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

Went to my local Apple store today - rather than turn off all key functions (I.e. location services for certain apps, turning off wifi when not in use or Bluetooth) was advised its better to turn off the functions in "system services".  We can locate this by going to privacy- location services- scroll all the way to the bottom to "system services". Turn off all functions, especially cell network search. Most of these functions, are more so used for data capturing purposes. I was most concerned about turning off cell network search (when on, the device is continuously searching for a stronger signal/tower). The Apple Rep. advised that the devices will automatically find the best available tower.  Another example was that time zone function.  The device will automatically set to the correct cell tower so there is no need t have this feature on.  Many of the other functions is advertisement, apps stuff etc.  Nonetheless, so far, all this has proven true. My device picked up the cell network without the cell network search on.  The only  option I left on was "diagnostics & usage" as I want Apple to have the ability to help troubleshoot, when applicable.  Hope this helps with other battery saving options without using having to turn off other key functions we use daily.

A Deep Firmware Uninstall (DFU) saved my battery life!

Hi there, I thought I'd add my story to give some comfort to anyone who's just bought and iphone 5 and is going insane about their battery life.  I bought one last Friday and by Monday was surfing this forum looking for help.  With light use I was getting standby time of about 25 hours.  After resetting (gently, not back to factory settings) the battery life, again with light use, improved to 125 hours.  Meanwhile my poor old 3GS was rocking on at standby of 7 days with battery still at 13%.  So I took it to the Apple shop.  They did something called a Deep Firmware Uninstall.  That was last night.  I juiced it up, turned off as much as I could and unplugged it before I went to sleep.  I woke up and it was still at 100%.  Oh, happy days.  I'm heading for 20 days standby, which will beat my old 3GS.

For those folks where this still doesn't work, I feel your pain.

http://iphonefreakz.com/beginners-guide/howto-dfu-mode/ explains how to do this.

Funny thing today during the iCloud outage.  My iPhone started having better battery life.  Now keep in mind I've restored my phone as a new device and done all the other trouble shooting steps.  When iMessage was down and iCloud not functioning normally, my battery usage drain was much better.  As I've been guessing for over the last couple of weeks with the iCloud fowlups, I think the phone is fetching or being pinged by Apple's servers and is causing the increased battery drain.  Since Apple doesn't talk about future software releases or even acknowledge fault unliess the village is outside with pitchforks, there's no real way to know. 

I do know I played with a HTC One tonight and it was like a iPhone 3G in metal with the design cues of the iPhone 5.  And the display and speakers and camera were phenominal.  If Verizon would just get that phone I'd happily trade my iPhone 5 or run them in tandem and switch between the two.  I'm simply tired of Apple's antics and overwhelming silence.  Nothing magical about a device who's battery is dead a lot of the time and after a short period of use.

Dear all,

I have tried resetting all settings and this is the usage I have got with LTE turned on. (Wifi, bluetooth and some system services turned off).

Do you think the usage time is reasonable based on the information on the screen cap?

1 of my friends has an iphone 5 white and he has a longer usage time than mine.. Thanks!!!^__^

A Simple software update would help allot. Also make sure after using the device you double click the home button and then hold one of the bottom apps to end it's use. It saves battery allot by not keeping these apps running continuously.

I've had the same experience. The fix for my iPhones poor battery come from Chrome. I noticed there was a sync option ticked in the settings, so I unticked it and then signed out of my Google account. Rebooted my phone and used Safari instead.

My battery life went from 4 hours usage to 8.

Today I needed some bookmarks from chrome on my mac, I signed in to my Google account on chrome and turned sync on. I forgot to undo it and just closed my browser.

Later that day I noticed my battery going down like crazy. I quickly rembered about Chrome and turned it off. Now I'm back to to normal drainage.

An average day ill get 8+ hours usage and an entire day standby.

Please try this and let me know if it helps. It would be interesting if this does help others. I'd have to question whether it was a possible sabotage attempt on Googles part. But maybe I'm being paranoid. Google wouldn't do that, right? :op

The 6.1.4 is out. Only for iPhone 5

I agree that LTE is the culprit. I got my phone 2 weeks ago from T-mobile and 60-70% of my battery was gone by five or six every day. I turned off LTE yesterday and my battery is still above 90% after a few short calls, checking the weather, checking email, etc.

dear friends,i've had my iphone 5 from day 1 and my battery was simply crap.i got about 8-9 hours of standby with barely 3 hours of usage..and it drove me crazy.tried every so called fix.nothing worked.then ios 6.1 came out and bettery life improved.then 6.1.1 cale out and my battery drained like crazy again.now,3 weeks ago i decided to switch mobile provider or carrier or whatever you may call it.since then my battery life has simply doubled!!!!easily get 24 hours of standby with 6 hours of usage.with my previous provider my reception was almost constantly as low as 1 bar.now i get full bars most if the time.so as i always claimed,my problem was the phone switching between antennas constantly (3g and edge,no lte here yet)en therefor draining my battery.hope this helps someone

Before iOS 6.1.2 I would get 7-9 hours of use on mainly wi-fi around 4 hours if mainly cellular (4G/LTE). After updating to 6.1.2. and especifally after 6.1.3 I would get no more than 6 hours even if 99% on wifi and usually between 4.5 - 5.5 hours (these are usage numbers, I try to charge only once per day, usually overnigh, if possible).

6.1.4 has not improved things.

To top things off, its totally unpredicatble, as in it can lose 5% of battery in 5 minutes, and on the other hand sometimes stays at 100% for a half hour of use (and I periodically drain the phone to the point of it shutting down).

Last point, I have 2 push emai accounts, iCloud set to fetch, brightness set to below 50% but on auto and otherwise keep notifications and location services to a relative minimum.

Is it software or the hardware? Even though I bought Apple Care+, I prefer not to swap hardware unless its really necessary (you just never know what you're going to receive).

This is really frustrating...

Wow that long my would be full drain after 3 hours of using.Replacment phone a rubbish .Is scam with bad batteries

I have the same usage problem with the batery of my new iphone (5)!!

1. Reset all settings
2. Do a battery calibration
3. If it doesn’t work/still draining so fast, do this following steps

Iphone 5 battery fix COMPLETE tips

1. Make a backup, or
2. Transfer purchases, to save your apps
3. Restore from custom ipsw, ios 6.1.2 recommended, or just normal restore in iTunes,
4. after upgrade/restore OS, or cant upgrade just do this
5. Reset all settings (this is the most important step) it wouldn’t delete your apps, contact, music, and another data, it just resets settings {FIX ISSUE}
6. Turn off raise to speak (siri) {MAXIMIZE YOUR BATTERY LIFE}
7. Re install Microsoft exchange {FIX ISSUE}
8. Turn off EQ {MAXIMIZE YOUR BATTERY LIFE}
9. Disable push email {MAXIMIZE YOUR BATTERY LIFE}
10. Fetch email manually {MAXIMIZE YOUR BATTERY LIFE}
11. Reset your device (hold power and home button simultaneously for 10 sec) it will reboot
12. Do a battery calibration ( do a very full charge around 2 hrs and let it drain/use it until the phone shut down itself), may better if you repeat this step for 2 or more times, or you can just charge again as much as you want and use it, {MAXIMIZE YOUR BATTERY LIFE}
13. Hope your battery life is back to normal,

You can't restore to custom ipsw 6.1.2.  You will have to upgrade to Apple's newest firmware.