iOS 5 GM Battery Life

[auero]

Before I even start, I am a registered developer and no I didn't register to get iOS 5 early. I'm looking to see if my issue is software or hardware.

For the passed two days I've charge my phone to 100% and unplugged it around 11pm/12am. When I wake up at roughly 8am my phone is completely dead. Nothing running running in the background or any reminders set. Through the day my battery life rapidly drops without using it causing me to at least charge it 2-3 times a day.

My question is has anyone seen this issue? I've been looking around (specifically twitter) and haven't seen a whole lot of complaints on this so I figured I'd give a shot asking here. I'm more concerned that it might be my phone? The battery life was pretty good prior to installing the gm so it doesn't make sense.

 

[saving107]

I've had iOS 5 on my iPhone 4 since the GM was released on wednesday and I would actually say that my battery life has improved since iOS 4.3.5

I did a test over the weekend and I managed to get 8 hrs of full usage out of my phone (before it hovered around 6 1/2-7hrs) with almost 36 hours of standby time.

• I have 3 location based reminders set
• I played multiple games (Words with Friends, World of Goo, Real Racing 2, Osmos etc...)
• Streamed audio from rdio (while on wifi)
• Made phone calls
• Used twitter
• iMessage
• Took pictures
• Wirelessly sent music and photos to my iPhone
• and a full iCloud back-up (first time)

 

[auero]

I've had iOS 5 on my iPhone 4 since the GM was released on wednesday and I would actually say that my battery life has improved since iOS 4.3.5

I did a test over the weekend and I managed to get 8 hrs of full usage out of my phone (before it hovered around 6 1/2-7hrs) with almost 36 hours of standby time.

• I have 3 location based reminders set
• I played multiple games
• Made phone calls
• Used twitter
• iMessage
• Took pictures
• Wirelessly sent music and photos to my iPhone
• and a full iCloud back-up (first time)

.

I appreciate your reply. You're not the first to tell me it's improved which had me question if it was perhaps the hardware. Only good news is that I have a new phone coming since mine is out of warranty already.

 

[jamespa66]

I have actually noticed better battery life on my iPhone 4 with IOS 5 GM.
The last beta release I did notice a significant battery drain.
When I first loaded the GM release I did the normal data restore and still noticed the drain so choose to reload IOS 5 GM again. The second load I did not do a restore from backup. Not sure if there was something that was getting restored causing the drain but things are great doing a 100% clean rebuild from scratch with no data restore.

 

[saving107]

I appreciate your reply. You're not the first to tell me it's improved which had me question if it was perhaps the hardware. Only good news is that I have a new phone coming since mine is out of warranty already.

I forgot to mention that I set up my iPhone a new, I never restore from a back-up when Apple releases a major update (like going from iOS 4.3.5 - 5.0).

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Mine was at 100% yesterday when I arrived home at about 6PM (car charger dock). No calls since then, but checked some emails and whatnot. Wifi, 3G, and Bluetooth are on, no location-based reminders.

Right now (18 hours later) I'm at 77% battery.

 

[Xenc]

Battery life looks the same to me. Maybe you had an app running that was actively using the GPS? (ie. with location icon in status bar)

 

[BamaATL]

Battery life has been very good for me. Better than 4.x.

I setup mine as "new" as well when I installed 5.0 GM.

 

[jrodsep]

Actually I have had the opposite of the OP. In fact, last night I unplugged my phone around 10PM, when I woke up this morning it still had 100% battery. I have currently ESPN Scorecenter sending me notifications, email and Fahrenheit weather app and with 4.3.3 my battery life was awful but 5.0 GM I can go almost 2 days with one charge and with light use of the phone.

 

[auero]

Very odd as I setup the phone as new when installing. Maybe I'll give reinstalling another shot. No location apps are running, not to mention I turned off the weather and stock widgets. I only loaded one or two apps onto the phone anyway.

 

[jamespa66]

Actually I have had the opposite of the OP. In fact, last night I unplugged my phone around 10PM, when I woke up this morning it still had 100% battery. I have currently ESPN Scorecenter sending me notifications, email and Fahrenheit weather app and with 4.3.3 my battery life was awful but 5.0 GM I can go almost 2 days with one charge and with light use of the phone.

jrodsep, was this a clean load or did you restore data after installing 5 GM? Just starting to notice a trend on this thread as well as on a couple other forums I follow.

 

[adztaylor]

Battery life I'd say has been the same for me using my iPhone 4 for usage. However standby has improved massively.

I restored from backup.

 

[Yumunum]

Crud, so I should probably re-install everything when I get iOS 5? :/ *bad memories from Android phones...*

 

[TOOFY]

Before I even start, I am a registered developer and no I didn't register to get iOS 5 early. I'm looking to see if my issue is software or hardware.

For the passed two days I've charge my phone to 100% and unplugged it around 11pm/12am. When I wake up at roughly 8am my phone is completely dead. Nothing running running in the background or any reminders set. Through the day my battery life rapidly drops without using it causing me to at least charge it 2-3 times a day.

My question is has anyone seen this issue? I've been looking around (specifically twitter) and haven't seen a whole lot of complaints on this so I figured I'd give a shot asking here. I'm more concerned that it might be my phone? The battery life was pretty good prior to installing the gm so it doesn't make sense.

This was an issue with beta 2 and 3 i observed on my iPad 2 and iP4 as a developer. After beta 4 came out i did not see this issue with beta 5, & 6 so on and so forth.

Be sure to setup as new device and then restore. Hope it helps - because it worked for me.

 

[jrodsep]

jrodsep, was this a clean load or did you restore data after installing 5 GM? Just starting to notice a trend on this thread as well as on a couple other forums I follow.

Clean restore. I always do a restore and set up as new.

 

[nooaah]

I restored iOS 5 from a 4.3.3 jailbroken profile - figured I'd take a shot since I just clean restored a week ago. Other than Infinity Blade getting the same horrendous lag, the phone itself is much smoother and the battery is, as far as I can tell, no different than before (which is to say it's pretty damn good).

 

[Xenc]

Crud, so I should probably re-install everything when I get iOS 5? :/ *bad memories from Android phones...*

I assure you there's no difference on battery life between restoring from backup and setting up a new phone and recreating the same environment. Explore the contents of the iPhone backup. There's nothing there that will cause loss of battery...

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Crud, so I should probably re-install everything when I get iOS 5? :/ *bad memories from Android phones...*

I don't see any evidence in this thread or elsewhere that doing so would make a difference. I restored from backup on my iOS5 GM and battery life is fine.

 

[Yumunum]

I don't see any evidence in this thread or elsewhere that doing so would make a difference. I restored from backup on my iOS5 GM and battery life is fine.

True, no "evidence" But I do wonder why everyone is suggesting that a clean-slate'll solve this problem :/ Hmm

 

[Gdgtguru]

I assure you there's no difference on battery life between restoring from backup and setting up a new phone and recreating the same environment. Explore the contents of the iPhone backup. There's nothing there that will cause loss of battery...

Agreed.

I too am having the same battery life issue with the GM. Some troubleshooting has led me to believe it is related to my work Exchange account. If I remove the account from the phone, the battery life returns to normal.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

True, no "evidence" But I do wonder why everyone is suggesting that a clean-slate'll solve this problem :/ Hmm

I think it's just asking questions - i.e. eliminating variables. At this point the few battery problems reported here on MR don't seem to correlate with fresh install vs. restore. However you might get more relevant data on one of the dev forums, where there are more Beta users.

 

[sziehr]

I can say that i have installed it on several devices all CDMA iPhone 4 and they all are showing signs of premature battery drain. This is compared to both 4.xx and beta 7. The beta 7 was rock solid and had battery life comparable to 4.xx series. I have noticed something strange I take an iPhone off the charger and it has nothing running yet the usage says 5 hours of use and i know for a fact the phone was dark the entire day no use. All i can seem to figure is iCloud is draining there better life. This happened in beta 5 or 6 for me. I am not sure what they can do except an update to fix this random smattering of battery issues. I have clean installed and recover from back all show the same issues. i am starting to wonder if the IPSW got messed up during the download cause i have used it to install on all CDMA phones

 

[zorinlynx]

Do you guys with battery drain have Skype installed? A coworker had battery drain problems, and he said the phone was warm all the time. Uninstalling Skype fixed the problem.

He doesn't use Skype much so it wasn't a big loss to him, but you might want to consider trying this to at least see if it's the problem. GPS apps, media playing apps and VoIP apps are the only ones allowed by Apple to run in the background, so you should target those first.

 

[mrockm01]

Do you guys with battery drain have Skype installed? A coworker had battery drain problems, and he said the phone was warm all the time. Uninstalling Skype fixed the problem.

He doesn't use Skype much so it wasn't a big loss to him, but you might want to consider trying this to at least see if it's the problem. GPS apps, media playing apps and VoIP apps are the only ones allowed by Apple to run in the background, so you should target those first.

I have poor battery on the GM. Significantly worse than 4.3.5

And I have Skype on my phone, but logged out so that shouldn't effect battery life

 

[Shanpdx]

I do see the battery life bit lower compared to the previous version.

I do not leave too many app open, not sure what is causing this battery life difference.