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

I've struggled with the rapid battery drain issue with my iPhone 4 and just now with my new iPhone 5. I tried all the tricks about disabling this and that. A waste of time... For me DonkeyHead's recommendation of deleting both my gmail and exchange email accounts worked. It was really easy and I never had to do a restore. Thank you so much for posting. Apple should really improve the code to better handle whatever error condition is happening to cause the problem. I love my phone but this problem was infuriating.

@Donkeyhead: Thankyou! This solution worked great for me (stop calendars sincronization). My iphone 4s was burning in my pocket and consuming around 1% of battery per minute. I stoped the sincronization of calendars and the phone started to cool down immediately and the battery consumption normalized.

For what I have seen so far, there are many reasons that can cause battery draining in the iphone. A good way to discover the cause is going to each application (calendar, mail, etc.) and see if the sync symbol dissapears after a while. If it doesn't, we have found the app that is causing the problem.

I wonder why Apple has not solved this bug so far.

This solution worked for me as well. Received my new iPhone 4 on Nov 23rd 2012, it came with iOs 6.0.1 installed.

So, I installed some apps (FB, WhatsApp, some Dutch footie news apps and Facebook) and synced my work and private mail/agenda. Battery drain instantly, iPhone was hot too. Didn't last for 12h.

So, deleted work (Exchange) and private (Gmail) accounts, turned phone off, turned it back on and re-installed both accounts. Presto! Battery's been up and running for 40 hours now with 20% left after a three hour wall charge. Mail is set to fetch every half hour, brightness is on 45% or so. Been whatsapping quite a bit, regular e-mail checks and 3 5 min calls....

I removed the calendars first and no change. I removed all email accounts and relocated only one (Live account). I have used the phone (iPhone4S) for going on 12 hours today and I am only down to 78%. I don't remember this battery ever being this good?

Thanks for the advice/help. Worked perfectly.

JC

I have spent 3 weeks trying to sort out this problem. I have had an appointment at the Genius bar and had the firmware reinstalled, but problem persited after restore.

I just happened to notice that one of my calendar meetings was not showing and it would not update so I removed all of my 4 email accounts and reinstalled them...... Hey presto phone is fine again now.

The heat and battery drain was being caused by the calendar constantly trying to update.

I was having a problem with a fast battery drain for several months. Finally got in touch with Apple support this week. The fix was to restored the phone to factory defaults, then restore my back up. All seems to be going well so far. The phone has been sitting for a couple of hours and is still around 94% charge with some minimal usage. Prior to this it would drain very quickly in a couple hours to about 70%.

I had release 6 installed.

I was having battery drain issues with my 3G phone and was told it was related to the iOS 4.x; i bought a new iphone 4S and everything was good...until about 2 weeks ago. Then the same problem came up again.

I tried:

1. Restoring factory settings and then re-synching.
2. Deleting and re-adding email.
3. Deleting and re-adding calendars.
4. Deleting SKYPE.
5. Deleting a bunch of games apps my kids had loaded.

Then finally I read the article in macworld telling me how to go into Settings > General > About > Diagnostics & Usage > Diagnostic and Usage Data and noticed that my MapQuest app was crashing. I deleted it, reset the phone and thought that had fixed the problem, but it hasn't either.

Any other advice would be appreciated...

I removed hotmail from the mailing directory after resetting of mail did not help. Since that moment no problem.

hotmail seems to have a sync problem.

Thanks for this direction to the settings and diagnostics area. I tried it and found that Springpad was associated with several low battery log items, and when I went into the app, it was spinning and spinning to sync up data. I cancelled all the push options for it and recharged. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

I also upgraded iOS from 5.x to 6.x which has the effect of resetting a lot of things and reloading off my MacBook. I will check this out tonight and see if I still need to keep my Genius Bar appointment tomorrow. I so appreciated folks including the details of what they have tried.

I think I have tracked the issue down to the size of my exchange mailbox in relation to my exchange mailbox size limit. The moment I exceed the limit my phone starts in with the overheating and battery drain issue. My guess is it has something to do with an altert message that the exchange sever is trying to send but cannot be displayed on the iOS. It kinda gets stuck retiring to download but keeps failing silently. If I reduce my mailbox size and remove and reinstall I'm good until the next time limit is reached. Hope this helps.

Btw this is with exchange 2003..

Guys, i am experiencing the same. My data package got over, and i took time to recharge ( 4 days). And during these 4 days, my phone battery was amazing, i used to charge it once in 2 days.

Im sure there is some app that uses data extensively that screws our battery.

When i connected to wifi , i noticed the battery getting low as well.

If only APPLE was smart enough, to create some software that tells us, that its using this much amount of data and at what time, then this battery issue will be resolved.

But that wont happen, because then they wont be a lot of free too good to be true free apps, which collects data and whatsoever without we know.

Until then, enjoy your life with a USB cable in your pocket and a car charger is your car, to charge it thrice a day.

Thanks.

After read your tips, i delete my mail account, hard reset (home+lock button), turn it on and add my email account again. But It doesn't work, my battery still drain 1% per 3-5 minutes in using wifi for browsing. What's my iphone 4 problem? Bluetooth off, 3G off.

Try switch off cellular data, 3G and wifi , for 2 to 3 hours and observe , if its still the same then replace your battery from apple.

My battery is ok when celluler data, 3G, and wifi is off. But when i'm using wifi for browsing, my battery drain 1% every 1 minute. I already change with new battery but the problem still same. What's going on?

Then you must have an application that uses push notifications. Like twitter , whatsapp and maybe email and some sports app that updates scored etc. I think u have too many similar apps that the battery can't handle.

Example is 30 apps , check for update in their server and come back to u that's of course 1% battery down, now imagine having more apps that do it more frequently , that's even worse.

Myself I have word games, sport apps, medical apps and social apps , 5 email accounts, so in full charge my phone stays upto 6 hours max in using.

Try deleting some unnecessary apps and I'm sure it'll be apple.

Already sent to apple to add a feature like cellular data usage, but this will be app usage , so atleast we kno which app screws our battery the most.

I hope they consider my point.