iPhone 5s Battery Life Sucks

[KaptKaos]

Anyone have any ideas on how to improve this? Damn thing drops 70% in a few hours just sitting on my desk.

I've already done all of the notifications, location settings, search disabled, etc... that the articles say to do.

I've had it replaced once by Apple because of the crappy battery life.

I want to smash it into a wall!!!

Any other ideas?

[jyl]

Something is wrong w/ that phone, I'd guess. Last try, fully charge it then close all applications (double-click home button, flick each app up to close) and switch to airplane mode (so phone is not even looking for a WiFI or cellular signal). See what happens. Might help diagnosis.

[motion]

Make sure Bluetooth and Wifi are both turned off. They both suck batteries quickly.

Also, with some carriers (AT&T and others), if your signal is weak, your battery will drain very quickly.

[GH85Carrera]

I don't use bluetooth so I kill that. I have push on so my email comes in all the time. I can usually go for two days of light to normal use and have 25% to 30% battery life after 48 hours.

[motion]

Oh yeah, push email kills the battery, too.

[island911]

"You're holding it wrong" - Steve Jobs

Seriously, motion is spot-on one aspect - as tower signal strength weakens, the phone will bump-up the output to maintain connections. (all phones, on all carriers, do this)
Also, you can't always judge true signal strength from the bars displayed.

[motion]

Originally Posted by island911

"You're holding it wrong" - Steve Jobs

Seriously, motion is spot-on one aspect - as tower signal strength weakens, the phone will bump-up the output to maintain connections. (all phones, on all carriers, do this)
Also, you can't always judge true signal strength from the bars displayed.

I have very weak reception with Verizon on my iPhone 4S at one of my homes, and it does not affect battery life. I think it has something to do with the CDMA vs GSM radio used by different models. In the same house, my other iPhone 4S with AT&T would last a few hours and be completely dead.

[onewhippedpuppy]

I just got a company iPhone 5S through Verizon and rarely use it, I maybe charge it every 4 days and the battery is normally about 1/2 full.

[dtw]

I've had a 5S for several weeks now and am pleased with the battery life. When I got it though, I went into settings and tweaked a lot of the stuff mentioned above.

My iPhone 4 finally gave up the ghost, so I finally had to upgrade to the 5S. I had been grumpy about it b/c they didn't offer a 128GB version. Still, other than that, I've been blown away with the new phone. Between the fingerprint passcode and Siri, I have all but eliminated time spent looking at the screen while on the road (which for me is a lot of time).

[mikester]

I'm at the office today if you want to trade for a regular 5 with good battery life.

I'm on AT&T and when I have challenging signal that battery gets sucked down so hard I can hear the suction.

[Teutonics]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

I can usually go for two days of light to normal use and have 25% to 30% battery life after 48 hours.

Same here, I've been impressed with the battery life... at least compared to my 4S.

Once you've turned of push, etc., one other thing to check is Background App Refresh (in Settings-->General-->Background App Refresh).

If you leave your apps open in the background, this new feature will allow the app to continue to run and refresh. Only allow those apps that you know you would want to run in the background, such as google maps, runkeeper, or other GPS enabled apps that you want to continue to run in the background if you take a call or do some other function on the phone. Otherwise I turn everything else off and vigilantly keep apps cleared out of memory.

[wdfifteen]

There must be something wrong with that phone, Joe. I've never heard of such poor battery life.

[Z-man]

I have a battery case that doubles my battery life. Typically, I get nearly 2 days out of the battery, and the case nearly doubles that. It's a uNu -- Linky



As stated before, changing your setting can make a world of a difference. I fetch email every hour, and have bluetooth turned off unless I use it. - both of these were mentioned above.

A couple of other tips:

- Turn off auto-brightness, and set your screen brightness manually.
- Under General / Accessibility, set Reduce Motion to ON. This stops the screen '3D effect' and saves battery life.
- In General, go through all apps and turn off background app refresh on all apps you don't need this. (Most apps don't really need this.)
- If you have social media apps, log out of these when you aren't using them.
- Turn off automatic downloads for all APPs. (Settings / iTunes & App Store). You will have to manually update apps - but that's not a big deal, and can save on battery life.

Here's a good rule of thumb to help save battery life: turn off stuff that is set to automatically update, especially on APPs where you don't need this. For example, do you really need the Angry Birds app to update you with the latest score board?

Hope this helps,
-Z-man.

[KaptKaos]

I have done all of the settings changes, and it still sucks.

I swapped it out with another AT&T phone, and it's no better. Since the iPhone4s worked just fine, I am at a loss as to how a new phone could be so much worse.

[motion]

Is the location services arrow in the upper right corner always on?

[mikester]

You're doing something wrong. Let me know if you have a few minutes and this engineer will look at it...

[81Kremer930]

Sounds like my new Galaxy S4... I traded my little brother my new 5s for his Galaxy(to try something new), and the battery is terrible. The 5S was great, battery life is triple of the Samsung, the 5s is the perfect size, and easy to use.... as you can tell, I am somewhat regrettable of my decision...

[KaptKaos]

Originally Posted by motion

Is the location services arrow in the upper right corner always on?

Its off except for google maps.

[stomachmonkey]

If you blindfold me and drop me in TX, NJ or FL I can tell you which state I'm in based on how fast my battery drains.

NJ I'm charging every 4-5 hours. FL is good for 8-9 hours. TX I can go two days.

It's more about location / signal than the device.

[LakeCleElum]

I charge my Iphone 5 once every 2 days.....Besides what's been mentioned, how is your screen brightness?

Like said, kill Wi-Fi, close app's.....When I'm in areas of "no service" while on a dirt bike or snowmobile, it's off......G'luck