iOS5 and battery life

[nishishei]

Having compared it a number of times against identically configured iPhone 4 with iOS 4 I can say that that kind of a drop is not normal actually, at least not for the phones I've dealt with that have iOS 4 on them. With iOS 5 the drop does seem to correspond to 1% about every 3-5 minutes of actual use, while with iOS 4 it often takes almost twice that time for the same kind of a drop doing the same kinds of things. So, it's actually not normal, at least most certainly not for everyone by far.

So you're telling me the iPhone 4 on iOS4 gets 8-10 minutes per 1% drop? I call BS because I have my wife's phone with iOS4 right in front of me and sees it go down at about 5 minutes per 1% drop surfing Safari. Sorry.

Both phones are going down at about 4-6 minutes per 1% drop.

 

[nishishei]

Here's my iPhone 4S (DNR serial).

Usage consists of browsing on a mix of Wifi and 3G, making a few trades on the Ameritrade app, live Level II viewing. The Exchange email push was turned on (received about 8 emails), iMessage also turned on. Notifications turned on for text messages, phone, and emails.

No iCloud (deleted account completely), and all location services except for Maps were turned off.

This averaged to about 6 minutes per 1% drop. Brightness was at 1/3rd with auto turned off.

 

[C DM]

So you're telling me the iPhone 4 on iOS4 gets 8-10 minutes per 1% drop? I call BS because I have my wife's phone with iOS4 right in front of me and sees it go down at about 5 minutes per 1% drop surfing Safari. Sorry.

Both phones are going down at about 4-6 minutes per 1% drop.

Well, maybe given the way you have the phone configured and/or the location you are using it and/or anything else that might be running on it, might produce the results that you are seeing. No need to call BS or anything like that, if anything, we've seen that people are seeing all kinds of different results--but one thing holds: there are definitely quite a few who are seeing some real noticeable battery issues (just as there are some that are not seeing them and some that might even be seeing some real noticeable battery improvements). Just because someone is or isn't seeing them, doesn't mean that someone else might or might not--doesn't mean that there isn't an issue somewhere.

 

[nishishei]

Could it be that there's also a difference between carriers?

 

[kas23]

Has nothing to do with the carrier. My old iPhone 4 has iOS 5 on it right now. I have taken out the SIM and am using it as a iPod Touch. The battery life before ios 5 used to be fine. But, in stand-by, it will go from 70% to dead overnight. This simply wasn't happening before. And yes, I have data shut off and leave Wi-Fi on only. You can't blame this on a "working-in" period either.

 

[Roofy.]

i've noticed after getting rid of "local weather" my battery life has improved pretty noticeably. Still isn't as good as my iPhone 4, but good enough honestly.

For anyone confused, go into the weather app and disable local weather by pressing the little info icon. Before, every time I pulled down the notification center, it would try finding my current location to update the weather according to where I was. I realized thats a complete waste and just have it set to my local town.

stats:

66%
1 hour 52 mins usage
5 hours 53 minutes standby.

before I would be at around 1 hour 20 minutes probably with 66 battery left.

 

[Mad Mac Maniac]

For me I think the problem is reminders.. It keeps location services on constantly. All day long I have the little gps arrow up at the top of the screen. I just turned location services off for reminders and I'll see if it improves tomorrow

 

[coconutxyz]

i,m wondering maybe it is because of new features such as notification center cause such battery behaviour

 

[Fatboy71]

After i first installed iOS 5 my battery was terrible but i restored it today and set up as new, and now my iPhone's battery is back to normal

I saw similar, although I wouldn't say my battery life was terrible, just not as good since moving to iOS 5.

I done a restore as new and my battery life has defintely improved. Mine was on standby for 8-9 hours. It was at 100 percent before I went to bed, and 8-9 hours later it was still at 100 percent, that was in a 3G area too

----------

For me I think the problem is reminders.. It keeps location services on constantly. All day long I have the little gps arrow up at the top of the screen. I just turned location services off for reminders and I'll see if it improves tomorrow

You should only be seeing the gps arrow if your using a location based reminder.

 

[Wozza2010]

My battery life on my iPad 1 is awesome with ios5.

Much much better than ios4.

 

[scyap]

My friends and I updated our iPhone 4 from 4.3.3 to iOS 5 and felt that iOS 5 drains battery a lot faster...

Not jailbroken

 

[synagence]

My 4S has seemingly started to settle down a bit .... still going to do a full DFU restore at the weekend (someone i trust said it made their battery issues go away)

But since i did a 'calibrate' i'm getting 4 - 5 hours usage, 22hrs standby and still on 29% free which compares to my 4

Also, turned off Ping and Siri motion activation option

 

[Mad Mac Maniac]

You should only be seeing the gps arrow if your using a location based reminder.

ooooh yeah that makes sense. My wife had created a reminder on sunday to test out the feature and never checked the box to say completed. I share her reminders, so while that reminder was still unchecked our iPhones thought the task was uncompleted and continued to keep track of the location thus the battery continued to drain.

So I guess it's not really a good idea to create location based reminders for days in advance because then your battery will continue to drain until you go to the location and complete the reminder.

 

[qap]

Ok, my battery life is better with iOS 5 during normal use but is worse in standby.

With my other iPhone 3G with iOS 3.1.3 I get 2/3 days in standby, with the same usage... and I keep the same things on (Push notification on and airplane with wifi mode at home and 3G with no WiFi when I'm not at home). I still don't understand why iOS5 in standby drain the battery faster!

 

[fred2028]

For me, the battery life is definitely worse than iOS 4.x, however it's not as bad as losing 75% battery in 8 hours. Yet.

 

[RevToTheRedline]

My battery life is definitely worse also, I have a 4 on Verizon, compared I haven't run it completely dead since updating to iOS 5 yet but from my best recollection I'm getting 3-4 hours less usage time out of the phone. Even doing just SIMPLE stuff it ticks away a percent even couple minutes... But it was even worse before I did a hard reset.. I'd be sitting there and seeing it tick away a percent every minute of just having the screen on.

I have everything turned off, no iCloud, all location services off, notifications at a very minimum with no weather, Ping turned off.

I'm thinking about going back to the previous version just to get me through the day.

EDIT ADDITION: I just wanna add that I made an 11 minute call just now and the ratio of minutes per battery % drop on that call was 1.5 minutes per percent, so right now I'm getting approx 2.5 hours of talk time on 3G.. isn't it supposed to be like 6 or 8 hours? It's greatly down I can say that much.

 

[Fatboy71]

ooooh yeah that makes sense. My wife had created a reminder on sunday to test out the feature and never checked the box to say completed. I share her reminders, so while that reminder was still unchecked our iPhones thought the task was uncompleted and continued to keep track of the location thus the battery continued to drain.

So I guess it's not really a good idea to create location based reminders for days in advance because then your battery will continue to drain until you go to the location and complete the reminder.

All you need to do if you want to setup a reminder days in advance, is to do the following:

When you are in the Reminder app and you are in the section where you choose either a date for the reminder or a location for the reminder. You simply choose ON A DAY as well as selecting a location for the reminder to.

Then on the day you chose, the location feature (little GPS arrow will show) will switch on and then you will be alerted when you reach that location

 

[MooneyFlyer]

I don't know if it has been mentioned, but I think iOS 5 isn't reporting battery life properly. Once the phone gets down to 1% it actually stay on for an abnormally long time. Almost as if it still has 10% battery left. It took me forever to purposely kill my battery at 1% after iOS 5, as opposed to before where a minute on 1% would shut the phone down immediately.

That said, my 4S battery does drain much quicker than my 4 with basically the same settings.

My 4S has seemingly started to settle down a bit .... still going to do a full DFU restore at the weekend (someone i trust said it made their battery issues go away)

But since i did a 'calibrate' i'm getting 4 - 5 hours usage, 22hrs standby and still on 29% free which compares to my 4

Also, turned off Ping and Siri motion activation option

I took the nuclear option and did a restore this morning. I don't know if I did a DFU restore even though I attempted to follow one set of instructions.

Anyway, I did NOT enable:
- iCloud
- Location services
- Push
- BT

I did install my exchange email but not on push. I'm currently charging to 100% (though I have seen some flakiness with the % going from 98% to 100% then back to 98%)... we'll see how it goes.

 

[Stella]

I took the nuclear option and did a restore this morning. I don't know if I did a DFU restore even though I attempted to follow one set of instructions.

Anyway, I did NOT enable:
- iCloud
- Location services
- Push
- BT

I did install my exchange email but not on push. I'm currently charging to 100% (though I have seen some flakiness with the % going from 98% to 100% then back to 98%)... we'll see how it goes.

Try disabling automatic sending of Usage Data too.. that has helped out with battery life - in Dianogistics and Usage, in Settings -> General -> about.

 

[sigp6]

I don't know if it has been mentioned, but I think iOS 5 isn't reporting battery life properly. Once the phone gets down to 1% it actually stay on for an abnormally long time. Almost as if it still has 10% battery left. It took me forever to purposely kill my battery at 1% after iOS 5, as opposed to before where a minute on 1% would shut the phone down immediately.

That said, my 4S battery does drain much quicker than my 4 with basically the same settings.

This describes my experience to a T.

 

[MooneyFlyer]

Try disabling automatic sending of Usage Data too.. that has helped out with battery life - in Dianogistics and Usage, in Settings -> General -> about.

Will do. Thx. I'll have an update tonight.

Edit: was off - must have not enabled during setup

 

[Halcylon]

The real pain is services such as Siri, Location services, Bluetooth, and Notifications are all features that we should be able to use without such a cost to our batteries performance.

It doesn't make sense that Apple would allow such a weak powered product loose without testing something like that first. A friend of mine has the 4 with iOS5 and he noticed a significant loss in lifetime, so its something software related.

Without all the bells and whistles that make this phone cool, its nothing better than a Panasonic.

 

[EJ257]

I disable push notification on my exchange email and set it to update every 30 minutes. Turned off all the location services except for map, yelp, and weather forecast. I'm seeing battery usage levels closer to my 3GS now, It's was 100% this morning and now down to about 50%. Couple of days ago I was looking for the charger by 3PM

 

[kas23]

So, in Location Services --> System Services there is Traffic. I'm wondering what this option does exactly. I have not opened my Maps app once (proven by no arrow next to Maps app in Location Services, but there is a gray arrow next to Traffic. If I have not even opened Maps app, how could Traffic have an arrow next to it. Could this be showing that crowd-sourced traffic data is being collected?

 

[Young Spade]

I can heavily use my phone throughout the day with browsing, videos, and music and not need to charge. By the looks of it, there's a problem with something, or a big that randomly affects users.

I went from 8am to 9pm Monday with music, videos, and browsing among other things and got home with 30 or so percent of battery left.