iPhone 5 battery worst case estimate
In this day and age when smartphones are becoming more and more advanced, it generally all boils down to what battery life a handset can bring, as there’s no real point in delivering a phone with all the features and stuff if the battery doesn’t last long enough. Obviously the latest smartphone to hit the mobile space is the iPhone 5, but how well does that iPhone 5 battery stand up when put to the test?
Well the guys over at CNN Money have put the iPhone 5 battery through tests to find out the worse case estimate. Apple estimates the iPhone 5 battery can deliver 8-hours of talk time, 225-hours of standby time, 40-hours of audio use, 10-hours of video use, 8-hours on 3G or LTE and 10-hours on WiFi, but all covered with ‘up to’ naturally.
To find out the worse case estimate for iPhone 5 battery life the guys used the Pandora app to continually play web radio, and disabled the iOS smartphone’s screen’s auto-lock option so the display stayed lit, and then left the device with the screen off, whilst Bluetooth, WiFi, and mobile broadband remained active although not linked to anything.
2-hours later, and checking the device the guys say the iPhone 5 is great but only by a small margin. The Web radio test lasted 7-hours 44-minutes, the on screen battery gauge after 24-hours if idling showed 85 percent, with each figure besting any Android based handset they have tested on LTE, but some on 3G have fared better.
On Saturday the guys spent 10-hours checking email, reading on the internet, looking up directions and tweeting, and the iOS smartphone still showed 32 percent charge come evening time, and still took a further three hours to drop below 10 percent.
However come Sunday five hours on airplane mode, along with three hours online, and a couple of tethering sessions sharing iPhone 5 LTE with a laptop shot the battery down to 52 percent, and the guys finalise by saying although the the iPhone 5 advances battery life, ‘in one aspect it only matches competitors,’ and as such it would still be wise to carry a charger and cable if you intend using the iPhone 5 all day long.
So we’d like our iPhone 5 owning readers out there to let us know what they think of the battery life of their iPhone 5, do you think it’s great or not so, feel free to let us know by dropping us a line to our comments area below.
Comments
38 thoughts on “iPhone 5 battery worst case estimate”
I have noticed that the battery on my iphone 5 has been really bad the last few days. With a few text messages, phone calls and a bit of surfing, my battery is lucky to not go flat by the time I get home from work after a full nights charging. I have turned the brightness down and notifications off, but hasn’t made much difference. I will probably take the phone into an Apple store this week to get them to have a look at it. If they can’t get it any better, I will have to return it and get something else.
Same here. I think it’s much worse than the 4. I’m good to make it half a day with continual use. Even with my location and Bluetooth off I’m at 40% 5 hours into the day – little use because I’m at work!
Definitely a lot better than my old iPhone 4. My 5 was unplugged on sat morning at 7:20AM. It’s now Monday Morning 10:44AM and its down to 47%
Note I do switch my phone off at midnight but still It’s quite a noticeable difference.
Definitely a lot better than my old iPhone 4. My 5 was unplugged on sat morning at 7:20AM. It’s now Monday Morning 10:44AM and its down to 47% Note I do switch my phone off at midnight but still It’s quite a noticeable difference.
Battery life has been awful on my iPhone 5. I leave work on a full charge and by the time I get home (a 40-minute train ride) it’s down 20-30%. It’s mostly browsing or reading articles; generally, no streaming of any kind. It’s much worse than my iPhone 4.
My battery life is nowhere near the above performance. I haven’t gotten more than 6 hours of usage under any circumstance. All of the usage is mainly surfing, texting, and email. It’s ridiculous.
My battery life is a joke! A few emails, 1-2 phone calls and a few facebook checks and the battery is down to 20% by lunch time, from 100% at 9 am! And yes, I keep all my apps closed and not running in the background, have restored from Itunes and not from the icloud and have notifications to a minimum… but what is the point in having a smartphone if you can’t use its functions because they affect the battery….. I do not use the phone any different from my old 3GS but battery life is much worst now (I would say that the battery on the Iphone5 drains twice as fast as the 3GS). I have asked Vodafone for a replacement of the habdset which should arrive tomorrow!
My battery life is horrible. I checked emails, sent a few texts, checked fb and the weather, made one phone call and was at 20% by 10:30 am.
Iphone battery usage has always been quick!!! dont buy iphone if you expect good battery life
Had a Blackberry Torch switched it for iPhone 5> Now thinkiing ill take that back and use my old reliable Blackberry Torch until BB10 devices come out. If that doesnt work Ill give Samsung a try.
Should have known, Apple products have always been overhyped!!!!
My battery life on my iPhone 5 has been awesome. I unplugged my phone this morning at 7am and by 10 it was still at 100%. It has 2 gmail accounts setup as exchange accounts and is on LTE 100% of the time (in this time it sat at my desk unused) Most days the past week it is only at >50% by 11pm. Only yesterday was the battery life “bad” due to my being in the hills and LTE signal being intermittent. Switching back and forth is pretty hard on the battery.
I am on Verizon in the Los Angeles area FYI.
mine was really at first bad but after recalibrating the iphone battery I can use 3g/wifi/bt and still be on 52% after a whole day of normal use.
How did you recalibrate
I can’t say I feel sorry for the ppl that bit the bullet and bought the iphone 5 before they even released the specs on the device because they “had to have it”. As soon as I saw it had a 1400mAh battery I dismissed it completely because I knew it was going to suck. In my opinion no smartphone these days should be released unless it has a baseline 2000mAh battery. Iphone will prob do what moto did last year with their razr Maxx and release an iphone 5S with larger battery because so many customers are going to complain about it. Apple was trying to be the thinnest 4G smartphone like the falsely claimed on release…
At 0830 iphone5 at 100% charge. By 0930 it was down to 90%. All i had done was send 3 texts and check e-mails once. Yesterday took it off the charger at 1130 and by 2100 it was done to 4% charge with only a few texts, one 5 min call and about 20 mins browsing. What a disaster.
I will add my two cents and say I have yet to make it a whole day without needing to recharge my phone after being fully charged the night before. LTE is not available where I live so I have disabled it. It made little difference. Yes I do close all my apps. Screen brightness is at 50%. The iphone 5 battery SUX!!!!!! I’m going to buy a mophie when available. (There goes my slim new iphone feature)
battery is utter crap,, my 2 year old iPhone 4 battery out lasts it by about 40%. I’ve had 2 iphone5 now, sent the first one back because i thought the battery was faulty,, turns out the 2nd one was exactly the same. about 4 hours use and its dead . just listening to music and texts and emails.. . apple told me they knew there was a fault and they are working on an update. i returned it ,, if they come up with an update that works i might get another..
I am in Canada and we basically only have 3G. My battery life is horrible. Even with all the extras turned off including brightness location services and push notification. I just upgraded from the 4s which was Amazing wish I could go back.
Unplug at 7 am by 3 pm it is down to 5-7% battery life this is daily. Blackberry would last all day & razor max would last all day also. Being used exactly the same.
l really hate the.iphone5 coz of the battery. i.recently bought it and i have to charge it everyday whhile the s3 can take upto 1.8 days
What the heck is this guy on? Not even close to these statistics. It’s the crappiest battery since the production of iPhone. I had them all up to the 5. I love the phone so much but the battery barley lasts a whole day and the sad part is that I use it 40 percent less than I did with my 4 and 4s.
Have you guys cycled your batteries 1 or 2 times?
my iphone battery is lasting only about 8 hrs, I have kept all app turned off, talk and texting has been limited. It lost about lost 8% while talking to apple care when i called to complain. They told me to do a complete erase and rest of the phone which seem to to help some but it still barley made it through the day. They are sending me out a replacement phone over night. They told me that it should last 2 days with moderate use without having to recharge. Hope the new phone works better for me this time! Hope the rest of you too can get yours exchanged. Maybe there was a bad batch of phones? Good Luck with you all!
i noticed a big improvement turning off LTE because i do not have LTE in my area and the phone kept searching for signal. This made a big improvement.
I bought the iphone 5 on the second day of release in the UK and am suffering from really bad battery life, i have restored it twice and it still is bad it only lasts about 8 hours doing the same tasks i use to do with my iphone 4 which would last atleast a day and a half. sometimes i lose 10% in 5 minutes its a joke bring and update out apple !
i thought it was just me but my iphone 5 battery life is very disappointing… it was good for the first week, now i have to worry wen i leave home what websites i open up…. P.S i uncharged my phone at 7am its 10am its at 52% i havent even done much but text and watch one youtube video
My battery life was shockingly bad! I’d leave it on sleep with 18-20% battery it would just die about an hour later.
Found a fix!
Settings > General > Reset > reset network settings
having owned for just over a week, my battery life is no better than that of the iphone 4 I just sold. On a negative my 3g signal is not as good. Places I used my 4 dont pick up with the 5. In fact if you own a 4s I see little point in an upgrade. Come on apple, its no wonder the Late Steve Jobs held back with this product and he was right too, its still not the massive step forward away from other brands that it should have been. Will be very wary to jump into the next generation iPhone, only reason for this is that i USE A mac book pro at home and they do work well via the cloud together.
The battery life on my Iphone 5 is terriable. Extremely disappointed, however there is a fix. Turn all fast cool features of the phone and the battery works like a charm. What a joke.
My battery drains like there is no tomorow . My power drops at a rate that i got to charge the phone 2 to 3 times a day …. With the old 3gs i was able to last all day . Am starting to wonder if it might be a defect ? Its really not normal… 🙁
My iPhone 5 battery is terrible. I am returning before my 30 day period ends with AT&T. I will getting the galaxy 3! I am very disappointed.
I’m on my second iPhone 5….this is worst battery life I’ve seen on any model iPhone…ever….and I’ve owned every model. Never make it EVEN CLOSE to 24 hours till the battery is at 1%. After doing MAJOR testing with boths phones, Apple engineering actually called ME and I ran a battery profile (logger) to help them gather info for how they created such a FAILED iOS. I asked if they suspect a hardware failure (which I cannot rule out at this time), and they wouldn’t confirm/deny. Remember what the band-aid was for the iPhone 4 antenna that was ADMITTED BY APPLE AS BEING FAULTY…..a $2 bumper. That’s like buying a new car with loud wind noise, and the car manufacturer gives you a set of headphones to drown the noise out. FAIL.
Apple better get their head out of their rearend….quickly.
I agree. I use my iPhone to check Facebook. Twitter and play games along with normal messages and very little calls. Reckon I get 5 hours. It’s crap!
85% after 24 hours? That’s almost a dream. My iphone 5 drained 30% in 1 hour and 15 minutes!! I don’t know if this is normal or if I should be returning the phone??
There are two huge threads about the bad battery life in the Apple Community forums. My iphone 5 doesn’t get anywhere near the advertised battery life and Apple IS aware of this and is tracking some people’s phone usage and battery issues. I’m one of those people. I got better battery life with my iphone 4 by far. Hold off getting this phone as this is a problem like I’ve never seen on any my other Apple products. This is really bad. Some of us have reset the phone, turned off all push notifications, turned down brightness, turned off LTE altogether and are still not getting that great of battery life.
I will return this phone if this isn’t fixed as it’s too expensive an item for me to have to worry about usage and battery all the time.
The worst phone battery I ever had. Iphone 5 would be my last iphone
That is why we supply a battery case for iphone 5
So you should have a esorun battery case for iphone 5 which supply extra 3000mAh power