Poor Battery Life iPhone5

My battery has been eaten alive since I upgraded to 6.0.1, and my data usage has also spiked. My phone waas getting extremely hot when it was in "sleep" in my pocket, it felt exactly the same as when I use my sat-nav on there, which led me to think it could be GPS related.

I'm not sure if anyone else has done this, but it has solved both of the above problems for me....

I went into Settings>Privacy>Location Services>System Services (Right at the bottom) and turned all of these off. I honestly don't think I will miss any of these.

My phone no longer gets hot, battery is as good as it should be and my data allowance is not diving quicker than a premier league footballer. I know each user seems to have slightly different issues, but this definintely sorted mine out.

Anyone who's suggesting to turn off Cellular data or disable services is clearly missing the point. It's like a car mechanic telling you not to drive your car over 60 mph coz the engine gets heated too fast.

The first few weeks of having the iPhone 5 were great, no issues but since the last 2 weeks, the battery is suddenly draining, phone is overheating and I am always frantically running to charge my phone (thanks to apple giving only 1 adapter). Nothing has changed since my phone battery started to screw up - still charging the phone the same way as i used to, same wifi/cellular signal at work/home. I've had the same services/settings in iPhone 4 on iOS 6 without facing these issues.

This is clearly an isolated issue with the iPhone 5 and its Battery drainage. Unless its a software bug on iOS 6 or its updates, I'm defintely getting my iphone replaced.

Fix the **** thing APPLE !

I had the same problem since getting my iphone 5 3 weeks ago... read countless posts from users' recommendation of turning things off (which takes away from the greatness of this phone). I've restarted from a fresh iphone rather than restoring from a nold back up, to no real avail....

What i have discovered that seems to have fixed the problem for me is backing up to iCloud. It seems that when backing up in this method constantly polls and uploads to the server, even though you arent forcing a back up. i always have my wifi on, so as soon as im in range of a WiFi connection it initiates a back up resulting in a massive battery drain and also increased data usage on my home network. Since turning this feature off, I have managed to return to the normal behaviour of the iphone battery.

I'v compared with other iphone users that i know and have discovered that those who didnt have battery issues, wasnt backing up to icloud either. since having the problem fixed i've tried to turn on icloud back up again only to have my battery drain to a faster rate, so i can confirm that icloud is the culprit for me.

It really depends on how you'd like ot back up. for me, I dont mind backing up to my Macbook once in a while, then sync all my important data such as email, calendar and contacts through iCloud. its not important to me that my apps and documents are backed up on my Ma when I choose to. Seems iCloud back up makes no regard to schedule, and will just back up constantly. Hope this helps you as it has for me.

Unfortunately, I think I too am falling under the category of battery issues with my nw iPhone 5, but I'd love to hear what you guys think about it.

I got my device 2 days ago with 73% battery, started using it, drained it on the first day and did a full charge cycle to 100%.

After reading all of this discussion prior to getting my iPhone, I started using my phone with BT and Wifi turned off, limited location services, turned off the Push option for iCloud and reduced brightness to 25-30%.

Yesterday with a light usage about 2:30 hours: calls, Whatsapp, Email and Facebook, my battery drained from 100% at 8AM to around 45% at 5PM, seems WAY too much...

Last night I charged it overnight to 100% again, today I've used it so far for 2:20 hours and after 8 hours since my last full charge, I'm now at 69% so it seems to be getting better.

Just to compare, one girl at my office with an iPhone 4 got to work with 100% yesterday, she didn't charge it until now (more than 24 hours) and her device is just now hitting 37%...

I also spoke to an Apple rep who told me to do the following to try and resolve the issue:

1. Backup everything to iCloud

2. Restore the device through iTunes while plugged into my PC

3. Set up as a new phone and sign in to my iCloud account to get only my contacts, no apps or anything.

4. Use the phone without any apps for 1 day, just phone, messages and Email.

5. If the issue is resolved, restore again and set up from the iCloud backup.

I could do this today, but frankly, I've used the phone more today and the battery life seems to have improved after its second charge.

Should I wait a few more days and give it a couple more charges to see how the battery behaves before restoring? I was told that it could take a few days for the battery to adjust itself to optimal performance after a few days of full charging. The bottom line is that I don't want to be limited to turning BT, Wifi and location services off and also with a pretty dark screen, I want to be able to use the features of the phone and my battery should allow me to do this.

Thanks for your help.

Hey Zach,

I'm on my third iPhone 5. None have been due to battery issues, though. Both had defects. For me, the batteries in the phone didn't change one bit. None was a worse battery than the other. It all depended on how I used it.

First off, if you have Wi-Fi you can use, definitely use it. The biggest battery drain for my device is using LTE or 3G when Wi-Fi is there. The difference is huge. Instead of losing one percent every 2-3 minutes, I lose one percent every 5-6 minutes. I pretty much double my battery life.

Yesterday was the first time I used iCloud. I restored my phone from an iCloud backup, only because I decided I was going to the Apple Store during the day and didn't have my computer on me to back up my phone over there. So I backed up over iCloud, got my new device, and restored from my backup. However, the phone was draining heavily. Like way too fast. When I got back to my house, I connected to WI-Fi and finished the backup. The phone was still draining at an alarming rate, so I wiped it and started it back up as a factory default without using iCloud or restoring from a backup.

Unofrtunately, your 45% remaining for your 2hrs and 30mins usage isn't totally out of the ball park of where you can get. Depending on a lot of things, a lot of people do finish their day with five hours usage and some decent standby. Your 2hrs and 20mins usage with 69% is pretty good, though.

My suggestion for you is to just do a full, clean restore. I'm no expert, but in all the cases I've had and saw with others, this was the best option. I've never had Bluetooth on, so I can't comment on that, so I'm not sure there. I usually can charge my phone one night and keep it going through that day and the next day before having to charge again. But that's over 80% Wi-Fi. Over 3G or LTE, I can usually get 18 hours standby and 5-6.5 hours of usage. I have location services on, but only for stuff that needs them such as Siri and Maps.

I too am having battery issues getting no more than 4 hrs 30 mins of usage on my second iphone 5 with Apple asking me to replace it again. Ive turned off every recommended feature through this forum and various other sources nothing has worked im trying to figure out is this fixable or what, my first iphone 5 was getting about 5 hr 30 mins. Puzzled that alot of reviews claim 9-10 hours of usage im not even close

Thanks for your reply, I've done a full restore via iTunes last night and only synced my contacts from my google account, I've installed all apps and services again from scratch. This morning I've unplugged my device from charging and right now after 58 minutes of use out of 1:30 hours of standby I'm at 87%. Wifi and BT are off, weather widget is off in notification center and location services is on just for the required apps such as Facebook, skyscanner, speedtest and finds iPhone.

I will use it throughout the day and see what are the results. But I think it may be getting better with each full charge.

I have the same issue. doing nothing on my phone, it says usage 5 hours + and 15 hours of standby. I did the reset setting and will see what will happen.

35% starting this post.

I've accumulated 4:20 hours of use today and 9 hours of standby, wifi and BT are off, location services and Siri are on. Played coin dozer for about 30 minutes, made some calls, lots of whatsapp messges and Facebook notifications.

I'm now at 34% as I finish this post. What do you guys think about this performance? Is it in par with a well functioning battery?

Thanks

Pretty good to be honest.

I've drained the battery now, it's been off charge for 16:30 hours, out of which I've used it for 6:30 hours before reaching 1%. I still think the battery can perform better, with my old 3GS I have never reached a situation in which I've drained the battery in one day's use... But if its different with the iPhone 5 then please tell me if I'm ok or if I need to go and replace my phone. Thanks

There are tweaks you can do to improve battery life, but 6 hours 30 mins usage is pretty good.

Hey guys,

I think that this issue is definitely not isolated to the iPhone 5, check out this thread:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4480592?start=0&tstart=0

iPhone 4 users are also reporting this issue after upgrading to 6.0.1 from their old 5.0.1 versions, it's definitely something within iOS 6.0.1 that's causing this issue in my opinion.

Anyway, I have some more reports on my usage, last night I've charged my phone and got up to disconnect it from the charger at 5:00 AM, woke up at 8:30 and the battery was still on 100%, then I've started using it as normal and when I got to work I've done some reading and changed the Fetch settings in my iCloud and Gmail account to Manual instead of Fetch.

This setting lies under General -> Settings -> Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data -> Advanced

After changing these 2 to manual, I am now with Location Services on, Wifi and BT are off but I've used Wifi for about 30 minutes today, had several phone calls, browsed Facebook, Gmail, Flipboard and did some web browsing as well and this is where I'm at right now:

What do you guys think?

With the data provided and assuming similar continuous usage you should see 6 hours 40 mins, reasonable with the settings you have on.

Yes its an iOS 6 issue rather than iPhone 5 issue, there are several large threads in the forums floating about on this. But I don't think one of the ones with a battery issue.

Thanks, I assume you meant "But I don't think you're one of the ones with a battery issue." right? 🙂

And also, do you or anyone else know if Apple is going to fix this issue in 6.1? Are they even aware? I have read lots of threads but no official Apple replies yet.

I know my performance are quite good compared to lots of other people who are suffering from full draining within 2.5-3 hours of usage but still I think that my battery can perform better, I'd like to get a full 8 hours of usage from it before it's drained.