenever I have the opportunity.   Not the ideal situation, but not the end of the world for me either.   If I were in a situation where I did not have access to power for long periods of time, I might be more anxious over the issue.  

I've resiged myself to the fact that there will be no fix.   Hopefully, I'm wrong!  

Only reason I would think a difference a USB charge versus a Wall Charge would be the rate of charge.  The power difference would make the USB more like a trickle charge.  I've not tried this before so I doubt this is the root cause. 

I think it's likely code related since the code is what manages the device/apps and their functionality.  It's not unlikely that a certain combination occurs which pushes the device over a threshold and causes the battery to drain prematurely.

I get to 4.5 hours  on 3g celluar. Whereas on wifi at the most i can pull out 5.5 hours.

When you say your getting more on wifi , how much time ? . and are u getting 4.5-5.5 on 4g/LTE

Charged via USB completed roughly 3:15 reaching 100%.  Powered device off then turned on and will track drain, check 10:25 CST.  All activity and use will remain consistent.

I don't even think it has anything to do with whether it's WiFi or 3G/LTE (although I have noticed WiFi does use less battery). I turned off my cellular data at 20% and it still drained like a mofo with just texting.

I think it's a background process that keeps running and trying to execute some code all day long. The only process I could see always running was "ubd" which starts up every 10 seconds. Anyone else get this? I've seen someone else around here who has it.. Download a monitoring app that shows running processes. It supposedly has something to do with iCloud, even though I have it turned off and my iCloud account deleted..

Hi ponglong,

     If you have the option, leave the data on and turn off the 3G. You can only do this if your current network supports EDGE (which I'm assuming a lot don't anymore). I've noticed I can leave the data on and turn 3G off to get significantly better battery life (better than 2+ more hours over leaving data with 3G on). Beyond that, I would strongly suggest filling out a bug report to Apple and going from there. I'd encourage everyone to actually. I have done so and am sending back powerlogs on a daily basis so at least there is a record of this happening and some actual logged data they can work from.

      With regards to the USB versus Wall charging earlier, count me in as seeing the same thing. USB charge (from a USB charge port on my latop) seems to give a better charge than a wall charge charging for the same amount of time. Very very strange and something I thought I was imagining as well.

This is ok

I did the USB charge way and got 4h 42 mins usage and 18h 13 mins standby with

10% battery left.... I guess that's ok

How did you do that???

https://discussions.apple.com/message/20513543#20513543

Symptoms:

- Rapid battery drain (100% to dead in 20 hours on standby)

- 'Usage' and 'Standby' times reported as almost the same even when the phone was on complete standby in airplane mode

Solution:

For me, the problem was a bug in the 'Settings' app. Whenever I had the app running in the background, the symptoms listed above would appear. Exiting the app from the background fixed everything. 'Usage' and 'Standby' times are now accurate and the battery drain isn't excessive. The picture shows statistics after the fix:

I've had a suspicion it was the Settings app.. I'll look into this as well.

Previous post -

Charged via USB completed roughly 3:15 reaching 100%. Powered device off then turned on and will track drain, check 10:25 CST. All activity and use will remain consistent.

Here the results. Didn't take too long. 7hr 31min total drain. Very limited use, even less than usual just to see hot that effected the battery.

Times I checked.

1145, 93%.

1215, 85%

All using wireless. Checked Email, notes, FB and camera to take one picture.

1315, 74%

1355, 66%

Keeping all apps closed after each use.

1415, 62%

1500, 48%

Mind you there is little to no use of the device today.

1515, 35%

1600, 33%

With a 14 minute phone call. No other activity.

1601, dropped to 26% - Not sure if the first check recalculated the percentage.

1613, down to 21%

1625, 16%

1700, 10%

1715, 8%

1748, 2%

1756, 1% then died. Was not used except to check battery since 1600 after the phone call.

I only believe this supports that there is a battery issue and based on my limited involvement on this topic plus my usage of my phone, it's got to be a code issue. I'm calling the carrier tomorrow to see if perhaps they've made changes that could effect signaling/connection draw. Doubtful but worth a call. I don't believe that the Wall/USB port charging theory makes a difference.

In short I was using my phone from 0530 to 2300 daily without having to charge or even getting the 20% battery message. I updated my phone 11/30/2012 to 6.0.1 and since then I have had this issue. I had the phone since 2 weeks from the release date.

Going to read others posts and review any new material. Might go the DFU route again without a restore since I did go against that recommendation. I have my items I need so a restore shouldn't be necessary next time.

Enjoy.

It's definitely a coding problem and the battery meter isn't even linear. People who say their battery is fixed because it lasted for a long time before dropping down to 99% are being tricked. Once the battery gets lower it seems to drain faster. Especially under 20%- you don't even have to open an app and you can see it ticking down like the post above.

Doubt it's a carrier/carrier settings issue as people all over the world are getting it.

Just have to wait to see if the next update fixes anything. Otherwise I'm waiting on a JB for better diagnosis.