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

Mar 16, 2014 1:18 AM in response to Rainxwater

I think I found a workaround. First, charge your battery to 100%. Then hold down the top button, when it says slide to power off do so. The battery should stay at 100% for at least a week or so, if you happen to turn it back on at that point.


In the meantime, go out and buy an Android phone and put your SIM card into that one.

Mar 16, 2014 2:51 AM in response to Rainxwater

I have an iphone 4s and I have always managed to get around three days out of it before needing to recharge it, I have not changed any settings, added any new programs other than the update for 7.1 and all of a sudden I find I need to charge it every day now, sometimes it does not even make the day out !! I can watch the battery go down even though everything is turned off and I am not using it. Something is VERY wrong with this latest update and needs to be sorted fast, a phone that will run out in a day is no good to man or beast if I am out in the wilds.

Mar 16, 2014 4:00 AM in response to Rainxwater

This is ridiculous!! I completed the most recent update and my battery life is draining so fast! I am also in the middle of texting and my screen flips for no reason.. I hope this is fixed or I will have to choose a different type of phone when I am due for an upgrade next month.... <SIGH> I would not have completed the new update, but it said it would HELP battery life.... SMH

Mar 16, 2014 5:25 AM in response to Rainxwater

I have the 5 and have tried all of the suggested steps to try and resolve this problem and so far nothing has improved my battery life. Prior to this update I was able to get through an entire work day with minimal usage now I'm lucky if I get 4 hours before I'm down in the 20% remaining. I've also noticed since the update my phone feels much warmer to the touch than it ever did.

Mar 16, 2014 7:00 AM in response to fullgravity

@fullgravity


Instead of time-wasting and usually unhelpful fallbacks like resetting your phone or reinstalling the OS, why don't you try some of the more relevant suggested troubleshooting methods:


Hard Reset
Hold down the home & power buttons until your phone restarts.


  • Recondition your battery
    Fully charge the phone, let it drain fully until it shuts itself down, then recharge fully
  • Background App Refresh
    Go to Settings - General - Background App Refresh and turn this off for any apps you don't need to be updating constantly
  • Location Services
    Go to Settings - Privacy - Locations Services and disable for any apps you don't need to know your location

Mar 16, 2014 7:12 AM in response to freediverx01

The comments are not unhelpful there feedback.


Location settings are turned off, auto brightness on, auto downloads off, Bluetooth off.


I have the 5s and since keeping the same settings I'm now only getting 5.25 usage down from 6 hours on 7.0.6.


There's definetly been a reduction in usage time in my experience on the 5s and it's no where near apples advertised 8hours on 3g usage for 5s.

Mar 16, 2014 8:20 AM in response to WCx2

"In the meantime, go out and buy an Android phone and put your SIM card into that one."


Samsung's Astroturfers are out in full force today.


For every post by someone claiming they've had it with Apple and are switching to Android, check out their user profile and you'll see the account was created less than 24 hours ago. This is financed by Samsung's $15 million marketing budget.


Do a Google seach for Samsung astroturfing and enjoy the results.


  • "Taiwan fines Samsung for astroturfing internet comments..."
  • "Samsung fined $340,000 for faking online comments"
  • "Second Samsung scandal this week: PR firm caught astroturfing forums"
  • "Samsung admits to astroturf attacks on HTC..."
  • "Samsung hired students to astroturf..."





Mar 16, 2014 8:21 AM in response to Rainxwater

With my brand new iPhone 5S I have typically lost 15% hour or more using cellular data (just email, browsing, maps, ... NO Games FB Twitter)


Yesterday with a full phone and light use (no voice, some browsing & app updates, plus fair bit of FaceTime) I was down to 20% after only 4 hours on WiFi ! My iPad3 does leaps and bounds better than that!


I also saw that the location arrow was on frequently, even though I had waze, maps, etc OFF. Looking at the apps that had used my location recently, there was only waze, which was closed???


So I went over all my settings again, which still looked pretty tight. Closed all but a few apps. Did a hard shutdown. When the phone came back on, there was that location arrow again for several minutes. So I figured I had to kill that.


Instead of looking at my apps, none of which were open that use locations; I dug one step further. All but two Location Services > System Services were ON (I turned off Location iAds and Popular Near me previously); so I turned them all OFF: Cell network search, compass, diagnostics, time zone, traffic, wifi networking and Frequent Locations.


That stopped the lcoation arrow dead cold, where in the past few days it was seemingly on every time I used my phone, without going out of the house or changing location. I haven't fooled around yet with turning them ON one at at time; but things seem to look better. I have logged 30 minutes of screen time on it; looking at stuff, without using data admittingly and lost 1%.


Now I know I probably need to have at least some of these on for my phone to function; but I'm not going to wait and see, till I run into something that doesn't work.

Mar 16, 2014 8:22 AM in response to Rainxwater

Just a quick related question, as I've just read about this but am out of the country right now and have my phone turned off, bluetooth/wifi/cell disabled, and airplane mode on in order to avoid massive accidental roaming charges.


I got my 4S in mid-October of last year, and the last major IOS update I recall was pushed down as an installation package, but I had the option to install or not install right away. The only thing, though, was that if I chose not to run the update right away, the installation package file couldn't be deleted from the phone, and just sat there taking up space until I finally gave in and ran the update. Stop me if I'm wrong, here.


Now that I've gotten a heads-up in the news and the forums, would it be possible for me to take this route when I return home, switch the phone back on, and switch all the bluetooth/wifi/cell back on, and turn airplane mode off, returning the phone to normal operation -- at which point Apple will try to push the update down to my phone? Just thinking... it'd probably be less headache to let the update package file sit harmless on my phone; even though it takes up space, at least it wouldn't be causing any trouble.


Thanks in advance,

ms

Mar 16, 2014 9:01 AM in response to Rainxwater

By the way.

What do folks use to take screenshots that include the battery level?


I have taken over a dozen screenshots in the past month or so, trying to document how poor my battery life was after 1 2 3 4 hours of usage; and when I look at the screenshots; not a single one of them includes the top bar with signal strength, carrier, time and battery % level.


iPhone 5S iOS 7

Mar 16, 2014 10:50 AM in response to freediverx01

freediver,

I was doing them that way as well, it is just that when I view the image on my phone, it never shows the top?


Well - doh - newsflash. When I tap sharing as if want to email myself the photo then it shows the whole thing. Geez Apple, I had tried to pinch out, tap, double tap to get a full screen photo/slide, ... and probably combined with having poor battery life, when I single tapped I never paid attention to the clock changing.


Live and Learn! Feel like an idiot. Keeps one humble.

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Iphone 5s battery drains fast after ios 7.1 update.

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