iPhone 5 running iOS 6.1. Battery issue is major problem.

I have had the same issue. Upgraded to IOS 6.1 on my iPhone 5 last night and began the day with a fully charged battery. After only a few hours of use (and by use I mean screen off and no phone calls, I think I have sent one text and looked at my email 4 times) it is dead. Only other symptom is that it is running very hot. Less than a quarter of a day on a full charge. Something major has happened to battery life with my IOS 6.1 update.

Obviously something went wrong in the update.

Take action to fix the problem.

Restore your iPhone to as new state using iTunes on your PC/Mac.

See how it then functions before doing any backup restoration..

I have latest update installed, got up about 5 hours ago fully charged been using the phone for calls email and games 5 hours later still showing 92% I know this doesnt really explain anything other than not everyone is affected, try a full restore.

Set my iphone 5 running on ios 6.1 to airplane mode at 7.30am and it was at 70%.Checked it at 2.15pm and battery's down to 41%.No apps are running.Just made a restore(as new phone) just a couple days back and now i'm seeing this??Any help?

For me, battery drain was caused by Exchange sync.

If you have an Exchange Email account, delete it and re-add it.

It's quick, you don't lose anything so worth a try.

Mine is draining even if i put it in airplane mode:(

Same issue here, when I called Apple support they said this is the first they have heard of it. Right now I am losing 1% per min with all services off. She opened a ticket with engineering and pulled the logs from my iphone to send to them. Very, very, frustrated........right now my phone is useless unless I am close to a power source.

I experienced same issue since upgrading my iPhone 5 to iOS 6.1. It works fine under wifi network, but when there's no Wifi, the battery drains very fast although I didn't even use it. I had to turn off the celluar data on the phone to stop it. Feel so frustrated.

I ended up taking my phone into an apple store genius and was advised very quickly (I strongly suspect they had seen the issue before) to restore the phone and set it up from scratch as a new device (and avoid using the backup). I have done so and it seems to be working as normal now. I have to say this is a very disappointing upgrade rollout from apple.

Is anyone having this problem syncing mail with an Exchange server? I was reading that this may be a common thread...

I have a similar issue. I think there are a lot of bugs and imperfections with the iPhone 5 , which Apple is either unable or unwilling to fix. We buy into the hype of Apple products being near perfect - and let's be honest, they are pretty good - and feel a bit let down when basic things like this don't work as they should. I don't know if they read the feedback portion of their website, but it is always worth dropping a note there just in case.