Why does my battery life suck?

[ernbrdn]

Since installing ios 6 I have been skeptical about battery life. My thinking was that I used my phone more than normal, or system services were eating battery life. I have since disabled most services, and I'm not using my phone near as much as I was but the battery life is still dismal at best.
Let me say standby time is awesome. It will sit in disturbed all day no problem but as soon as I begin using my phone the battery sinks like a ship. Usage may only get 4 hours with 18 hours standby if I'm lucky. Screen brightness is set to around 10% but that only prolongs the inevitable. Example I listen to an hour podcast with downcast and my battery drops 20% I've never seen this before. Any ideas?



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[slalomskie]

Sometimes you have to restore as new in order to get the full effect sometimes when you restore from backup when you upgrade to a new iOS your battery life suffers.


Sent from my iPhone 5 baby.

 

[BLiNK]

wow, brightness at 10%?? i could not deal with that. maybe try doing a Reset All Settings

(Settings >General > Reset and tap Reset All Settings) + a power cycle and see where that gets you

 

[Skippy]

Sometimes you have to restore as new in order to get the full effect sometimes when you restore from backup when you upgrade to a new iOS your battery life suffers.


Sent from my iPhone 5 baby.

This were the case for me. Restored first with my backup from my 4s, battery draining like 15% just over night. Restored and choose not to restore from backup and choose as new and now it's like 3% overnight.

 

[Rene Ritchie]

I always set up as new. Always turns out better for me.

 

[Ringfinger]

I have a question on this topic. I too was having crappy battery life on my iPhone 5. So, this morning I set the slider on icloud to on for contacts, enabled icloud, then did a backup which I assume put my contacts on the cloud and nothing else? I had like a 5.6 MB backup. Next I restored as new. It didn't seem to bring over anything, settings, photo, etc. I then turnd on icloud and contacts and it downloaded to my phone.

Did I do all of this right as far as not bringing in junk from before and just getting my contacts back? I want to make sure 100% that I don't have settings and junk left over so I can be assured of a new iphone and optimal battery life. I appreciate any input.

 

[ernbrdn]

I would love to restore as new I just don't comfortably feel that I can. I have several databases on my phone in apps and it has been my experience the backup and restore in these apps are sketchy at best. I wonder if apple will ever let you selectively restore certain app data. I'm OCD about my text messages as well, but that's a personal problem for a therapist.

Resetting all settings seems to have helped without any data loss. A little bit still not 5.1.1 battery life but I will trade charging more often for the knowledge my data is still in tact. Sucks to have to choose though.

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[Ringfinger]

Well. A day after restoring to factory settings I don't feel much better off. I woke up and went down 10% overnight while in do not disturb mode. I get around 6 hours of use and 17 hours of standby. I do have my gmail pushed to my phone and all my apps have location services and push notifications enabled. Will that negatively impact things? It would seem to get the full use out of an app you would want it that way. I am thoroughly disgusted. This is basically installing apps all day yesterday over 3G and wifi. I have brightness down and close all my apps regularly. What gives? I am quite dissPointed with this to be honest with you.

 

[Bazza1]

Battery life taking a hit seems to be a constant issue with Apple upgrades, be they iOS or Mac OS. Not sure why this is or why Apple hasn't gotten round to issuing these updates without this issue, but it seems to come up every time.
Eventually, Apple does seem to offer a patch (sorry, Apple....update) that mitigates some of the complaints, so that suggests that it is something in their OS coding that causes the problem. Or its a sneaky way to encourage its current users to get frustrated with their current devices and buy into the next product. Built-in obsolescence.

 

[ThePinkChameleon]

Well. A day after restoring to factory settings I don't feel much better off. I woke up and went down 10% overnight while in do not disturb mode. I get around 6 hours of use and 17 hours of standby. I do have my gmail pushed to my phone and all my apps have location services and push notifications enabled. Will that negatively impact things? It would seem to get the full use out of an app you would want it that way. I am thoroughly disgusted. This is basically installing apps all day yesterday over 3G and wifi. I have brightness down and close all my apps regularly. What gives? I am quite dissPointed with this to be honest with you.

If you want to conserve on your battery life even more, here are a few more suggestions: set your gmail to fetch - and choose how often, instead of push. Also, for all your apps that are in notification center and location on, minimizing those would also conserve battery life. Now for those apps, if you need them set with location on/notification center, then you have to adjust yourself to how its using your battery life because its an option you want and how you want your phone to work/notify you. At that point, i'd say plug in(often) to keep your battery charged, so that you can have the features set to enjoy your phone the way YOU want

 

[Eileen89]

I never set up as new. My iPhone 5 has the same great battery life that my iPhone 4S had that I restored from. If you were having issues with the battery life on your old iPhone maybe setting it up as new is a good thing. However, if you weren't having issues, I don't think restoring from a backup will cause any issues with the battery life on your new iPhone.

 

[Ringfinger]

If you want to conserve on your battery life even more, here are a few more suggestions: set your gmail to fetch - and choose how often, instead of push. Also, for all your apps that are in notification center and location on, minimizing those would also conserve battery life. Now for those apps, if you need them set with location on/notification center, then you have to adjust yourself to how its using your battery life because its an option you want and how you want your phone to work/notify you. At that point, i'd say plug in(often) to keep your battery charged, so that you can have the features set to enjoy your phone the way YOU want

Here is my latest:

That is after doing all I did yesterday and setting overnight as posted prior. I have set all my yahoo mail accounts to fetch every 1 hour as they are not as critical. The GMail I like to stay on top of and it is only one account. Will it being push impact it that much? As far as notification center, I get it. the less the better. As far as location, I have to have it set for map apps, weather apps, and yelp and the like, right? Right now I have location on for camera, cnn,key ring,mapquest,maps,redlaser, runkeeper,siri,speedtest,TWC,twitter,weather and yelp. is that over doing it? Is 6 1/2 hours fine? It does not seem so.

 

[Ringfinger]

Saw this on another board, someone went into location privacy>location services>system services and turned all off except sell network search and diagnostics and usage.
What does that all do?

 

[ThePinkChameleon]

Ringfinger that's not terrible batt life compared to some I've seen or heard about. But like Rose had suggested, sometimes restoring as a new phone and just having icloud throw your contacts & calendar on may be the best route for an improvement. Yes it could be a PITA because you have to redwld everything again, but if you get better battery life than what you're seeing now....it would be worth it right the whole diag & usage thing is for Apple It gets sent from your device automatically (nightly? cant remember) for any type of crash or error that may occur on your device/iOS. I've had mine turned off since I got my 4S on day one (nov 2011)

Also, here's an article I had bookmarked on my iPad in regards to conserving batt life on the i5. Maybe they'll be some tips I didn't think to mention to you, or even one or two you may not know of.
Managing battery life for iOS 5 devices | Macworld

---------- Post Merged at 12:42 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 12:42 PM ----------

Ringfinger that's not terrible batt life compared to some I've seen or heard about. But like Rose had suggested, sometimes restoring as a new phone and just having icloud throw your contacts & calendar on may be the best route for an improvement. Yes it could be a PITA because you have to redwld everything again, but if you get better battery life than what you're seeing now....it would be worth it right the whole diag & usage thing is for Apple It gets sent from your device automatically (nightly? cant remember) for any type of crash or error that may occur on your device/iOS. I've had mine turned off since I got my 4S on day one (nov 2011)

Also, here's an article I had bookmarked on my iPad in regards to conserving batt life on the i5. Maybe they'll be some tips I didn't think to mention to you, or even one or two you may not know of.
http://www.macworld.com/article/1163372/managing_battery_life_for_ios_5_devices.html

 

[BLiNK]

Battery life taking a hit seems to be a constant issue with Apple upgrades, be they iOS or Mac OS. Not sure why this is or why Apple hasn't gotten round to issuing these updates without this issue, but it seems to come up every time.
Eventually, Apple does seem to offer a patch (sorry, Apple....update) that mitigates some of the complaints, so that suggests that it is something in their OS coding that causes the problem. Or its a sneaky way to encourage its current users to get frustrated with their current devices and buy into the next product. Built-in obsolescence.

i have often wondered the same.. guess we'll never know

 

[Ringfinger]

Thanks for the link. That was helpful. We will see over the weekend where I stand and I will report back. I have a lot removed from notification center, location services, etc. Hopefully that all will help. I just felt that 6 1/2 hours was small compared to all the 8-9 hours I am seeing. Now that was a lot of wi-fi downloading and installing and configuring of apps if that makes any difference.

 

[ThePinkChameleon]

Ok great Ring. Perhaps the few tweaks you did will give you more out of your battery that your looking for.

 

[Ringfinger]

Ok great Ring. Perhaps the few tweaks you did will give you more out of your battery that your looking for.

Hopefully. Where are you at for battery life?

 

[ThePinkChameleon]

Hopefully. Where are you at for battery life?

Well, I've never updated to ios6 because my phone has been running great on 5.0.1. Yep! Still on that iOS lol. As for my batt stats, I just posted a screen shot last week in the ios5 forum. It was something like 2 days 1hr standby with 8hrs40mins usage with 7% left. ??? Something like that.

Dare i say, Plus there's not much in ios6 that really interested me except for the DnD feature but I've gone this long without it, and well, that little toggle mute switch on the side above the volume up/down works fine for me At some point in the future I may upgrade, or I may just get the i5 and experience iOS 6 that way instead

 

[Ringfinger]

Wow, that is some good battery life. I am jealous!