How To Tell If Your iPhone 5 Is Affected By Apple’s Battery Recall

If you bought an iPhone 5 in the months after Apple’s bestselling smartphone launched and you’ve been having battery problems, you’ll want to pay attention to this. Apple has issued a recall, letting you swap out your old iPhone battery for a new one, and Inquisitr‘s got the details on how to see if your iPhone 5 qualifies.

Apple announced the iPhone 5 battery replacement program Friday, noting that it affects “a very small percentage of iPhone 5 devices,” mainly devices bought in the first five months after the iPhone 5 launched in 2012. If yours is one of the recall-affected iPhone 5 units, you simply need to send the device in to Apple, and the company will replace your battery for free.

What exactly is the problem? Well, recall-affected iPhone 5 units “may suddenly experience shorter battery life or need to be charged more frequently.” This is the sort of thing that typically happens to devices with a Lithium-ion battery over time – that’s why your older laptop or smartphone doesn’t get quite as much life out of a charge as it did when you first bought it. In this case, though, it’s apparently happening way too soon for a number of iPhone 5 models.

Currently, the recall covers affected iPhone 5 owners in the United States and China. The recall program will move worldwide beginning August 29.

If the battery on your iPhone 5 doesn’t hold a charge for as long as you think it should, or if you find yourself needing to charge it more frequently than you did a short while ago, you’ll want to enter your serial number into Apple’s iPhone 5 Battery Replacement Program page. Finding the serial number on your iPhone 5 is a pretty easy process.

You’ll want to access your Settings menu, tap on General, and then tap on About. The Serial Number option should then be visible. Tapping that option will display the serial number for your iPhone 5, and that’s what you enter in Apple’s page.

You can also connect your iPhone 5 to your computer and open iTunes. When you click the Device button in the upper-right corner, a summary of your device will appear, and the serial number should be displayed right below the phone number. You can then copy that number to the clipboard and paste it into Apple’s battery replacement page.

The page will tell you if your iPhone is one of the affected models. If it is, then you’ll have the option to have it replaced at an Apple Authorized Service Provider, at your local Apple Store or by Apple Technical Support.

Before you take your iPhone 5 in for a battery replacement, though, you’ll want to make sure to back up your data to iTunes or iCloud. You’ll also need to turn off Find My iPhone and erase all of the data and settings on the iPhone. If your iPhone 5 has a cracked screen or other such damage, Apple might require that that issue be fixed before the battery can be replaced, and you might have to pay for that sort of repair.

Alternatively, you could just sell your iPhone 5 and upgrade to an iPhone 6 in a couple of weeks. It will pack a bigger battery, more powerful processor, and a bigger screen. Just sayin’…

[Lead image via iPhoneFreakz.]