iPhone 5 shutting down with 20% battery life left

My iphone 5 is turning off with 20% battery life showing. I've done all the updates. When I plug it in, battery life immediately jumps to 30% left. Any clues? It's not overheating and usually I'm just typing a text message. It's shut down twice now as I try to send a picture with the message. Thanks in advance for any help.

iPhone 5, iOS 6.1.4

Posted on Sep 4, 2013 7:43 PM

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44 replies

Apr 23, 2014 11:55 AM in response to Jules 35

this seems to be strictly limited to new OS (ivy++. Bring back Forstall NOW.!!). I upgraded to new OS and next day % started jumping.. I disabled all background app but that hardly made any difference. I notice that the problem is worst with any data cellular connection and with camera. Open a page and battery runs down 30-50% before the page finishes loading.! I am an avid reader and can clearly see that the problem is caused by new software. Also, for some reason battery seems to be running hotter ie it heats up quite quickly witheven data connection is active on cellular. probably some NSA spyware with new software? who knows.!

May 17, 2016 11:10 AM in response to Jules 35

I Have been running through full battery for iPhone 6+ in 2-4 hours! Made a GB appt but kept playinv for an answer and here's what I got that fixed it for now:

for the shutting off at 18-19#% problem I did what Lawrence recommended & it worked so far. After it shut off, I plugged in for two min, then took the cable out first, then force rebooted, and when it came back on there was a sudden jump from 20% to 4% to 1% and then I put a movie on silent and ran down that last power which took 2 hours!!! ( so it had more than 1% obviously) and then I plugged it into it wall charger and left it for 4.5 hours.

To solve the rapid drain problem I took over all the setting manually. I turned off most background refresh, took off auto bright, took off everything I could find that seemed optional just to find the issue(there's alot of manual settings, if you don't know go have a deep look into the settings app & see how much you can turn off!!) After two days it was iCloud Drive that was found to be the cause. When I turned off that, the problem went away. Bottom line: the battery status is not the whole story, start turning things off to find out what is causing it!!! It took two days because to isolate variables you can't do everything at once! Ok? Do it piece by piece to see what happens...

OTherwise do do a restore as new or go get a new battery. Neither of those are the end of the world.

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iPhone 5 shutting down with 20% battery life left

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