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Poor Battery Life iPhone5

I've had my iPhone less than 24 hours and have noticed the battery life is being depleted at a much higher rate than what I consider normal. This morning turned on my phone after turning it OFF last night and connected to the charger all night.

I adjusted some settings to match my iPhone 4 added PW's to some app's. After about 20 minutes of playing with my phone the power level dropped from 100% to 92%...no calls.


Anyone else notice poor battery life issues.........or do you thing that's normal?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.1), 2012 MBP 15.4 2.6 i7 Quad USB3

Posted on Sep 22, 2012 6:38 AM

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373 replies

Sep 22, 2012 6:32 PM in response to Mini-Mac

I concur. Sadly the iP5 battery life is actually worse off than 4S.


I have restored my iP5 as new yesterday, Day #2 of use, hoping that starting from scratch will provide better battery management (than carrying over previous, perhaps less efficient profiles). NOPE... Didn't work.


Yesterday, I went from 100% to 29% from 7:00AM-1:30PM of use. That's JUST 6 hours!


I have more or less surmised that the biggest battery drainers/culprits are (in descending order of culpability): 1. SCREEN BRIGHTNESS, 2. 802.11N Wireless, 3. LTE, 4. The usual PUSH suspects


It's a throw between 2 & 3 but if you keep the screen off and ip5 on standby, the battery drain is actually somewhat acceptable. It's only when you are using the phone and the drain just becomes a guzzler.


I apologize if I have not being able to quantify some of the above points more scientifically, but as an iPhone user who have used all iterations from 1 to 5, I think I do have a pretty good sense of what it should be.

Sep 22, 2012 7:42 PM in response to Mini-Mac

I'm not sure it's entirely an iPhone5 problem. Since I downloaded iOS-6 to my iPhone4 it seems to being to the same things everyone is reporting about the iPhone5. Even with minimal use the battery is draining at a much faster rate. Use it to much and it drains rapidly. The rate of use is way faster than prior to iOS-6. Lets hope Apple gets a update soon ...

Sep 23, 2012 5:51 AM in response to Mini-Mac

It's good to hear that others are experiencing the same. I noticed this from day one. I was just waiting for others to report it because I kept hearing so many people saying how the battery life is meant to be better than the 4S.


I was using both a 4 and a 4S at the same time prior to the 5. It's one of those things where after using a phone so much each day, you kind of get an idea of how much your battery drains dpending on how you use it. I noticed that doing simple things like just going through the settings menu on the phone would be using up way more power than expected.


I'm not entirely convinced the battery life on this phone is as good as they claim. My 4/4S would easily make it though my day of usage whereas I can imagine this phone cutting it quite a few hours or more short.


I'm also fairly certain that it isn't an iOS 6 issue either because I have been using the Beta on my 4/4S since the beginning. Unless of course it is an iOS 6 + A6 combo that is causing the issue, but I am leaning more towards the hardware playing the larger part.

Sep 23, 2012 6:26 AM in response to Mini-Mac

I have noticed this on the iPhone 5 too, I was looking forward to better battery life than the 4 like they improved with the 4S, but I am today noticing it's draining very fast, charges to 100% last night and at 2.30 in the afternoon it's on 45% - the annoying thing about this is now I only have one lead for my phone as I have about 5 of the old style so could have one in my car, home and work, now as I only have one I am going to have to remember to tke it everywhere with me, what a pain! Hope they sort this out very soon, as I have just lowered the screen brightness to see if this makes a different - but I like the screen quite bright - it is too dull how it is set now!

Sep 23, 2012 8:07 AM in response to Mini-Mac

I've noticed the same thing you are all describing. I had an iPhone 4 before and I feel like even after 2 years of use, the battery might still be marginally better than my new iPhone 5. The new OS, wireless, and LTE are probably all factor in it dying but its quite upsetting because at the end of the day, the phone isn't any good if it won't stay on. And if you turn off LTE and Wi-Fi, then you lose the benefits of the new phone.


Apple better patch their software soon to be more efficient. I have a feeling its the new chip they designed to cover all cell activity. I'm sure that thing guzzles the power back.

Sep 23, 2012 9:24 AM in response to Mini-Mac

My iphone 5 is going through a full battery charge at an alarming rate. In comparison with a 2 and a half year old iphone 4 running the same os6, if both 100%, the iphone 5 is flat and the iphone 4 still about 60%. Using any location services makes the iphone 5 get hot, and you can watch the battery % falling. Even my ancient 3G can still go all day on one charge. Very worrying. Hope this can be fixed soon with a software update. I still have bad memories of getting the 4, only to realise its antenna was a joke. Feel very stupid to have gone and bought another iphone with obvious issues. Think I may have learned my lesson this time. Even more frustrating is that only having one cable means I have to take it everywhere, as three charges a day since friday. Needs fixing!!!

Sep 23, 2012 11:01 AM in response to Mini-Mac

There are a lot of different factors that can be causing this for different people. I went through this personally with the iPhone 4s launch and the best thing to do is to turn off the things you don't use and leave on only the things you are. (Afterall, we wouldn't buy the phone if we didn't want to be able to use some of its great features.)


I have updated my guide from the 4s launch to applicable for the iPhone 5 and it can be found here. I have attempted to make a pragmatic guide that is realistic about the changes you can make to improve battery life on the iPhone 5. While this guide isn't guaranteed to work for everybody (not everybody's situation is exactly the same), it has worked very well for me with my own iPhone 5.

Sep 23, 2012 11:30 AM in response to Mini-Mac

I've been having some pretty poor Battery performance as well. I had my phone sitting on my desk for about an hour and a half and without touching it the battery drops from 100% down to 95%. I don't know if there's something running in the background that's causing the battery just keep draining, but this is pathetic.


I even just turned off LTE to see whether or not that would make a difference at all, I don't know if my phone is jumping from 3G to LTE causing any of these problems but I'll soon find out.


But anyways, I made an appointment with an Apple genius for tomorrow so hopefully I can get a replacement, that's if they even have any in the back to give me. So far I'm very disappointed in the battery performance.

Poor Battery Life iPhone5

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