FIX FOR: iPhone 4 battery draining fast, phone running hot

Thanks for this Fix. This IS THE ANSWER for that annoying battery drain issue with my iPhone 4. I followed your steps and immediately the problem was fixed. Thanks!

IPHONE 4 OVER HEATING AND BATTERY DRAIN :- I found a fix yippeeeeeeeee

well after 5 weeks of my iphone 4 getting red hot and draining the battery i seem to have found the correct fix for mine, i had tried all the recomendations on every forum in the world but had no luck in resolving the issue, then the other day i stumbled accross a phone repair shop in manchester, as a last diched attempt i went in and explained my problem, the assistant immediately seemed to know the fault and even better knew the cure, for £5 he offered to remove the battery and re-seat the same battery after a minute or so, having tried everything else i accepted his offer, after a couple of minutes he reapeared and handed over my phone..i handed him £5.. i went on my way and a few minutes later noticed my fone had completely cooled down, and the battery had stabilised,i have give the fone a complete charge since and it now lasts about a day and a half between charges, i really cant beleive that after five weeks and all sorts of attempts it was as simple as having the battery re-seated....been brilliant since

still working fine after removing and re-seating the original battery...really has cured my overheating and battery drain problem....better still it was the cheapest fix in the world...awesome

What do you mean by re seating the battery? Do you mean like you just unplugged it, and waited a minute and re plugged it?

Thanks for this fix, Skeuomorph (OP). Even though this seems to have originally been a pre-iOS 5 problem, it worked for me when my 4S running iOS 5 started getting hot and draining my battery a couple days ago.

I modified your instructions somewhat and am now actually getting much better battery life than I was before the problem started. Since I read elsewhere that the problem is likely caused by a corrupt contact/sync process, I decided to try using a third-party app to sync my contacts with Gmail (instead of a Gmail exchange account), and it's worked great. My iPhone now sips only 2-4% battery per hour on standby. I put up all the details at my blog if anyone's interested: The iPhone Hot Battery Drain, Fixed with a Lightweight Email Setup. (I also linked back to this support thread)

I ran into this same issue last week. My battery began draining ~20% per hour. I had not installed or updated any apps or other software days prior to the problem.

I took my phone to the Genius Bar and they did a complete reinstall of the system software, then restored my files using iCloud. This took about an hour, and did nothing to solve the problem.

I read on a forum (maybe this one, I can't remember) that this sometimes happens when a meeting invitation gets hung up in the calendar function, causing the phone to continuously churn and use power. This ended up being my problem, which had an easy fix:

1. Open the Calendar icon and select Calendars (this opens a list of the calendars you have synced to your phone).

2. Uncheck all your calendars. After doing this, look at your calendar and confirm that all entries are now gone.

3. Turn off the phone, then restart.

4. Go back into the Calendar icon and check the calendars you want synced to your phone.

5. Verify your calendar entries are back in your calendar.

It really was as simple as that. Now my phone is back to its normal battery drain rate of 2-3% per hour. Good luck!

Hey Skeuomorph,

Thanks a tonne for this update. This was one of the freakiest and the coolest fixes I have come across. Even though I had wiped out my iPhone clean and reloaded all the apps and music (and in that process lost some of the apps I paid for but seldom used and didnt really bother to go looking for them), my phone's battery was still bleeding to quick death.

But once I deleted the email accounts and reinstalled them I was good to go! 🙂

This is one of those fixes which of course the experts would understand, but we laymen find it hard to grasp as to why this fix would work, and a lot of people end up ignoring these fixes. One time my laptop would create sub-folders automatically within every folder whenever I opened one and I couldnt figure out how to solve this issue (no, this could not be fixed by a Trojan antivirus). Then I read the if I simply deleted the Internet Explorer and reloaded it, the problem would be solved!

So, sorry for the volunteered mind-jacking, but im just so happy!

Cheers,
Sharad

Hi Everyone,

I have had the same problem but no success at fixing it so far. I have a 4S with OS 5.1.1 since it was released and originally set up from a 3GS back-up. Battery life had been excellent since OS 5.1 up until three days ago when it suddenly deteriorated. Now the phone runs very hot and drains battery from 100% to zero over 5 hours or so in standby and up to 1% per minute when in use. It has been running so hot that it is almost too hot to hold and yesterday it overheated and put up the overheat warning screen.

If I put it in airplane mode or turn off mobile data then problem stops, it stays cool and the battery does not drain any faster than it used to. Mobile data is slower than usual and and I seem to drop network connections more often. If I am in a wi-fi zone then the phone runs hot and the battery still drains but not as fast.

I have not added any new apps recently. I have shut down all multitasking apps and done some hard re-sets. I have removed and re-installed my e-mail accounts and calenders as well as resetting network settings. The latter seemed to help until I used safari with mobile data and then it started to run hot again and despite putting the phone back into standby the battery has drained fast and it has got very hot again. From what I have read this is likely to be due to corrupt firmware, causing the processor or data connection to cycle continuously, draining power and generating heat.

I expect that setting up as a new phone and not restoring from my icloud back-up would resolve it. However I do not want to loose my app data and sms messages unless I have to (I wish apple would give us more control over our backups and save these to icloud separately). I was wondering if anyone has had exactly the same problem and has a solution that has worked other that than resetting mail/calenders or network settings that have been working for most people but not for me.

Thank you.

NDLH

When you deleted your email accounts and added them back did you reset (reboot) the phone after removing them and before adding them back? This is an essential step - if you don't do it the same settings will be used on the added account as was on the just deleted account.

Thanks, Skeuomorph. That seems to have fixed it. I deleted my corporate mail account (only one I have on there) and reinstalled it. I lost 20% battery this morning just driving to work, but it seems back to normal now.

I've just discovered this thread and thanks to all for contributing.

I received my re-manufactured iPhone 4 last week from Apple Store in San Mateo, CA after they swapped my old iPhone due to microphone problems. Now I have the same problems as above. My phone drains 50% in an hour and is running extremely hot. I restored to a new phone setting which has helped the discharging rate, however, when I try charging, it heats up very hot before full charge.

Now I have an iPhone with basic settings and none of my contacts or apps that I loaded over the past two years!

Since I reside in Qatar, no one from Apple can help me unless I return it back to an Apple store in the USA.

Can someone supply me a Dummy step by step solution for this phone before I throw it in the garbage.

Thanks in advance.

AMAZING! My iPhone 4S, which I had upgraded from the 3 via copying my profile from the iCloud, was draining from 100% to 0% in 4 hours! Now, it has taken 10 hours to go down 7% with some use. All I did was delete my email accounts and readd them. It took me two whole minutes. Thank you so much!

Thanks Velcrovan. I found your link very interesting and I am about to try it out, so will let you know if it works.

The most interesting thing is your comment about Icloud. I hope someone from Apple is reading this, because I think my experience may be useful in pinpointing and fixing the problem.

I have had my Iphone 4s for six months and have had no issues with battery life. So I assumed the earlier problem had been fixed.

I had been signed up to a MobileMe account for a number of years and received numerous messages from Apple telling me that MobileMe was ending and that I should transfer my account to Icloud if I wanted to keep my .me email address. So finally last Wednesday I followed the instructions and steps to transfer to Icloud and since then I have the battery drain problem.

So from my perspective the culprit is Icloud and something to do with the way it works and syncs.

Hope this helps and I will report back when I have followed your re-setting instructions

So far I have managed to switch off Mail, Calendars, Reminders etc but the phone gets hung on turning off contacts. Rebooted a couple of times with same problem so the issue seems to be related to contact syncing - had previously had problems with MobileMe on this - duplicating all my contacts multiple times. So I tried to switch them off without deleting - ie keeping them on the phone. This worked pro-tem Have deleted Icloud account, rebooted and now recharging phone. More when recharged, I expect.

More here on syncing contacts:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1163200/troubleshoot_iphone4s_battery.html