It’s widely known that smartphones just don’t get the same multiple-day battery life as their feature phone predecessors, but if you’re noticing exceptionally poor battery life on your new iPhone 5s, it may be due to a manufacturing defect. Apple on Tuesday released a statement to The New York Times, revealing that a small number of new iPhones are running into battery life problems.
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. We are reaching out to customers with affected phones and will provide them with a replacement phone.
Apple did not identify which component was faulty or exactly how many units were affected, but the company spokeswoman implied to The New York Times that faulty units numbered “a few thousand.”
The iPhone 5s has an advertised battery life of up to 10 hours for calling and video playback, and up to 40 hours of audio playback. A number of forum threads at Apple’s support site, including one with over 3,500 messages, reveal that affected users are seeing significantly less running time than advertised.