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

Unfortunately, this problem would not be limited to your iPhone.   Any Smartphone being used as a GPS will experience severe battery drain.

HwyHawk1976 wrote:

 

THANK YOU AND WELL SAID... and don't think about using the GPS if u dont have the car charger.. Was out with friends, took a trip to Pensacola and just so happens we got lost. Had left the charge (USB) cable at home. It was well into the eveining. Friend had an "ol school" flip phone. How do u think that played out??

Hi dexxter,

You mentioned some time ago that charging through usb port on your computer makes your battery last longer. Do you feel that is still true? I just bought an iphone 5 and was going to do a full charge/discharge cycle letting the battery drain down to 0% and then charging back up to 100% (I've read a lot of people do that a few times with the new phone to calibrate the battery). But I was wondering if I should charge my phone the first few times using the usb port on my computer or should I use the wall outlet? Thoughts? Thanks!

Hi,

When you say you let the phone dischrage all the way down to 0% and then recharged all the way back up to 100% did you use your wall outlet or the USB Port on your computer? Which makes the battery last longer? Sorry I know I've asked this a few times today but was hoping to get a few different opinions.

Thanks!

Hi paulfromhere,

I also saw your post regarding discharges and full cycles on this same discussion topic. Here was your original post:

"Try to get your battery broken in by letting it go to 0% (dead) before recharging to 100%. Then if it's still bad, repeat going to 0% and then 100%.

After doing this twice here, I now have the normal battery performance.

hth"

so I wanted to ask you the same question I asked a few other people: when you first get your iphone 5, is it best to do the draining of the phone down to 0 and then charge back up to 100% using the USB port on your computer or through the wall outlet? When you broke in your battery (as mentioned in your earlier post), did you charge using the USB port on your computer or through the wall outlet?

Thanks,

AA

Abe....   You're wasting your time.  

Turn off features you don't want or need to use.   Leave the rest on.   Try to use wifi whenever possible.   Buy a car charger and carry a wall charger with you whenever possible.   All the tweaking and toying with settings is useless.

Maybe the iPhone 5s will have a higher capacity battery.   If not, perfrmance will be the same.   The battery is simply tapped out given the features an power needs of the phone.  

Apple decided that a thinner phone was more desirable than increased battery capacity.   IMO, a big mistake.   Maybe iPhone 6 will change that?   Maybe iPhone 99 will be nuclear or fusion powered?   ;-)

I don't think my battery is better as a result of that anymore, but I did do it and my battery seems to get what apple describes as normal life.

I don't think it matters whether you use the pc or wall outlet or car adapter.

I've noticed that charging all the way to 100% seems to enable me to get more time between charges. Specifically, after charging it to 100%, it seems to run quite a while before it drops to 99%. But, if I only charge it to 96%, then it starts dropping immediately. But, to charge it to 100% seems to take quite a bit longer than just 96% or 99%.

So, that makes me think that the battery usage is not linear.

And, I've also noticed this on the low end. For example, when on standby, my iphone runs down from 25% to 3% and then sits there for hours, going from 3% to 0%. This may be intentional by apple because it gives you a little more warning to find a power source and plug it in before it shuts off.

I always notice that once it shuts off at 0%, it seems to take 5-10 minutes before it will start up again after being plugged in. Obviously, if you're on a call, you don't want to have to wait 5-10 minutes to call someone back.

So, this is what I've learned about the battery.

Regarding getting more life, I'd say reducing the backlight has the biggest impact of anything I'm willing to do.

I don't care to stop using LTE or icloud or wi-fi, but I don't have any bluetooth, so keep that off always.

hth

To clarify some confusion here:

Your iPhone's battery has 3 distinct phases of charging:

1. First 80%: Charges very quickly
2. Remaining 20%: Charges slowly
3. Trickle: It's that almost 1% and it will take up to two hours. Your battery might show 100% but it is still charging.

This is all designed to balance usability and battery maintenance. The general battery health rules you should follow that apply equally to iPhone 5 are:

• Let the battery drop below 20% before going for new charge. Otherwise a certain portion of the battery could become "stale".
• Do a full discharge-recharge cycle once a month. That's where you kill the battery completely from a full charge, then recharge it and leave it connected to charge for 2 hours after full charge. This takes less time if you use a 10W charger of course.
• When your battery is new, the first handful of full cycles will indeed get your battery to its maximum capacity. I have already noticed this marginal improvement with iPhone 5.

Anyway, I followed all of these general rules with my iPhone 3G, iPhone 4 and now with iPhone 5. The latest iPhone is the only one where battery is significantly underperforming. I still suspect the software issue, though considering it has a much more powerful processor but not that different of a battery that also plays a small role.

Thanks for the input! Appreciate all the detail you provided!

iPhone 5 battery is rubbish and that's quite clear here. I'm trading away mine for a Samsung need a phone that works and not one piece of beauty which is all brains but can't take a days worth of calls.

Bye bye IPhone 5 WElcome SAMSUNG

I know that GPS is a battery killer, but my iPhone 5 performs much much worse than my two year old iPhone 4 did at the end of its days while using GPS. A one hour run while listening to podcasts using 3GS with my iPhone 4 drained less than 10% of the battery. The same run, same time, same course, same cell towers with LTE turned off will see my iPhone 5 dropping around 20%. Consistently.

I'm still holding out on a prayer that 6.1 will help, but when it doesn't I will exchange my phone one last time in hopes that a newer built model will have a better battery. But I'm absolutely done early adopting Apple products. I got burned bad this time. I really hate owning a phone that is capable of doing amazing things yet I'm afraid to touch it. I wouldn't even be so mad if Apple didn't straight up lie with their battery life estimates. But I bought this thing expecting the same to better battery life compared to my iPhone 4.

I do have the same experience with my iphone 5 compare with my iPhone 4S or even my iphone 4 who has a much longer battery life. Iphone 5 drains battery like an open faucet! It's really very disappointing that Apple hasn't done anything yet to fix this problem. I have high expectation from apple but now I am beginning to change my mind on them. Hope that they will do something about this soon!

Check out this article from USA TODAY:

Apple sinks below $500

http://usat.ly/VVOX9E

I don't think its battery related... Lol

Better article with some actual analysis.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2013/01/15/did-the-wsj-get-punkd-on-app le-or-is-it-rotten-to-the-core/

what were the results after leaving the phone off charge

I would like to point out that today I am having a crap battery day

phone was taken off charge at 8am,with 100% battery, it is now 15.41 and the battery is at 58%

Usage 2hours 27minutes

Standby 7hours 46minutes

The 2 hour usage was 40 minutes call this morning and mainly emails on 2 bars 4G at work.

so it happens to all of us 

Hi,

yes, I stand anytime by my claim. I started doing this well after the phone had its first charges and when I have enough time to let the phone sit for that long, still do it now. As a rule of thumb I would recommend draining the battery once a month (till it dies completely) and a full recharge (the mains does it in approx. 2,5 hours; I would give it an additional hour plugged in).

The main difference is the voltage (power): USB is "smaller" intensity (thus taking longer) than wall.