Why is my battery life draining so fast on my new iPhone 5S?

Question

Why is my battery life draining so fast on my new iPhone 5S?

Hi everybody,

First of all, thank you for reading this - I really appreciate any help I can get.

It seems like the battery life on the iPhone 5S is a very common topic here and since Apple can't help me anymore maybe you guys can. I bought an iPhone 5S 32GB about two weeks ago. I experienced a worse battery life than my last iPhone 5 and I could tell that the battery life was draining abnormally fast. I contacted Apple and according to their tests the battery life is good but in comparison to my friends with the same phone it's way worse. They helped me set it up as new and to change the settings to where it would benefit the battery life the most. The issue continued and a few days later they replaced it with a new iPhone 5S and still, I had the same problem. The same process (running tests, restoring, setting up as new) happend several times over again before they chose to replace it with a third iPhone 5S and today, when I got it - the issue is still there.

Guys, I am CLUELESS of what to do.

When I first got the phone I wanted to test the battery life, here is what you guys need to know.

It was set up as a new iPhone with iOS 7.1
iCloud was synced (only contacts and calendar)
Medium brightness
All background apps closed
Wi-Fi was the only major setting on in the background
I live in San Antonio, TX - the signal is always good, 4-5 dots and LTE with AT&T.

So what I did to test it was I started "Stopwatch" and kept it on for 10 minutes without letting the screen go off. I've tried this twice and the battery life goes down 6% which to me seems abnormally much. I asked my friends with a 5S to run the same test (keep in mind they have much more apps and "stuff" on their phones) and they lose 2-3%. Feel free to try with your iPhone 5S and please write the results in a comment. The battery life on my past iPhone 5S have drained with a pace of 1 percent every 1-2 minutes of basic usage (texting, surfing, facebook) and last me about 2 hours of usage.

This is my third iPhone 5S and I don't know what to do, if you have anything in mind - please put it in a comment. Also, is there anyone else who's experiencing this problem? Feel free to ask any questions that comes to mind.

I'm thankful for all the response I get guys.

iPhone 5s, iOS 7.1

Posted on Mar 14, 2014 4:03 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

razmee209

Level 10

191,382 points

Mar 14, 2014 4:15 PM in response to Emil Clemensson

Double check your settings here:

http://osxdaily.com/2013/09/19/ios-7-battery-life-fix/

Are you running an exchange email account? IF so is it pushing your emails?

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Answer 2

Mar 14, 2014 4:29 PM in response to razmee209

I learned a few things on that link but most of the settings were already set up like that.

I don't have any email account synced right now but usually I use "other" and settings are put on fetch instead of push.

Thank you for the advice razmee209!

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Answer 3

razmee209

Level 10

191,382 points

Mar 14, 2014 4:33 PM in response to Emil Clemensson

Are there apps on your phone right now?

I think one of your apps is causing this.

The only way to find out is to delete them all and then add them one by one to see what app maybe causing this.

Especially if you've gone thru 3 iphones already.

When you restored as new - did you sync back your stuff - apps/music or did you restore from backup?

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Answer 4

Mar 14, 2014 4:55 PM in response to razmee209

There are no apps installed right now besides the apps the iPhone provide itself.

On my past iPhones I synced 81 songs from iTunes and then I started installing every app again to make sure that the app is fresh.

Thanks once again.

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Answer 5

Mar 14, 2014 9:24 PM in response to Emil Clemensson

Please guys, could anyone help me out here? I'd love to get a conversation going!

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Answer 6

Oct 14, 2016 6:33 AM in response to Emil Clemensson

I found that the widgets that were added after the update was my problem. I noticed my phone draining 25-30% in 30 minutes. I started turning all "background apps refresh" off and only the ones that I use all the time are left on, and it still drained fast. I turned off the widgets and this seemed to solve the problem. I did this last night and today on the way to work this morning, and I use a GPS app called Waze to get to work usually uses 20% of my battery, used only 5% today. I think the widgets are the main problem because the new update added some and turned them on without my authorization or asking me if I wanted them. We'll see if this continues or is just a temporary fix.

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