iPhone 5 shutting down with 20% battery life left

Well, no, not true at all. Lithium chemistry batteries should NEVER be fully discharged; it can kill them. That's why the iPhone shuts off before the battery is fully discharged. There are no "parts" in the battery to be used more or less frequently. Your analogies have nothing to do with battery chemistry. Apple recommends charging the battery whenever you want, to whatever percentage you want. The only reason Apple recommends fully discharging and fully charging the battery is to recalibrate the battery gauge. If you look at other Lithium chemistry applications, like hybrid (Ford, Toyota Prius, etc) cars and all-electrics like the Nisssan Leaf or Tesslas, They never fully discharge the battery. The Prius (I own 2 of them) will never let the battery go below 20%, and stops charging at 80%. My older Prius still has the original battery at its original capacity after 11 years.

Lawrence, I appreciate your response.

I am not sure where I read it, but I thought the battery design was more like a honeycomb and the battery draw pattern did effect the lifespan of the battery. That said, I couldn't find any evidence to support my statement, though I didn't search to hard.

I did find sites/blogs which confirmed your, "charge-at-will" policy:

http://kipre.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/4-myth-and-facts-about-lithium-ion-polyme r-batteries/

And what I found more informational, but some may find boring:

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries (it discuses effects of overvoltaged batteries)

Thanks again,

vol7ron

I have the same problem. I just read an article that came out on January 23rd that said Apple will come out with a new software update around March. March? Are you kidding me? This problem requires me to carry a charger everywhere I go just in case my phone randomly locks up. I've read many forums where people have experienced this between 20-30%. I have a feeling my situation in much worse. Just yesterday, my phone locked up at 83%. Yes 83%. Upon plugging my phone back in and starting up again, I went back to my messaging app to send an important text and it locked up again no less than 30 seconds after it started up again. I've also noticed that it frequently shuts down the moment I tap on a song in the music app and try to play it. The problem has grown. It started with my "danger zone" being between 40-50% and now has grown up to 83%. In what world should I only be able to use 17% of my phone battery? I have done all of the tricks to save battery including turning off Airdrop, background refresh, data roaming and 3D wallpaper. I've also done a hard reset and completely restored and re-synced my phone. I demand that Apple make amends sooner than March.

Your problem is not related to the current version, and the next version won't fix it. Either your battery gauge needs to be recalibrated as described already in this thread or your battery is failing. Take it to an Apple store and the genius bar can test the battery.

You can also restore the phone as New using iTunes. If that doesn't fix the problem it is a bad battery.

This discussion seems to have run its course, but I wanted to mention one other thing that happened recently.

After a long day out of the house, I wanted to use Maps to ensure a cab driver was taking the best route with the least traffic. At 20% left, upon opening the app, the iPhone shut down. Either the phone crashed, or it went into this early shutdown mode.

Unlike sometimes when you try to turn it on and you get the bootup screen (white background black apple logo), this time it gave the battery dead screen (black screen, empty battery, and lightning plug), so I was out of luck. Out of stubborness, I tried a few more times over the course of 5 minutes to no avail. However, the remarkable thing, when I arrived at my destination 10 or so minutes later I tried again and it did power on. I forget what percentage it stated, but I think it was close to where it left off, probably between 10 and 15%.

This is most likely a fluke and doesn't add/detract from anything mention before, but I'm stating this as a just in case. Who knows, in an emergency situation this could be vital information.

I have an iPhone 4S. Three times now it has completely powered off when it gets to 20% battery life. When that happens, I press and hold down the power button and it shows that the battery is completely discharged. However, after charging it for about 30 seconds the phone will turn on and show 20% battery life again. I only started having this problem after I upgraded to iOS v. 7. If this were truly a battery issue, why did this problem suddenly start only after I upgraded? And if it is truly a battery problem, why does the battery charge level suddenly return to the original level after charging it for 30 seconds? iOS v.7 is a total failure. I am so sorry I upgraded. Everything runs slower, there is keyboard lag, apps suddenly crash and my ipad and iphone both lock up on a regular basis. I have followed all the "solutions." I have restored both multiple times, but nothing works. I used to love Apple products because they just worked, but after all the problems I've had with this new iOS, I can see that Apple simply doesn't care anymore. It's getting as bad as Microsoft with the buggy software it is foisting on its customers. Apple needs to own up and admit that it created defective software and let people downgrade to iOS v.6. iOS 7 is crap, plain and simple. And as for Mavericks? Given Apple's recent track history, there is no way I am upgrading to that on my Mac, even if it is free.

Maybe someone else will be helped by my anecdote: I've been having a terrible time with my iPhone 5, with rapid battery drain, the unexpected shutdowns experienced in this thread, and flakey lightening cable connections.

I read somewhere that lint can cause the flakey connections, so I spent some effort delicately removing some from the socket. This helped slightly with the connections, but they soon got worse again.

I finally got frustrated and fearless jabbed an unbent paperclip in there and dug around until I had removed approximately a kilogram of pocket fuzz. It's amazing how much link an hide in there, and how well designed the connector is for handling this treatment.

Since then, I have no connection difficulties at all. And, I swear, my battery drain and "20% shutdown" issues seem to be getting better with time.

I am not an EE and the circuits that estimate battery power are voodoo to me, so I won't pretend to understand my observation. But if you're reading this thread and also having problems with the lightening connector, I can recommend some fearless digging.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW-uIWlg6y8

same problem

tayfuniper wrote:

same problem

Same solution

It has been posted several times in this message thread alone, and dozens more times in other threads. So start by reading the thread you posted to.

I was having the same issue for what seemed like over 2 months. Updating to iOS 7.0.6 seems to have resolved the battery drainage problem for me.

To add to my previous post...

The phone battery drainage issue seems to have been resolved by iOS 7.0.6 for me.

However, the random shutdown problem persists.

After everything working okay for a few days, I'm now back to having my iPhone randomly shut off. Have to plug in the USB cable and attach to a power source for it to boot back up again.

Most recent instance happened with 25% battery left.

• It shut off while I was browsing my camera roll. (Seems it happens more while in camera roll anyway.)
• I attached it to the power source.
• It turned back on.
• Battery showed at 24%.

What a disappointment. One would hope that the most resourceful tech company in the world could have a battery last through 1%. In fact, with the premium we pay for the products, it's not a hope but an expectation/customer demand.

The solution has been posted several times to this thread alone, and also to dozens of others. So read some of the posts to learn how to resolve the problem. See, for example, the 3rd message in this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5286126?answerId=25052334022#25052334022&ac_cid=tw123456#22916087

Lawrence: Thanks. I've tried this before the update to iOS 7.0.6 and it never worked for me. I'll try it again. Thank you.

If it doesn't work you probably need a new battery.

Thanks for your reply. Tried it. It doesn't work. I will stop by the apple store next time I'm around one, but I refuse to believe it's the battery. This started happening *the day after* I updated to iOS 7.0.4 from iOS 7. It may be a combination but there are too many people on this forum who have bought a brand new iPhone 5 who are also having this issue less than 3 months after they bought the device. All we have in common is the update to iOS 7.0.4 or later.

Oh well.