Poor Battery Life iPhone5

i am sure many of you have read this, but basically iphone 5's will not perform to the battery specs advertised by apple. By the way, its all stated as UP TO a certain number of hours. So there are no promises we would actually reach those specs. Apple knows what they are doing 🙂

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/iphone-5-battery-life-reduced-due-to-lte- signal-strength

Anyway, not completely happy with my iphone 5 battery life either, buts its not as horriffic as some seem to experience. My stand by time is ok as i have gone 2 days with very light usage, but during normal or heavy usage, phone seesm to drain 1% every 3-4 minutes, which at that rate would never reached any of the specified APPLE StATED Specs. I think it is slightly better than the 4s battery as i never remember really going 2 days without charging it, but i am not too cetain.

For a little piece of mind, i did go to 2 different apple stores in the Boston area and played with the display IP5's. Not sure how the stanby time holds up but I compare mine with each one ( total of 5 that I tried ) and all drain on WIFi, with eveything on, at the same level 1% every 3-4 minutes while brwsing or using different apps, as long as the phone was actually in use and not on standby. So i am not to certain, at times I feel like the drain is terrible since the pecentages just keeps dropping while in use, but then again, I have had a few instances of 2 days stanby with 9 hours of usage ( which is what the phone states ) but I dont know if i actually used the phone for 9 hours. But since 5 other phones plus mine pretty much drained the same way, I would think that is the standard of how iphone 5 battery will drain during usage. I cant speak for those experiencing drainage during standby, especially those losing over 10% overnight. From my observation, you should only lose 1-3% at most over a 8-10 hour time on standby. I just keep hearing postings on people getting mutltiple exchanges on their device, but stil encounter the same problem. I think we all just have too high of an expectation for battery life as many of us are stuck on what apple advertises. But just remember, their tests are alot different then how most of us every day users, use our phones, and also, they only specify UP TO, they dont ever state we would actually reach those specified battery times.

Guys, hold the phone, I think I may have found the cause for this, it's not really a fix, but it could significantly improve your battery life!

Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-qezboCfNm4

Seems like even when everything in iCloud is turned off, it's still receiving and sending approx. 1KB per second, which is probably one of the main causes of draining our batteries.

I deleted my iCloud account like suggested in this video and my Data usage simply stopped! I have a very good feeling that after doing this, I'll be able to get at least 8 hours of uasge out of my iPhone. Apple needs to know about this and fix this ASAP!

This could also explain why iPhone 4 and 4S users are also experiencing this issue on their iPhones, something is not working as it should when iCloud is enabled in iOS 6.0.1

Will post results later on...

As far as I can tell this only related to data

I have a UK contract - go abroad to Spain - have data off - and find my battery is fine all day.

In the UK the thing is stupidily easy to drain battery with data on.

This comment by a user saying that with icloud off the phone was still sending data of 1KB every second

smacks to me of Apple requesting data from the phone on it use - I know you say you can turn of usage stats [of which I have]

But I bet theres another way that still get stats ...

You guys realize that 1k per sec leak = 2.5 gigs of leak per month right? Lol

Yeah, that's a bunch of BS. Surprised no one had gotten sticker shock from your Carrier for data overages for those who are not on unlimited data plans anymore.

Good read on real life battery test results, thanks for sharing.

That's a data use in tether not in regular cellular network. "Reset All Settings" helped in my case to improve a bit in the battery life.

Update: After deleting my iCloud account, here's where I'm at:

I've played games, used Whatsapp, had phone calls, browsed the web, checked my Email and did a lot of stuff with the phone, it's been off charge for 10 hours and I've used it for 2:20 hours and I'm still at nearly 70%. I have location services turned on, Wifi and BT are off.

It's now 7PM, end of my work day, and I still have almost 70%...

Seems like deleting iCloud helped quite a bit...

I'm curious

Deleting the account or just turning all the toggle switches to off for everything ?

I had the same problem.

You must Restore the phone and set it up again as a new phone. DO NOT RESTORE FROM BACKUP as this will not solve the problem.

Well, while deleting my iCloud stopped the data leak, I'm not sure just how much it improved the battery overall.

I've used my iPhone a lot today for Whatsapp texting, phone calls, checking Emails and played some 3D games, I'm at 57% battery with 2:34 hours of usage and 7:42 hours of standby.

Rough math means that I should drain the battery after almost 6 hours of net usage. Which still ***** to be honest...

Honestly I don't know what to do anymore, I've restored the iPhone from scratch last week, I tried turning off BT and Wifi, left Notifications and location services at a bare minimum and I feel like it's lame, I want to be able to simply use my phone and enjoy all features without worrying about the battery all the time.

Funny thing is that yesterday my friend came with a 6.0 iPhone 5, he has EVERYTHING turned on. Location services, BT and Wifi always on, uses GPS apps and talks on Viber on 3G all day long and he got 7 hours of usage yesterday.

I wish I hadn't updated to 6.0.1 :/

Is there any way to downgrade back to 6.0 by blocking the host file on my computer and restoring from an ipsw file?

Or alternatively, does anyone know of a fix which should come from apple anytime soon?

Thanks

The biggest battery fix for me: use a Wi-Fi connection when avaliable. If you have an unstable Wi-Fi connection and a solid 3G/LTE connection, use the cellular one. But if you have a solid Wi-Fi connection, use it. My battery life pretty much doubles over Wi-Fi. I haven't noticed a difference when trying the iCloud stuff.

6 hours of usage on 3G/LTE is actully solid. Maybe not what you'd like, but it's average or above average. On Wi-Fi I can get 8-9+ hours of solid usage and two days on standby.

I have actually read that Wifi can make your battery last longer since you pull less data from your 3G provider.

I'll give that a try tomorrow after my next full recharge and I'll have Wifi on all day long and see how it affects my usage, thanks for the tip.

One more question, if I have the weather widget turned on does it still update the weather in the background all the time even when I don't pull down the notification center? Becuase only when I pull it down I see the location services arrow appear. I turned it on again yesterday and I think it may have contributed to my usage although I rarely pull down the notification center, but I just want to have it enabled there as it's a nice feature.

P.S.

Is there a way to downgrade to 6.0?

I think I may try another restore tonight and see if that helps.

I can confirm that it does actually save a lot of battery. I spend about 50/50 time in a Wi-Fi zone and a 3G/LTE zone. I get much, much better battery over Wi-Fi.

I'm on my third iPhone 5 (screen issues, not battery issues) and every single one of the batteries have given me the same results. I can't say if it's a good battery, bad battery or average battery because I've only used the ones I have. On average, I get about 5.5-6.5 hours of usage and 16-17 hours of standby on each charge over 3G or LTE. On Wi-Fi, I get about 7.5-9.5 hours of usage and 1day, 12 hours of standby. I usually don't play any games. I browse a lot, text, sometimes do a couple calls and a bit of music.

My location services are on for Maps, Siri, Compass, Weather and Yelp. Bluetooth is off. I have Siri turned on. My screen brightness is set to Auto-Brightness. My email is on push. I have push notifications on for most of my apps I use.

So yeah, I recommend using a stable Wi-Fi connection as much as possible. Mine can usually make it through a day, which is all I need, really.

Sounds good.

I've always feared about leaving Wifi on and preferred to use 3G since I thought I was saving battery but when I think about it it makes more sense to pull data from Wifi when available rather than having the cellular data network constantly stream data to and from your phone, so it does make a lot of sense to have it on where available.

My 3G network is also very VERY fast, it's actually one of the top 3 in the world so I can imagine it uses more battery since data is running faster.

I'll try using Wifi tomorrow for the entire day and see how long the battery lasts, I have a steady 1GB connection at work and a 100MB line at home which runs 24/7. My settings are quite similar to yours as well except my mail is a Gmail account which I manually fetch and I use a fixed % of brightness.

Thanks again.

It's a fact LTE is power hungry stay on WIFI as much possible or turn Cellular Data OFF when you are at work and only turn it on during breaks what I learned. Actually ironically enough iOS 6.0.1 allows you Cellular Data ON/OFF instantly where before it used to take a long time to search for network etc