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

FabMahesh wrote:

 

Hi Jody85,

 

When you set up the phone as new phone, did you lose all the contacts ot did you restoe it from back up? If you restored it then is it not the same as restoring the iPhone 4 or previous versions?

 

Could you or someone please briefely list the steps that you followed to resolve the battery life issue?

 

Many Thanks in advance.

Read pages 31-33 of this thread. See posts from me, Griffin800 and others. The fix is posted.

If your contacts and calendars are synced to iCloud, you will be fine. If your music & videoo is in iTunes, it will restore. It may be "brute force", but it works. My wife's phone has been on for 4 days - over 9 hrs use. We'e charging it today. I finally charged my phone last night after 3 days of "normal" use.

Please note: verizon phones have a bug that att does not... separate issues.

did you let the phone drain, then set it up as new iphone and then charge it?

no, my contacts are saved in the icloud.

i did a dfu restore and no backup.

downloaded all apps new etc.

now it runs really good.

this is what i have done:

1. connect your iphone with itunes

2. Press and hold the "Power" button (on the top of the phone) and the "Home" button (below the screen) simultaneously.

3. Release the "Power" button immediately after 10 seconds. Continue holding the "Home" button. If you have done this successfully, the iPhone's screen will remain black, and iTunes will notify you that it has detected an iPhone in "Recovery Mode."

4. wait until your phone is ready.

5. disconnected my iphone from my macbook

6. set up all on my iphone 5

7. redownloaded all my apps i want

8. when i was finished with doing this i did some settings:

- disabled die safari sync and passbook sync in icloud

- disabled the reading list sync in safari settings

- turned off "timezone support"

- various other settings for my personal usage

9. since then i got a good battery life

sorry for my english, i am a native german ^^

Bad news my end Jeremy. Having done your fixes my battery is still bad. The weird thing is it's losing power on standby.

Since i got into work it has lost 7% in 2 and a half hours just sat on my desk with me only checking the usage stats. This can't be right surely?

jody85 wrote:

 

sorry for my english, i am a native german ^^

 

Very few Americans can read or write in German as well as you write in English. You have nothing to apologize for!

danpatriley wrote:

 

Bad news my end Jeremy. Having done your fixes my battery is still bad. The weird thing is it's losing power on standby.

 

Since i got into work it has lost 7% in 2 and a half hours just sat on my desk with me only checking the usage stats. This can't be right surely?

-7% in 2.5 hrs - wifi? That could be ok.

Are you in the US (verizon phones have an update) ?

Is there delta between usage and standby?

No wifi. Just 3g on the carrier 02 (I'm in the UK)

The Usage standby stats are

Usage 1hour, 58 mins

Standby 6hours, 9 mins

It's now gone down again to 69%.

I'm dubious about the usage stats too as ALL I have done on the phone is downloaded an app, browsed the web for half an hour, and listened to music for half an hour - and that loses 31%? That's crazy it's almost a third of the power FFS. 

Thank you.

Thanks Jeremy.

I had the same issue but found a cause and a solution.

Firstly, i had returned my first iPhone 5 and received a replacement, but it had the same issue - it was constantly warm and the battery dropped 1% every 2 mins. It needed charging 3 times a day. Now, after the issue has been corrected, the battery is on 12% after 36 hours.

The cause

The cause was iCloud items doing something crazy, resulting in the phone getting hot and then killing the battery.

The solution

1. Go to Settings > iCloud and turn off all iCloud items. Let the phone delete all the local copies of the disabled data

2. Leave the phone and see if it cools down and if the battery life stabilises.

3. If the phone has stabilised, go to Settings > iCloud and re-enable iCloud items.

4. Monitor the phone and see if it remains cool and has good battery life.

Mine is working great now and is cool most of the time.

I hope this helps.

Just to add my 02.c worth; found this thread after noticing not very good battery life on my iPhone 5. After doing a hard reset and setting up the iPhone as a new phone, the standby battery drain issue I'd noticed has gone (was reading 97% yesterday at 5:00pm, now reading 77% 14 hours later). I originally restored the device out of the box using an icloud backup of my iOS6 iPhone 4. Clearly a rectifiable software issue, hope Apple tracks it down soon. Good luck to those still seeking a solution, I think it's fixable.

Greg

I have just had a replacement after smashing the screen on mine after a week, £180

the phone has been on standby for 1 hour, and 4% battery has gone already, no apps running in the back ground.

Setting up as a new phone, doesnt this mean you have to put all your number/apps etc back in manully?

A lot of messing around IMO

Ouch..! Sorry about the screen - I have nightmares about doing that on mine...

I believe that you can restore from a backup on iTunes after doing a hard reset from the button inside the phone settings; judging from other posts it seems that a from-scratch restore from iCloud is the culprit. Once you log back into icloud, your contacts etc will be restored (assuming that you had iCloud enabled before resetting).

Hello,

I'm writing from Germany too. I contacted Apple to replaced  my iPhone 5. Max. 5 hours of use. LTE and most of the location services off. That can't be true. My "old" iPhone 4 lasts much longer. I tried everything, which was decribed in this threat. Nothing really helped. We'll see with the new one.

They restored from iCloud in the Apple store earlier, I asked about the battery life and he said it may be a problem with an old back up from an earlier iOS. I will restore from iTunes when I get home, let this drain right down a couple of times and see how that goes.