Iphone 5 turning off at 40% battery power

Well, 7.1 did nothing to fix things.

I worked with Apple who sent me a link which, when clicked, ran some diagnostics and sent them to Apple. They concluded that my battery is bad. I don't have AppleCare, so the cost would be $80 to fix.

Rather than spend the $80, I'm going to try to hobble along with cables until October when the iPhone 6 will hopefully be out and my contract will allow a cheap phone upgrade.

Why this "battery" problem seems to have started only after upgrading to iOS 7 is a bit of a mystery to me.

Yea same issue here.

It has something to do with how old the phones are.
I have had mine since October 2012.

I've had a Mophie case on it since June 2013 and it saves me all the time.

I used to have to turn it on when the phone got down to about 20%, but now I need to turn it on around 30% because usually the phone randomly dies at that point.

I've had this same problem for about a month now.. I ran ios Diagnostics (diags://20866) on my phone and it came back w/ a report saying the battery had an issue- fortunately I have apple care, so they swapped it out in 45 min and we're good to go. Phone was dying everyday, and was told that there are batteries that show fully charged, but are only filling up to X %, in my case 70 of full. So when it says 30% left, I have 30% of 70.....

Battery replacement is the answer- $80 at the genius bar is you don't have coverage.... Hope this helps...

iphone 5, Dec 2012 (or thereabout)...

Replacing the battery fixed it for me too. Problem solved.

I live in SE Asia. Was quoted $40 for a replacement battery at the mall. Guy at the local market organized one for me for $14. $14 for a new iPhone 5 battery including install & it works just fine - gotta love Asia 😉

Now my battery life is back to "could be better" instead of "outright terrible"

Hmm, wow. How much does a 4 bedroom 2.5 bath house cost down there?

Had the same problem. Checked with Apple - no coverage any more. I ordered a replacemnet battery at Ebay. A kit with tools included costs aroud $15-20. It took me 30 minutes to replace the battery (the difficult part is to open the iPhone). Fully charge and with "everything" turned on it shows 70% after 24 hours.

Problem solved. I hope it stays like this for some time.

I have been battling the exact same issue for 6 months. Went to the Apple Store and was told I am just a heavy user and they showed me how to scale back battery usage. Didn't do a thing. Went back again, they said the phone was healthy and they could do nothing for me. I dug in and refused to accept that answer. The question they cannot answer is why does the phone shut off with almost 50% battery life left and when you plug it in it still says you have half the battery. I kept asking this question and other than saying well the battery meter is software and you cant trust software they had no answer. They eventually said they would replace the battery. I countered why replace the battery it is healthy, what is the issue? They finally replaced the phone under warranty. It told them I would let them know if the problem happened again as that would indicate software, if not they should look at the defective phone. They said the defective phone would be recycled and would not be examined, This is pretty poor trouble shooting and as a result the customer service is shocking. I got my phone replaced but they have not addressed the larger issue everyone here is facing. Come on Apple at least try to treat your customers with respect.

still occurring with my IPhone 6 and the battery drains even quicker now...... Apple said it was a software update issue.

These DFU and Restore and Resets and Battery Recalibration did not work for me.

I have suffered with this switch off problem for 6 months now. Finally I think I may have fixed it.

Firstly, just turn the phone to low power mode after a full charge and revel in the long battery life. Irrespective of the excitement you will see in the battery lasting so long, do observe whether the phone turns off or not.

If you find that the phone doesnt turn off, then it is clear that there is no hardware problem. Now your culprit is either an app that uses background data, or an app that uses location.

For me, turning off background app data worked and my phone drained power gracefully and turned off only after 1% charge. When I turned it back on I started getting shutdowns at 40% or 20%. I seem to have narrowed it down to whatsapp.

Try turning off the background app data for whatsapp, or better still, uninstall that godforsaken app and your $500+ iphone will show no battery problems.

This has been happening to me almost daily. I have an iPhone 6. Typically, it happens when I use Snapchat. However, there are random times throughout the day when the battery completely drains. I'll plug it in and it reads 90% charged. All of this started happening with the latest IOS update. I keep hoping a fix will come to repair battery issues. I'm due for a new phone and I don't feel safe with this one, but I will consider an Android if their battery is more reliable. This issue has apparently been going on for a while according to this thread and it's still not resolved. Disappointing.

That doesn't work I tried it

I've had the same issue with my phone randomly shutting off (with sometimes over 50% battery left) and it won't cut on until connected to power. It happens more often with Snapchat than on its own. I took it to the Apple Store and they rebooted it and it was good (or so I thought). But today I had the same thing happen again. I was using snapchat and the phone cut off. They said a new battery is the next option.. but I don't know if that would really help.

The exact same thing has been happening to my iPhone 6 for almost a month now. The phone randomly shuts down at 20-30% or even 35% and it has been getting worse lately. The problen occurs almost every time while I'm using Snapchat and my battery is down to 30%, probably because Snapchat is a battery-hungry app and that could be adding to the issue. I really don't see how this could be a software issue because I've been on iOS 9.3.5 for a long time (haven't updated to iOS 10.1.1) but this only began about a month ago. Today I took it to the Genius bar and they ran a diagnostics test which revealed no problem with the battery whatsoever. They just told me to do a backup to iCloud and restore my phone as new. What is really going on is beyond me but not being able to rely on my phone drives me mad.

There are two common causes of the symptom you describe; a failing battery, and a battery gauge that needs to be recalibrated. There's a third one if you have a 6S; one production run had a problem and Apple is replacing affected phones, but that doesn't apply to you. So the first step is to recalibrate your battery gauge:

• Charge to 100%
• Run the battery down until the phone shuts off
• If it shuts off above 1% charge it for a minute only, then continue running the battery down. Repeat until it makes it to 1% before shutting off
• Charge it to 100% again

Some people with this issue say that upgrading to iOS 10 fixes it also.

Thank you! I've tried recalibrating the battery before but it hasn't helped. I will update my phone to the newest iOS version though. Do you think this could still be a hardware issue, even though the genius bar folks told me that my battery is at 97% of its capacity?