Apple Replacing Some iPhone 5s Units With Poor Battery Life Due to Manufacturing Issue

Does your shiny new iPhone 5s last well under the amount of time Apple advertises that the iPhone 5s should get? If so, your iPhone could be affected with a big issue that Apple has recently made public. According to the company, a “limited number” of all iPhone 5s units sold to date are suffering from sub par battery life due to what they’re calling a manufacturing issue.

Under normal operating conditions, Apple advertises that the iPhone 5s should receive an average battery life of about 10 hours talk time – roughly the same as the iPhone 5. Unfortunately, from the start it was clear thatn ot everyone was getting Apple’s advertised battery life estimate, with many threads like this one filling up Apple’s Support communities as well as social networks.

Originally, many had attributed this decline in battery life to Apple’s brand new mobile operating system, iOS 7. With its excessive use of animations, 3D-esque parallax effect, and broad use of transparencies it’s clear that iOS 7 is harsher on batteries than previous versions of the software, however now we know that for at least some users, there is this hardware issue to blame. Apple claims that all owners of defective iPhone 5s units are being contacted and will receive replacement phones free of charge, an appreciated move considering I personally know that I wouldn’t be happy if my brand new iPhone was experiencing these sorts of issues.

“Batterygate” as some people have begun calling it, is only one of the fairly widespread issues currently affecting Apple’s newest flagship smartphone. Prior to this, there had been widespread reports of the iPhone 5s’s built in sensors being reported incorrectly in software, causing issues in software that makes heavy use of the gyroscope and accelerometer, such as games and leveling applications. Apple has reportedly dealt with these issues via a recent software update, iOS 7.0.3, however some users are reporting continued issues with the sensors in the iPhone 5s suggesting that some sort of further hardware issue is also taking place. On top of all that, iPhone owners have been complaining about the build quality of the iPhone 5s, most notably pointing out that the frame seems susceptible to bending and warping.

So now that many of you early adopters have had some time to put your iPhone 5s through the paces, what’s been your experiences with Apple’s latest and greatest? Personally, my launch day iPhone 5s has held up mostly well, experiencing no signs of excessive battery drain nor issues with how my sensors have been reported. However, I have noticed that my iPhone 5s doesn’t lay exactly flat on the table and exhibits a slight warp – nothing deal breaking, but annoying. Let us know your experiences in the comments!