iPhone 5 Battery Life

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shinji23

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 12, 2002
Messages
336
Hi all! Simple question for iPhone 5 users. How is iPhone 5 battery life?

I was checking apple and other forum and I saw lots of complaints regarding iPhone 5 battery. Is it really that bad???

I get lot of work related emails (gmail and exhcnage push is must). And do quite a bit of talk on the phone time to time.

occasionally sms/web browsing/google map. Not so much twitter, facebook, or any other location based apps.

I currently have Galaxy Note 2. yes it is a great phone with amazing battery life, but it's too big for my taste. I was using GS3 before I switched to GN2, so this time I want to try iPhone 5.

Can you guys give me some input on iphone 5 battery life?

Thanks!
 
You'll probably get slightly better battery life on the iphone 5 compared to your gs3 but your note will have a lot more battery life in comparison.

Your carrier also plays a big role with its LTE coverage. I get slightly better battery life on my iphone 5 compared to my previous iphone 4 and way more than the iphone 4s.

If you aren't on wifi and on verizon your iphone 5 cannot do voice and data at the same time so if you're on a call you will save some battery life there compared to the samsung devices.
 
I have been nothing but impressed by my iPhone 5, well minus the fact that the first one came with "factory installed" scratches.

I can't compare it to the 2 phones you mentioned as I had a Galaxy S before getting the iPhone. I typically go 2 days between charging it with light use, and 1 day with moderate use. I was lucky to get a day with the Galaxy S.

Personally I've very happy with the battery life.
 
If your connected to just WIFI, it lasts for an eternity. 8-10 hours of actual usage for general stuff (not gaming).

The battery starts to get sucked away by 3G though, but even with a poor 2G signal all day at work (like 1 or 2 bars) I can still get around 5 hrs.

To me, that is impressive. Compared to my GS3, it's far better.
 
It really depends on the service in your area.

I can last all day with mine at home. At work, my battery goes down pretty fast and I am stuck with about 20% by 5pm. The reception sucks there though.
 
Arthur Hucksake said:
If your connected to just WIFI, it lasts for an eternity. 8-10 hours of actual usage for general stuff (not gaming).

The battery starts to get sucked away by 3G though, but even with a poor 2G signal all day at work (like 1 or 2 bars) I can still get around 5 hrs.

To me, that is impressive. Compared to my GS3, it's far better.
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LTE browsing time on the iPhone 5 is about twice as much as on the GS3, eight hours. Very impressive given how bad LTE battery life has been in the past.
 
My girlfriend's iPhone 5 gets better battery life than my 4S, which I've tweaked a lot to squeeze as much battery life as I can from it. Only reason I've not jumped to the 5 is iOS6 doesn't have an untethered jailbreak. Once it does, I'll be all in for the 5. I've gotta have a jailbroken iPhone... it's a biological need.:p
 
iPhone 5 battery life is great. I tried the GS3 for a few weeks and wasn't impressed. iPhone 5 battery life is much better, especially with LTE. The iPhone 5 lasts a bit longer than the iPhone 4 and 4s in my experience.
 
I consider myself a heavy smartphone user and I usually have around 30-40% left before I go to bed at night. A friend of mine says he's at around 60-70% left at night on his. I leave LTE and WiFi enabled, but am primarily on WiFi at home and work.

My wife has an iPhone 4 and leaves 3G, Wifi, and Bluetooth enabled all day and is still in the 70's% when we go to sleep. She doesn't use her phone much at all during the day though. With Bluetooth off she's in the 80% range..
 
It's really signal dependent. Mine dies MUCH quicker than my 4 ever did. At the office where 3g and 4g signal sucks: I'm seeing about 5 hours of usage before death. With the iphone 4 and 3g disabled and using just edge, I was seeing more like 8-10 hours. If you have good service in your area though it should be fine.
 
mrrogers747 said:
It's really signal dependent. Mine dies MUCH quicker than my 4 ever did. At the office where 3g and 4g signal sucks: I'm seeing about 5 hours of usage before death. With the iphone 4 and 3g disabled and using just edge, I was seeing more like 8-10 hours. If you have good service in your area though it should be fine.
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I'd say my experience is the same.

When I've traveled and my service went from LTE > 3G > 2G a lot, I noticed my battery draining faster.

I have some friends with iPhone 5's that refuse to use LTE because they think it drains the battery crazy fast compared to 3G. From my experience so far, the battery drain between 3G and LTE is no where near as bad as it was from 2G and 3G.
 
I see better battery life on LTE than on 3G ("4G"). The LTE radio is much faster and can get to a sleep state quicker when web browsing.

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I only get 2 bars of LTE at my apartment (still 25mbit download) and my battery life seems as good as it was on my old iPhone 4.
 
Honestly thought, and I actually came here to ask about it, my Iphone 5 seems to have WORSER battery life in comparison to my Iphone 3GS (and mind you, this 3GS lasted me from when I first got it when it was new several years back to now, so that's one darn impressive and resilient battery).

But yeah, since getting my Iphone 5, it does seem to drain a tad quicker. Which is odd because due to it being so much faster I waste quite a bit less time trying to load things :p .
 
spincut said:
Honestly thought, and I actually came here to ask about it, my Iphone 5 seems to have WORSER battery life in comparison to my Iphone 3GS (and mind you, this 3GS lasted me from when I first got it when it was new several years back to now, so that's one darn impressive and resilient battery).

But yeah, since getting my Iphone 5, it does seem to drain a tad quicker. Which is odd because due to it being so much faster I waste quite a bit less time trying to load things :p .
Click to expand...

Disable any location services you don't need. That'll help.
 
Terpfen said:
Disable any location services you don't need. That'll help.
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Yeah but that's most certainly not the reason, as I overlayed an identical backup of my 3GS onto my Iphone 5, and pretty sure that includes preferences.

Point being is that whatever location services preferences I am using on the 5, I was also likely using on my 3GS as well.
 
spincut said:
Yeah but that's most certainly not the reason, as I overlayed an identical backup of my 3GS onto my Iphone 5, and pretty sure that includes preferences.

Point being is that whatever location services preferences I am using on the 5, I was also likely using on my 3GS as well.
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No, the 3GS and iPhone 5 do not have the same location services on the same version of iOS. For example, services related to Siri aren't available on the 3GS.

Also, restoring from a backup of a 3GS onto the 5 may not have been the best of ideas. I've (anecdotally) noticed a decent difference between restoring from a backup and starting fresh. Battery calibration also helped the 5 get its legs.

Sorry, but all I can think of is that you have some sort of super battery in your 3GS. I've had the exact opposite experience of you. My 3GS' battery barely limped to the iPhone 4 finish line, which itself was getting pretty bad before I upgraded to the 5.
 
What is "battery calibration"?

Also, any specific reason why restoring a backup from a 3GS was a bad idea? Because it felt like a great idea to me, considering the ATT store transfer hardware was slow as molasses and they said it would take 6-8 hours. I did it from home and boom, had all my stuff and preferences. It was one of the big advantages to getting another Iphone. I would have trouble seeing anything really wrong with on a technical level. Outside of the battery issue it certainly hasn't negatively affected the phones performance.

As far as the location services being different...,yeah....they dont really seem that different. Sure siri is a new addition, but I doubt that having location service on for that drains the battery a lot more, heck so far I have barely used it (definitely not enough to cause an inordinate battery drain in comparison to my 3GS).
 
spincut said:
What is "battery calibration"?
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Charge the device up to 100% and leave it plugged in on that 100% charge for 2 hours. Unplug. Use normally without recharging until the device reaches 0% battery and turns itself off. Wait about 10 minutes. Plug the device back in and let it charge back to 100%, holding the home and sleep/wake buttons to reboot the device at some point during the process.

This calibrates the battery gauge to more accurately report your real battery life. Do it once a month.

Also, any specific reason why restoring a backup from a 3GS was a bad idea?
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Because the settings that you restored may or may not have the same effect on the iPhone 5, and in actuality may just be causing problems as those settings attempt to apply to something that isn't there anymore. You want to let CPU cycles chew in the background, be my guest.

As far as the location services being different...,yeah....they dont really seem that different. Sure siri is a new addition, but I doubt that having location service on for that drains the battery a lot more, heck so far I have barely used it (definitely not enough to cause an inordinate battery drain in comparison to my 3GS).
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I've never understood why someone asking for advice would then turn around and attempt to explain away said advice. Either follow it or don't. No skin off my back if you don't believe me. It's your phone.
 
Even when location services are enabled it only activates the GPS chip and uses power when you see the little arrow up by the battery percent. I don't know about you, but I hardly ever see it light up. Only a few apps trigger it (most commonly, weather, siri, maps obviously) so I really don't think location services takes any noticeable battery life.
 
SirMaster said:
Even when location services are enabled it only activates the GPS chip and uses power when you see the little arrow up by the battery percent. I don't know about you, but I hardly ever see it light up. Only a few apps trigger it (most commonly, weather, siri, maps obviously) so I really don't think location services takes any noticeable battery life.
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Location services run fairly constantly in the background. I see the indicator quite a bit.

Load the Camera app? Location services geotag you. Check the Weather? Location services try to find your location. And by default the iPhone has a location service enabled for getting time from your carrier, which triggers fairly often. And as a last example, if you tell Siri to remind you when you get to a specific place, the GPS will constantly track you until you get to the geofenced area. So if you tell Siri at 12 PM to remind you to do something when you get home, but you don't get home until 5 PM, you've had the GPS on for 5 hours due to permissions in location services.

A lot of this is useful and one may not want to disable these features. But the point is that they're still present and enabled.
 
Terpfen said:
Location services run fairly constantly in the background. I see the indicator quite a bit.

Load the Camera app? Location services geotag you. Check the Weather? Location services try to find your location. And by default the iPhone has a location service enabled for getting time from your carrier, which triggers fairly often. And as a last example, if you tell Siri to remind you when you get to a specific place, the GPS will constantly track you until you get to the geofenced area. So if you tell Siri at 12 PM to remind you to do something when you get home, but you don't get home until 5 PM, you've had the GPS on for 5 hours due to permissions in location services.

A lot of this is useful and one may not want to disable these features. But the point is that they're still present and enabled.
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Oh, Well I customize the locations services permissions. But I don't ever disable it completely. That would be way too inconvenient IMO.

I turned off cell network search, compass calibration, diagnostics and usage, genius for apps, location based iAds, setting time zone, traffic, and many apps that have no real need for location data.

The only apps that show that have used location services in the past 24 hours is Siri and Weather. And when those use it they only use it or a few seconds.
 
Terpfen said:
Because the settings that you restored may or may not have the same effect on the iPhone 5, and in actuality may just be causing problems as those settings attempt to apply to something that isn't there anymore. You want to let CPU cycles chew in the background, be my guest.
Click to expand...

You do realize you can just open up the task manager and DELETE stuff running in the background so as not to "waste CPU cycles". Because IOS is a common platform across multiple devices, I think this concept of broken settings is not an apt one. For instance, I observed my battery life doesn't feel quite as good, but otherwise there have been no odd errors or really any problems at all. All the apps were updated for the newest os and the old phone had the exact same OS running. I don't think it's quite as fraught with problems as you're assuming.

Terpfen said:
I've never understood why someone asking for advice would then turn around and attempt to explain away said advice. Either follow it or don't. No skin off my back if you don't believe me. It's your phone.
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And I've never understood why people are so bad at paying attention. I was never asking for advice. You know I'm not the OP, right? I made a comment about my personal experience with the phone, and that was the first post I made. No requests for advice, Your opinions came unsolicited, making this comment of yours a bit short sighted and dismissive seeming.
 
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