Iphone 5s battery drains fast after ios 7.1 update.

Am I the only one who seems to be experiencing this? My iphone 5S battery seem to drain much faster than usual, and charge longer. I heard that the new update is supposed to increase battery life, and read comparison threads regarding other iphones that are capable of a much better battery life than mine.


I've had my phone for 3 months, never have dropped it once or anything of the sort, if that matters. My battery drains to 50% within an hour or so after intense use on the lowest level of brightness, and I seem to lose about 5-7 percents when on standby for 5 hours or so. Is this normal? Is it perhaps due to the fact that I am mostly using 3g, and applications that require more processing such as tumblr (graphics and gifs) as well safari? I'm just worried that my battery may be draining to quick, despite the update which's supposed to make it much better according to many people.


Thanks.

iPhone 5s, iOS 7.1, Battery life

Posted on Mar 11, 2014 8:30 PM

Reply
442 replies

Apr 12, 2014 5:25 AM in response to Rainxwater

So I think we know it's not a battery fault. That leaves hardware or software.

I'm still not convinced its software because as I have said before I had iOS 7.1 for a few weeks before experiencing this problem.

I posed this question on Facebook the other day and someone gave me an interesting theory. They said -


"Apparently the charging port tricks the phone into thinking it's fully charged and displays 100% when it isn't actually charged at all. So it's all to do with the charging port and Apple can't fix it so you have to replace the phone"


What do you think?

Apr 14, 2014 5:17 AM in response to Rainxwater

Well finally I have had some sort of success! After contacting Apple and them doing a diagnostic test on my battery they counld not find any faults. I happened to be looking into the Warranty information on the Apple website and found that under EU Consumer Law my phone has a warranty of up to 6 years! Well this was news to me so I contacted Apple on their 'Chat' system and quoted the Consumer Law to which they replied "A UK Apple representative will call you tomorrow". Interesting, I thought.

Well sure enough I got a call next day and the lovely lady explained that as I purchased the phone from Orange they were liable to replace the phone.

I contacted Orange and quoted 'EU Consumer Law', was put on hold for 10 minutes and now have a new phone being delivered tomorrow!

I don't believe that my particular problem was to do with iO7.1, the battery or the way I use it. It was clearly a hardware fault and I think there are others who have had the same thing.

Moral of the story is don't be put off by the standard 1 year manufacturing warranty. Makes you wonder why you would bother with Apple Care.

Of course this only applies to European countries only.

Hope this helps!

Apr 14, 2014 7:04 AM in response to FunkyFearny

Good to read that FunkyFearny that you will receive a new iPhone. In my case i bought my iPhone 4S second hand so i couldn't go back to a store or provider (although i have an invoice from the previous buyer which bought his iPhone on the Apple.com website so maybe it would be possible however it's a US website but he is from the Netherlands - Europe).


Aside from that it was a rogue app in our case (my wife and I) as they call it as described in my post from the 28th of March. We both are again very happy with the 'normal' battery usage after removing this rogue app which was running all the time. For people who are still struggeling with battery drainage i would suggest to read my post and also look at this blog post first.


We now have again a 1-1,5 day or even 2 days (if i don't use my phone much) and with WIFI connecting for about 90-95% of the day and ofcourse phone network but no 3G.

Apr 14, 2014 7:51 AM in response to oliverhr

Read my other message (see link in my previous message) and you will see it was a Dutch app called Scoupy. But it could occur with any other app which keeps running in the background if it has a bug in that could cause that and cause the drainage.


The main thing is to look first at the blog post link i mentioned and especially if your usage time is exactly the same as your stand-by time and then look at my post. Is that the case?

Apr 14, 2014 9:07 AM in response to Rainxwater

I've been following this thread for quite a while, and I'm just now curious -- is this issue affecting only the 5s? I have a 4s, purchased Oct '13, currently running IOS 7.0.4, with a grand total of one third-party app, Twitter.


The 7.1 update was pushed down to my 4s early this month, after switching the phone back on after returning from out of the country. I haven't installed it yet. Should I go for it? I'm a bit gun-shy about it after reading about all the battery drainage issues.


TIA.

Apr 15, 2014 8:10 PM in response to Rainxwater

I've finally found one change which has tremendously increased my battery life. It actually seems to be almost back to "normal". Since I don't like to have my email download automatically (I always knew this drained the battery), I had it set to only check for mail when the app was open on my screen.


There are a few different options for downloading mail. In Settings -->. Mail, Contacts, Calendars. There is a button "Fetch new data". For some reason, mine was active. Although all the settings were set to "Manual," just having the button activated drained my battery really quickly. I don't know whether I had it activated before or not, but I sort of wonder if the software update automatically turned it on to make fuller use of the new functions?? Whatever the case, my battery life is back to an acceptable level!

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Iphone 5s battery drains fast after ios 7.1 update.

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.