AppleInsider Staff
An small number of iPhone 5s owners are experiencing problems with their new handsets, seeing markedly shorter battery life than Apple's advertised specifications.
In a statement to The New York Times on Tuesday, Apple confirmed that a production issue affected a small number of iPhone 5s units, which could cause the units to suffer from reduced battery performance.
"We recently discovered a manufacturing issue affecting a very limited number of iPhone 5S devices that could cause the battery to take longer to charge or result in reduced battery life," said Apple spokesperson Teresa Brewer. "We are reaching out to customers with affected phones and will provide them with a replacement phone."
Apple declined to elaborate on the specific manufacturing flaw, but is supposedly not a defective battery. The company also did not say how many handsets are affected, though the publication interpreted the statement as referring to "a few thousand" iPhones.
In the past, Apple has dealt with a variety of battery-related problems, the most recent being an unexpected shutdown issue with some MacBook Pro and MacBook Air laptops. The company released a firmware update to solve the problem, though the iPhone 5s situation appears to be hardware related.
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
18 Comments
How soon till the class action lawsuit is filed?
"Listen we're not perfect..." Now for some sarcasm: battery-gate¡
I got my 5S a few days after they went on sale and noticed battery life that was about half that of my three-year old iPhone 4 and was a bit worried. Certainly the first day was the worst as it was busy restoring apps and my iCloud backup but battery life three or four days in was still poor. I'm not sure what's changed, but in the past week my battery life has been phenomenal. Perhaps those moaning about their battery consumption should give it a few days to settle down? Or maybe go in and shut down some services (including location) that typically kill the battery?
That must be a pretty large "small" number if they're actually fessing up to it, considering how they normally respond to defects.
What do we think the definition of alarming battery life problems is in the context of an iPhone? At what point should I challenge the quality of my battery?