Why is my iPhone5 battery draining so fast, worse than my iphone4?

I'm also having battery problems. I have a 64GB black, ATT version that I got just under 2 weeks ago. I charged the phone all night, and was at 100% at 8am this morning. It's now 11:45am and the phone is at 72%. That's a 28% drop in 3.75 hours. The phons has been in standby all that time, and I haven't made or received any calls. I do have wifi, location services and LTE on... what's the point of upgrading the phone and then crippling it's capabilities?

One thing that may be different from everyone else... I have terrible cell service at my home, so I use an ATT Microcell. I get 5 bars of microcell coverage.

I tried all the recommended fixes... restored the phone, drained the battery to 0% and then charged it to 100% (leaving it plugged in over night).

I'd appreciate it if Apple would contact me and let me load their battery diagnostics program. Something is not right here!

I know for sure that any service in IOS6 which is using GPS- drains the battery.

You can go to settings, privacy, location services and system location services and uncheck some services you are not using every day.

Secondly, when cellular reception is not good- iPhone consumes more battery charge.

Tertiary,of course, IOS6 is not perfect and some parts of it drain the battery as well.

I'm using a really good application "iFullStat" which would allow me to shutdown some processes running on the background and not involve in my current tasks- it does save a battery charge.

Try it.

Same here. Reading emails or whatever, as soon as I have the screen on (50% brightness, no auto-adjust) it seems to suck about 1% every 2 minutes.

Are you saying that if I have, say, Location Services on for Best Buy (which uses it when I'm in the app and looking for a Best Buy around me) that it drains my battery no matter what even if I haven't used the app in weeks because I have that setting on? Why in the world would it do that when it's not an app that ever needs locations outside of when I need it inside the app?

I don't know for sure, but I assume Best Buy's app has no need for background services (which it would tell me if it did) nor does it need to use the significant-change location API to monitor my locaiton all the time.

I think most apps are like this, and I think you can tell which are not. So why would any service using GPS always drain me battery?

1 every 2 minutes does not sound right. I have gotten very good battery service so far with wifi lte location services all working. You should bring the phone in to be checked.

Any service using GPS- drains your battery significantly due constant search for satellite.

Any GPS device drains it's own battery significantly. Go to www.garmin.com and look for comparative table for different models of GPS and will find out why.

Secondly, almost every developer wants to run their application on the background just to mark their every minute needs for the customer.

Examples- HP, Lexmark,Microsoft Office, etc- want you to start their apps when windows starts and run all the time on the background, taking valuable CPU time and RAM- all professionals know that.

That's why a really good application consumes minimum resources and battery charge! Simple logic!

That's why I would never install any application on my iPhone right away and only after thorough research and reviews.

Do your own research and you'll see what I'm talking about!

I've wrote in my previous message not my assumptions but conclusions after thorough research and trials!

Well Apple is rather specific about how apps are allowed to use background work - and locations are one of the most severe. Having locations on in general will indeed require battery power and such, however, most apps do not use background locations - either with a GPS or with cellular tracking and the significant locations API. If they do, it will show you with the purple/gray arrows. It is quite easy to figure out which apps use this (both by how the app works and by tracing if it uses locaitons or not.)

So if you want to use Locations - turning off locations for specific apps won't effect battery life if you rarely use it.

Here is a link to exactly how you can use Locations Services in you app/in the background in iOS:http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/ LocationAwarenessPG/CoreLocation/CoreLocation.html.

A slightly less tech-version here:http://www.quepublishing.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1927378.

For more detail on how the purple icon works you can look here:http://whereoscope.wordpress.com/2010/09/29/the-location-arrow-on-ios/ and here:http://www.theiospost.com/latest/2012/8/17/location-services-in-the-background-c an-burn-your-data-plan.html.

I've mentioned it before, but I'm on my third iphone 5.

Today I did an experiment. I documented the data draining with screen shots.

I concluded when in standby, with cellular data on (no LTE) I'll loose 1% every 2 minutes. (NOT USING PHONE. ON STANDBY.) Soon the phone gets warm to the touch. Ouch.

Then...

Disable cellular. Still in standby. The phone gets cooler and stops draining. I loose maybe 1% every hour. Normal.

I think the battery is fine. The hardware is fine. It's a software bug (I hope).

Mine too. On third phone. Drains 1% every two minutes when cellular data is on. All had about 60-65% battery when first turning on. Hmmmm....

My battery is actually quite normal after the initial days. I meant it's not like super good, but at least on par with my iphone 4. I think the syncing between your old phone and new phone, and some bad apps must have play a role. Also calibrating battery helps. Something I don't think you need to do to make the battery better is to turn off the location/bluetooth/LTE, etc. Those suggestions made no sense to me. Without turning off those features your phone should be at least stand for a day with normal use (say 2-3 hr music, 1hr phone, 30min text, 1 hr internet, etc)

But another thing you need to expect to drain your battery fast is to have GPS gudiance on while you driving. Which is always the case because that's probably the most usage a phone need to be (it needs to use tons of data, GPS, speaker, and constantly screen-on!) So if you use GPS function a lot, you shouldn't complain like after 2 hours usage 50% or more battery is gone. I think that's normal....

That being said, something I do notice about my phone is that it's fairly good at standby mode (screen off, everything else on), probably drop less than 1% per hour. Very good while you only listen to music (about 1-1.5% an hour maybe). But pretty bad when you do anything with screen on (1% every few minutes). However, what intrigued me is that it seems doesn't matter much about what you are doing. Say I am simply writing an email or blog, I can see my battery dropped every few minutes. But that dropping rate seems identical if I am playing a cpu/gpu-demanding game or if I am downloading stuff or surfing the web, etc. Basically when it's on (other than just listening to music), it seems draining your battery fast.

If your battery even drained battery "constantly" at standby mode, then there must be a hardware problem or a bad outdated app you used a lot and left-on. "Constantly" the key, I meant there were a couple times my 4 died overnight for unknown reason. However the other 600 nights it was perfectly normal.

So I've done the diagnostics testing with Apple and they're checking out the logs now. Still no improvement in battery life, the one thing I did that helped was reset settings, so now the phone dies at 8pm instead of 5pm.

I'm going to do one last thing, the reset as new phone and back up manually, before throwing in the towel and asking for an exchange. Can I ask if anyone's gotten an exchange and managed to get the battery problem resolved? Thanks!

I did that once, restored from i4 backup. Had battery drain. On second phone used no backup. Started fresh. No difference.

As posted many times before, I had the very same problem you're having now. Out of the box, I used icloud to sync. Bad idea, let me tell you. Since the battery problem was obvious, Apple gave me another one. This time, I set as a new phone and then back up manually. And guess what...Magic!!! No more problems. My battery can now last at least 36 hours when using the device for about 3 hours of talk time. I did compare with my iphone4 and the results are pretty much the same. So, if you set up your phone as a new, you won't have battery issues. But if, for any other reasons it still draining, Apple will replace it.

After running diagnosis of my battery, Apple Store Genius Bar replaced my phone and new is working SO much better. After I got home I received an unsolicited call from an actual Apple Engineer. He said that he saw my post on this forum and wanted to help (hadn't heard that my phone was already replaced.) He was nothing but over the top helpful. They truly want as much information as possible to fix this battery issue. He then called three more times to check and see how my new phone was doing. Impressed!

Hope others with similar issues can get theirs resolved.

I had the same problem lastnight I followed a couple of the post here and my batteryis back to the ways it was when I bought it last week.

Here is what I found:

1. practically all of my notification were turned on. I turned all of them off except for PHone, Messages, Calendar, and email.

2. I reset all of my defaults...I did not lose any data

3. Resarted my phone.

This worked for me but I really think think the cause of the problem was number one...everytime my phone asked fi I wanted to use notifications or allow my locations..i was saying yes. I turned everthing off that Idid not need an now my phone is back to being great.

The post about it stayin on after 1% is so true...I was trying to test ot see how long it would take to charge after being dead and it tood forever to die at 1%..great.

Try different things but they did not lie about the batter life being good...my phone has been on since yesterday at 7pm and it is still going evern after working out htis morning and playing my play list!! 34% right now.