This is an issue we already signaled weeks ago

Oct 29, 2014 14:18 GMT  ·  By

At the beginning of this month, Softpedia reported an odd finding involving the battery percentage indicator on an iPhone 5 test unit running iOS 8. The percentage indicator was jumping up and down erratically.

After a few tests, we concluded that “the phone’s battery goes into the red well before [it] actually drains below 20%.” We noted at the time, “This never happened under iOS 7, and it’s happened three times after the jump to iOS 8. It’s pretty obvious what the culprit is here.”

Users make their voices heard

Despite our report gaining very little traction, it seems we weren’t the only ones who noticed this strange behavior. On three separate forums, Softpedia has now found similar, if not identical scenarios as the one described in our own report earlier this month.

Identified as XeroAllusion on the MacRumors forums, one user describes his experience as follows.

“This is a weird behavior I have noticed on my iPhone 5 since I upgraded to iOS 8. My iPhone 5 will get stuck on 61% battery for 15 minutes and then jump down to 59%. When the battery was at 45%, I used the camera for maybe 30 seconds and then all the sudden the battery dropped down to 39%. Another time it was at 5% for almost 40 minutes and then went down to 4% continuing to do so.”

XeroAllusion adds that “iPhone 5 battery life on iOS 8 is abysmal, btw.” His feelings are echoed by many others on the forum. Both the erratic behavior of the battery meter and the poor battery life issue. However, the latter can also be caused by poor handling of the battery (i.e. letting it reach 5% to 0% one too many times, which damages the battery) or simple aging of the cell inside.

Mainly iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s units are affected

It’s interesting to note that most people reporting this odd jump in percentage points are iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s owners. Very few iPhone 6 users are experiencing any problems in the battery department.

That being said, some iPhone 6 users have reported poorer battery life after making the jump to iOS 8.1, Apple’s latest software update that promised to squash bugs and enabled Apple Pay as well as a bunch of other features.

Considering these user reports, it’s fair to assume that Apple will take note of the issues in the battery department and will make the necessary adjustments to the code responsible with power management on iDevices.

There’s no word on whether Apple engineers are testing iOS 8.1.1 or not, but it’s probably reasonable to assume that they are. After all, this is certainly not the only bug that needs to be addressed.