Viewing 26 posts - 1 through 26 (of 26 total)
  • Iphone SE battery life has gone….rubbish
  • jekkyl
    Full Member

    I love my SE it’s a great phone, the perfect size to reach all parts of the screen with my thumb while holding the phone, except the battery life seems to have taken a nose dive in the last month. It can go from 30% to 5% within the space of a couple of minutes it seems. When I go out for the day or on longer rides I have to take a little usb charger thing, which is a PITA.
    I don’t usually use it for Strava as I have a Garmin.
    Has anyone else experienced a drop off with an SE/5 or 6. Hasn’t Apple been told off in the past for messing around with battery life or was that over something else?
    Or Any tips to make it better?

    jam-bo
    Full Member

    get a new battery fitted.

    gonefishin
    Free Member

    Apple were “told off” for using software to maximise the life of old batteries. Yes the slowed the phones down but it was done to try and save the battery. Basically you need to replace the battery. I had a similar problem with a 5 and after replacing the batter the issue went away. My parents now use that handset.

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    martymac
    Full Member

    Lithium batteries have a finite lifespan, you can only charge them up so many times until they’re done. .
    It’s worth getting a new battery fitted, the rest of the phone will be fine.

    wwaswas
    Full Member

    My wife had this done.

    Two days later her phone got a little wet (she made a call when it was raining) water got into the case and it all burned out. Went back to the place that did it ‘tough – read the small print’.

    Rio
    Full Member

    Ask the phone how much its battery has deteriorated – settings->battery->battery health. If it’s bad then Apple charge I think £45 for a replacement, or a local phone wrangler will do it for less, or do it yourself with a kit from Amazon or EBay. I just replaced Mrs R’s 5s battery myself (wasn’t worth getting anyone else to do it as it was only a stop-gap) and it didn’t take long and still works.

    clubby
    Full Member

    In the battery setting it’s gives a health percentage. Anything below 90% and you need a new battery. Fairly cheap to get done these days. I’ll be keeping mine going as long as possible. New phones are just too big.

    P20
    Full Member

    I had my old SE done before the price hike at the start of the year, authorised repairer (CPW) through apple. Worked fine after that.

    paladin
    Full Member

    I got New battery fitted free by Apple (phone was just under a year old), itd started dying really quickly, especially when out in cold weather

    superleggero
    Free Member

    I had a similar battery life experience with a 6 and replaced it myself with a kit from Amazon. Kit came with all the tools required to do the job at under £20. A bit fiddly – plenty of patience and steady hand required. Many instructional videos on YouTube which helped. Done over 2 months ago and has brought the phone back to full operational capacity.

    If you’re not inclined to do it yourself then an independent or Apple will do it for a proportionately higher rate.

    peterno51
    Full Member

    Are you using low power mode, where the battery indicator goes yellow?

    Much as it pains me to say it, have you turned it off and on again. Best to do this after making sure all apps are closed down first, i.e. double tap and swipe up all the apps to close.

    (Sorry if your sucking eggs as this point)

    footflaps
    Full Member

    My 6s started dieing really quickly, I went into the Apple store and they diagnosed a problem with GPS being on all the time even though Apps weren’t allowed to use it unless running in the foreground. Think I had to delete and re-install a few apps to fix it.

    maccruiskeen
    Full Member

    Ask the phone how much its battery has deteriorated – settings->battery->battery health

    while you’re there scroll down to see which apps are making the most use of the battery – you can toggle between seeing which app is using the most power and which is getting used the most – helps you see if its your habits with the phone are battery hungry (ie you have you are using the phone a lot) or if apps in the background are power hungry

    CountZero
    Full Member

    Hasn’t Apple been told off in the past for messing around with battery life or was that over something else?

    That’s Li-ion battery tech for you, it affects every mobile phone, regardless of make or country of origin, and, with the technology that’s currently available, there’s bugger-all you, Apple, or anyone else can do about it.
    It’s also worth noting that all Li-ion batteries are potentially very dangerous, Apple are trying to discourage people from buying batteries from other sources, because of the fire risk, which often results in accusations in the media about how dangerous iPhones are; Samsung proved that poor QC of their own batteries can result in bad publicity, and there is CCTV footage of an Apple tech working on a phone when a battery explodes in front of him!
    My own iP6+, which is coming up on five years old is showing signs of the battery deteriorating, the level really drops off very quickly during the day now, the battery check shows it has 75% of its original capacity left, and it’s clearly affecting overall performance.
    I’ll be replacing it soon, so I’m not bothered, I’ll flog it, or possibly see if I can get a new battery fitted by Apple, and maybe keep it as a backup; I’ll most likely pass it on, it works fine apart from power drain.

    phil5556
    Full Member

    Looks like Apple are doing SE batteries for £45 again.

    Miss5556 got a new phone when she took hers in for a new battery, they just swapped it over for her.

    https://support.apple.com/en-gb/iphone/repair/service/battery-power

    drlex
    Free Member

    ^ I also ended up with a new SE, when the Apple mail-in/out left me with a non-functioning iPhone. Good result as the screen was pretty scratched up.

    mogrim
    Full Member

    I changed my daughter’s iPhone5 battery when it started to fail, wasn’t very hard using a kit bought off Amazon. Couple of things to be aware of: it obviously voids any guarantee you might have with Apple (not the case if you use the official service channel), and the batteries might be reconditioned (i.e. not new) with similar issues to the battery you’re swapping out…

    In my case the phone was old enough not to make it worthwhile using an Apple store to fix it, but it’s something to be aware of.

    hooli
    Full Member

    I replaced mine with something similar to this:

    https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Geniune-Replacement-Battery-For-iPhone-SE-5SE-100-Oem-Full-Capacity-1624mAh/123868055402?hash=item1cd71c876a:g:DJgAAOSwm4tdTBBY

    Took about 20 mins and not as hard as it looks, the phone has been as good as new since.

    Smudger666
    Full Member

    Timpsons – £29.95 fitted. sorted my SE battery issues.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    Hasn’t Apple been told off in the past for messing around with battery life or was that over something else?

    Yes, but they were only trying to help.

    As the battery deteriorates slowly, it’s peak current capacity reduces slightly. This means that some very heavy processor use (for a tiny duration) can exceed the batteries capability, which would cause a crash. If iOS detects this, it switches in a rate limiter for the processor which stops it repeating this by capping max speed. The media / press span this as Apple deliberately slowing down old iPhones to make you buy a new one. So, they released an update which lets you enable / disable this feature; it’s in battery settings.

    hot_fiat
    Full Member

    Have been though this with many iphones. Firstly close all the running apps and safari tabs.

    Back it up, (Settings>Click on your apple ID>Icloud>Backup>Baackup now>) then update it to the latest version of ios (it’ll happily run 12.4) (Settings>General>Software update>Download & Install)

    Put it in flight mode and charge it overnight so it gets a good soaking.

    Take it out of flight mode. Use it all the next day and let it die completely (so it actually turns itself off). This will allow the OS to calibrate what it thinks the battery health is.

    Check the battery usage by app report (Settings>battery>scroll down) & see if any app is sucking the life out of it unnecessarily. Check the battery health report and see how shagged the OS thinks your battery is (Settings>Battery>Battery health). It should give a % of capacity. Below about 80% is when you’ll notice it most. Check to see if it’s triggered the peak performance capability threshold. This is where an app is pulling so much current that the OS decides to shut down. This often happened to mine when taking photos in the cold.

    Armed with this info (and a successful icloud backup) go to an apple store. After running some tests with a suspiciously jail broken-looking ipad, they will replace some batteries for free and others for £45 if you ask nicely. Often they just swap the phone.

    Keep an eye on what apps use your location info constantly (Settings>privacy>location services?then review each app). In general I forbid most apps from doing this & set them to “While Using”. Anything like stalkbook can sod off as they use wifi, cell tower and I suspect other people’s bluetooth to work out where you are.

    If any apps are particularly hungry, disable background app refresh for that app. This normally allows multitasking for that app (Settings>General>Background App refresh). Disabling this prevents them from churning away in the background while you’re not focused on the app.

    The only other thing I shut down is raise to wake (Settings>Display & brightness>raise to wake) which seemed to bring up the screen backlight whenever I did anything at all (like sneeze).

    jekkyl
    Full Member

    Awesome stuff. Thanks guys.

    grum
    Free Member

    Whenever I’ve had a new battery fitted it never takes it back to new-like performance, for some reason

    hot_fiat
    Full Member

    That’s usually down to the OS not understanding the capabilities of the new battery which is why you should always do a full charge/completely dead cycle. That or your “new” battery was a recycled one, which happens loads, particularly with ebay or amazon mktplace.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    or newer iOS versions / apps not being as power efficient as their earlier variants…..

    footflaps
    Full Member

    Use it all the next day and let it die completely (so it actually turns itself off). This will allow the OS to calibrate what it thinks the battery health is.

    Out of curiosity I tried this the other day, probably the first time in years its been run down to zero. The battery score was the same afterwards though….

Viewing 26 posts - 1 through 26 (of 26 total)

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