iPhone 5S get EXTREMELY HOT and drains battery in 2-3 hours

I have experienced the heat & battery drain issue you have desribed on other iPhones after IOS upgrades. I discovered a great app called "system activety monitor" It shows you how much processor, and memory are being consumed, as well as the estimated battery life remaining. The really great thing about the app, I think, is it lists all the processes that are running, and te amount of memory they are taking up. Once I find the process that is hammering the device, I usually have to Google it to understand which function I need to turn off, or reset.

This has worked for me at least twice on my personal phones, and I have lost track of how many other phones I have fixed with this method.

Good luck, happy hunting!

Look at your usage and standby times. If they're the same, you're probably going to have to either delete and readd all your apps manually, or restore and set up as a new device, bringing only the minimal data from an itunes sync or an icloud sync. annoying but it appears to be the only 100% way. If it carries on after that I would go to apple, as I've seen it be both the CPU and the battery in the past. 95% of the time it is the software, though. Oh the joys of rogue processes!

I have exactly the same issue, and tried to delete my iCloud account and the phone gets cool immediately!

but it gets hot again after i have re-entered my icloud account.

i turned off the following and it gets resolved now: Settings > iCloud > Documents & Data. once this is turned off, it is not as hot as before even though i am charging it now..

i guess it may relates to the iWorks in iCloud thing.. apple must resolve this..

I have this phenomenon from time to time as well, so right now ... I tried, but neither this, switching off the "documents and data" thing in iCloud, nor airplane, nor background synchronisation off, not location services off, all together, all background apps off, battery drains nearly faster than it charges. "System Activity Monitor" (running as the only app with all this off) shows still about 90 to 100% load on both CPU cores. Unfortunately no means of knowing which one of the more than hundred processes is the troublemaker. Among the processes are however those with such worrying names containing "crash" or "Gestalt" ...

A reboot helped: "system activity monitor" shows only 10 to 60% of CPU activity (40% in average), still a proud 159 processes, although nothing els but "system activity monitor" is running, and finally slowly charging at a speed of a little percent per minute or so (but with location services, iCloud Docs&data, background synchronisation still off and in full Airplane mode).

Switching Airplane mode off, having back Wifi and GMS (Bluetooth was and stays off), activating one further app, DataMan does not make it worse, CPU load between 5 ane 70% in average about 25%, 186 processes now (among them Calendar jumped into life as well as Mail which was active from the reboot).

Now activating Background refresh (with a selection of apps allowed to do that) on top of that, CPU still not overly exhausted, charging of battery continues slowly, average CPU load now maybe 30%, varying from 10 to 60%. 193 processes, among them Preferences (needed to activate background refresh).

Now switching on location services, most apps and services are allowed to use them (but now purple arrow in the status bar, yet). Charging continues, seemingly a bit slower now (all the time since reboot screen at 50% luminosity), CPU cores below 25% load in average, relatively constant now. 198 processes, well, no, some older processes disappeared in the meantime, 198 is just the highest PID number.

Now switching back on this dreadfull iCloud dos&dat section which I suspect to be at the origin of al lot of trouble, in particular a process causing kernel panic and thus resets with the damned "blue screen of death" named "backgroundd" when accessing iCloud documents within the iWorks suite, PDF Expert or GoodReader without leaving the corresponding page in the app before sending it to background. Well, re-activating this brought a jump in CPU activity to about 40% together with a bunch of new processes (213 is the highest counter now) and a harmless crash of the somewhat unstable "system activity monitor". But afterwards the CPU calms down to a mere 5% of activity (thus there is some higher activity for a while whenever the system has been rebooted -- in my case synchronising with the computer, forgot about that ...). Of course, no heating, and charging even accelerating now (as battery consumption seems to be quite proportional to CPU load, maybe as much as WLAN, 3G, 4G, Bluetooth, GPS and luminosity, known as battery draining candidates).

Now starting some potential trouble makers, here PDF Expert, synchronising automatically a whole bunch of files. Together with a new synchronisation with the Mac, it briefly made the CPU spike at a 100%, for some 20 seconds or so, but soon it comes back to 20% levels.

Resumee: Yet another singularity ... should better not happen when you are in the wilderness and count on your iphone ... so, whenever it gets awfully hot and starts draining, consider a reset -- and hopefull 7.0.3 will solve them all ...

1. Try to decrease the brightness of the screen because it uses a lot of energy and gets hot easily.

2. Turn off the bluetooth,wi-fi,Lte,4G or 3G if not use. This will save the battery life and will cool down your iPhone.

3. Turn off the motion because it also uses battery life. To do tgis,go to general,then accessibility and reduce motion. The keyboard also uses a lot energy cause it is white colour and it's bright and the brighter the screen,the battery life easily reduced. To disable this keyboard colour, go to general,and then accessibility,and turn on the increase contrast to make the keyboard looks a bit darker and will use a bit energy. Like I said,if the screen brightness is too high,it will decrease the battery life and will get too hot.

4. If you like dark colour on your screen,go to general,then accessibility,and switch on the invert colour. This will save a lot energy from your iPhone and you can use it about 12 hours.

5. If the iPone is still hot,then I don't know what to do. My 5S works for 12 hours with all of this information and its not hot like it used to be,it even also works perfectly fine and I even off my location service because it uses a lot of energy to activate the antenna to the satalite if you know what I mean.

Okay. That's all for tiday from me and try this info from me and let's see if one of you tried it.

Thank you for your co-operation.

haha, and why do you need an iphone if so then you should turn everything off? 😁

How? iCloud accounts can't be merged. Did you simply re-enter all your contacts, etc?

I've had my Iphone 5S since the launch date, never had this problem until recently.

I have the 32Gb model. Since I had the phone only had around 150 songs on the phone, few photos, maybe 30 apps and plenty of free space. A few days ago selected on itunes to fill empty space with music. Now I have over 4000 songs on the phone (and 1.7Gb free space).

Over the last few days since then it started heating up when I use the phone amd the battery life is shocking!

I listen to music frequently and will delete the odd song I don't like anymore... doing this almost makes it worse.

I'm not too technically savvy, but perhaps others with the same situation is experiencing the same issues??

McS

I just got a 5S the other day (upgraded from a 4s). I have EVERY option turned on that can be... icloud, I have 6 email accounts, 3 icloud, 3 non and the phone checks the non apple emails every 15 mins.

My 5s has a mophie case on it so the phone thinks it's on AC (technically DC). That way it never drops Wifi when locked.

I never gets hot.. even when gaming.. warm, but not hot

A hot phone is usually cause by a few things

1a) Massive use (brightness cranked to max, and playing a CPU/GPU intensive game). This wil get a phone or ipad fairly warm...

1b) MASSIVE use of CPU due to a service or services that have corrupted settings going crazy on the device.

2) do 1A above while on DC power and the phone or device can get REALLY hot, and even activate thermal shutdown - especially if you use Apple's new 12W charger. Charging the battery generates heat. So high use plus charging will heat things (even if the charger isn't strong enough and the battery slowly drains, it will heat up). I use a Y device that lets me use a second charger, and I inject a 5V, 5Amp power source. This lets an ipad 3,4,or 5 be under HEAVY use and not drain the battery..but the device can get hot. It's safe as each device has a limit of how many volts/amps it will draw

3) This one is a no brainer .. don't leave the device in direct sunlight or warn room temps over 80-85F under heavy load.

The phone shouldn't get hot like the OP's phone with such little use. It sounds like there was an icloud issue, and it was solved. However if ANY ios device does this after a full erase and set up NEW (no restore), then it's probably a hardware fault. (if it were an ios bug, the all devices would have the heat issue).

ios does NOT constantly use icloud... I should say it SHOULDNT... It ONLY sends docs and data (if turned on) ONLY when you USE the app and save the data... OR every 24-36 hrs, it backs the phone up to icloud (if turned on AND you are on Wifi, AND it's running off power and not battery). Once you get past the initial FULL backup, the device uses incremental backups that should finish in 1-5 mins depending on your wifi / internet speed (and how many pictures, documents an app data you have). Eventually icloud will delete the backup and do a full backup and resume incremental backups (this safety thing in case your "base" backup gets corrupted on the apple servers ... and YES.. that has happened)

The OP's situation is usually caused by iphone upgrades. The settings from one phone gen to the next don't always restore properly (even if it's the same ios version).

icloud also doesn't backup all your passwords, and app data

TBH, icloud backup should be used, but only as an "oops" in case your itunes backup has an issue. The best way to backup and restore ios devices is with an encrypted itunes back up

1) an encrypted back up saves any and ALL passwords and secure features of the device (icloud backups do not fully support this)

2) backing up and restoring from itunes is a LOT faster. USB 2.0 is 480Mbits/sec (60 MegaBytes/sec). Granted NO ios device can handle moving data at those speeds plus there's overhead to consider. About 50MB/sec is as fast as you can go (a SATA 3 HDD or SSD can EASILY hit that cap) Even the most up to date devices can only move about 15-20MB/sec of data. Hence why no ios device is usb 3.0... No point. The read/write speed of the storage is just too slow.

That's still a LOT faster than any internet connection most people will use 🙂

I have a 110Mbit/20Mbit Time Warner Business class cable modem connection in my house (you don't want to know what I pay for that LOL). Even at my speeds, I can only pull 13.75MB (megabytes/sec).. and that's providing a site supports that.. Apple does NOT...Apple caps all app, music, movies, tv. blah blah at 35MB/sec for any of their services. I have a 64GB iphone 5s. Restoring and backing it up goes FAST as my 5S is mostly all music with some apps. My 128GB ipad 5 has 64GB of apps, no music (set to iTunes match as my phone plays my tunes).. and the other 64GB are video. I would NOT want to restore my ipad and have to DL 64GB of apps!! Not at apple's speed caps!

So as you can see, backup/restore from itunes a LOT safer, and less buggy

When I backed up my 4S to icloud and restored it to my new 5s, it prompted me for SOMEONE ELSES Apple ID! Apple thought it was the new activation lock feature, and that I got sold a used phone.. not the case.. the icloud servers accidentally tossed a few apps linked to another person's apple ID into MY backup. Deleting the icloud backup, backing up my 4S again, and restoring to the 5S solved it. I wasn't at home which is why I didn't use my itunes.

10/28/13 I upgraded to a 5s 64g from a 5 64g. First issue I had was when I tried to restore my 5s from my last backup, iTunes gave me an error message stating my backup was currupt or not compatible with the device (5 out my 6 backups were "supposedly" corrupt). After hours of research I gave up and set the new 5s up as a new phone. Right away I noticed the battery was draining so rapidly I could watch the battery meter count down. 50% battery lost in (1) hour!!! The phone was noticeably hot, and actually shut down at one point due to overheating. When I tried to charge it, it would lose battery power faster then it could charge, so the only way to charge it was to power it down. I went to the apple store, was given a new phone, same problem occurred. Back to apple, another new phone, "Genius" (use that term loosely) asked me not to install anything on my phone for a few days & see how phone acted. So for (3) days I had an $800+ roladex with only contacts on the phone. Low & behold, no battery or overheating issues. So I attempt to sync with iTunes (contacts only, no music or photo's). Immediately battery starts draining and phone heats up. Back to Apple and I am given a (4th) phone.......asked by genius again not to sync or install apps for a week, no problems for a week, sync with iTunes, contacts only, instant battery drain and overheating.......Only way I can figure out to stop the problem is to do a full restore. I can install all my apps, just can't connect to iTunes. Apple is has been no help at all, I am about ready to throw in the towel and give Samsung a go.

Thank you so much!! This was driving me crazy and I even got my 5S 64 Space gray replaced.. Apple needs to get on this.

Last week i was at the Apple Store about my problem that the iPhone 5s gets warm and the battery holds only 8 hours. At the Genius Bar they told my to update the IOS to 7.0.4. Today i had a schedule at the Genius Bar. After they did some checks at the Genius Bar it got replaced.

Hi, I recently got my brand new Space Grey 16GB 5S and I have noticed it gets really hot, like unbareable hot. Usually all im doing is texting. I also have no icloud and my battery is perfectly fine, if anyone knows why it gets SO freakin hot and could tell me, that would be great thanks