iOS 12.1.4 battery drain

No, you are in denial, and not willing to troubleshoot. For the past almost eleven years every time an iOS update has been released a few phones have an issue with battery drain. EVERY SINGLE ONE of the 4 dozen or so updates. You can check yourself if you want by looking through historical posts, or take my word for it as I have been answering them for those years.

The title of this thread is "iOS 12.1.4 Battery Drain". Take that same title and insert any other version (e.g, "iOS 3.1 Battery Drain", "iOS 10.1.3 Battery Drain", etc) and you will find posts like this thread. Here's one for 12.1.2, for example https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250032514. Did you have a problem with that one? The ones who posted were convinced it was a problem with the version, as you are with 12.1.4. Actually, this thread is much shorter than most of them. There is a problem, but it is not the version itself that is the cause. It is something, usually an app, that did not respond well to the update. Unfortunately, it could be any app on the phone, which is why different users who took the time to troubleshoot and posted their results found different solutions. And they DID find solutions. If it was 12.1.4 itself none of their solutions would work.

My motivation is to help users who have the problem resolve it. But if you are absolutely certain that it must be the version then your mind is made up and I can't convince you with facts or help you.

Here's what you should be doing to troubleshoot the problem:

• Power the phone down completely (which kills all running apps), wait a could of minutes, then restart it -->Restart your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support
• Wait 24 hours, then go to Settings/Battery and see which apps are using the most energy. If you have Facebook that is probably it.
• Investigate what those apps are doing over the past 24 hours.
• If this hasn't helped restore the phone from a backup-->Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from a backup - Apple Support

Most likely one of these will resolve it, but if not restore to factory settings and don't install anything or enable email for a day. That will resolve the problem. You can then restore your backup, and see if the problem comes back. It probably won't, but if it does you have data corruption or a corrupt app on your phone.

While this may NOT be great news, it just goes to show that “Apple” is aware of the ‘problems’ with the 12.1.4 version

and is planning to release a MAJOR new version in March.

I am not certain/aware “IF” Apple intends on releasing an interim version to correct the on-going issues,

but the following is what I’ve located by website/news search inquires:

APPLE

5 Things to Know About the iOS 12.2 Update

Published 3 days agoon 02/14/2019

By Adam Mills 

Apple’s confirmed a brand new version of iOS 12 and the iOS 12.2 update is now in beta ahead of a release for iPhone, iPod, and iPod touch.

The iOS 12.1.4 update is finally out which means iOS 12.2 is likely next in line for iOS users.

We don’t have an official iOS 12.2 release date yet, but those who can’t wait for the official release can try an early version of the software right now.

With the iOS 12.2 update official, we want to take you through everything there is to know about Apple’s next major update to iOS 12.

In this guide to the iOS 12.2 update we’ll take you through iOS 12.2’s known changes, what you can expect from the iOS 12.2 release date and release time, the iOS 12.2 beta, and more.

iOS 12.2 Beta

If you don’t want to wait for the official version of iOS 12.2 to roll out you don’t have to.

Apple’s pushed an iOS 12.2 beta to developers and those enrolled in the Beta Software Program. The Beta Software Program is free to anyone with a working Apple ID.

The iOS 12.2 beta is compatible with every device capable of running iOS 12, a list that includes the iPhone 5s, iPad Air 2, iPhone X, and many others.

Before you download the iOS 12.2 beta remember that pre-release software is typically plagued with bugs and performance issues. These issues could impact the performance of your core apps, your device’s battery life, and its overall speed.

You should be able to fix some of these issues on your own, but some bugs and performance problems will require a fix from Apple.

Apple is currently on iOS 12.2 beta 2.

iOS 12.2 Release Date

Apple hasn’t confirmed an official iOS 12.2 release date or release window but there’s a good chance it arrives sometime in March.

Apple typically announces iOS release dates on stage during media events so there’s a chance we get the iOS 12.2 release date ahead of time.

The company typically hosts an annual spring event in March and we wouldn’t be surprised if Apple keeps the iOS 12.2 update in beta until then.

The company has reportedly set a March 25th date for a media event at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California and we expect iOS 12.2 to arrive in and around that event.

Personally, I’d rather NOT (have to) wait (it out) till March, but I don’t know what Apple’s intensions are in this matter.

hi @peter_watt, all,

this is with BT off, Mobile data off, WiFi off, no push, no background refresh.

I was sleeping.

-> same slope:

now...either...or

• I wait more days (there are more than 10 days from the moment the issue started)
• I wait for 12.2
• I follow those 4 steps you proposed - next week I will travel abroad...so I'm still thinking

Please wait 48 h, this might happen because of update and it needs time to adjust with phone settings. If you continue having this problem, try to optimize settings on your phone https://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/

hi al,

let’s summarize my experience.

• IOS 12.1.4 battery drain
• erase all, restore from backup - no effect
• reinstalled IOS 12.1.4 restore backup - no effect
• reinstalled IOS 12.1.3 plus all apps reinstalled from scratch (as backup is not backwards compatible) - no effect even I enter Low Power mode.

I’ll upgrade to IOS 12.1.4 OTA ( I do not think my phone was official in 12.1.3...maybe I’m wrong but the last was 12.1.2....) as no reasons to remain in 12.1.3.

I’ll try the Google Translate workaround as well.

have a good one!

robert

hi all,

david, peter, all thank you for your reply and contribution on this challenge!

as I have iPhone and not iPad, the Xcode+Instruments are not for me.

but I did what David proposed.

• disabled locations
• closed all apps
• disabled WiFi
• a power off/on to be sure everything is closed as should

for the first 1h45min period was fine, see below, no battery drain.

after that it is like some "dragon" wakes up and start eating.

every hour has 4 green columns.

I counted 7 columns no drain, meaning 7 x 15min = 1h45min

sounds promising.

robert

I'll add my experience with 12.1.4, in the spirit of helping others:

• Symptoms: Massive battery drain (measured in % / min) on a 2 year old SE with 90% battery life (not jail-broken); I can watch the battery drain to a red 0% in the course of a single morning with only very moderate user interaction, even having waited for a few days for re-indexing and background updates of apps; also observed unprecedented drain overnight. I am not saying 12.1.4 caused it, but it clearly triggered it.

• Attempts at diagnosis / fix: Checked the usual suspects (deactivate Siri, disable background updates, turn off location service for almost all apps, most notifications are off already, no Facebook or twitter, screen set to lock after 2 minutes, stay in area with good wifi and decent mobile reception), watched the battery usage % by app which confirmed almost no active usage => suspect problem with background process, e.g. app messed up by update; restart doesn't help, so went through reset and install from backup procedure => no change; I did NOT try to restore to factory settings and install all apps from scratch, because I have other things to do than to figure out how to reinstall our company apps and re-configure my settings

• Workaround: I did, however, start to read up on 12.1.4 and found that a significant number of users report issues with their wifi connectivity. So, I decided to turn off wifi and deactivate mobile data for all but the most essential apps. Lo and behold, the battery stays at 100% again. And stays, and stays. After reading ibooks for an hour it is down by a few % - but that's normal. Start listening to podcasts on itunes using bluetooth - moderate battery consumption but nothing dramatic. Turn on wifi ... there it goes.

Going through this thread, I noticed that user Lan Man described very similar behavior. Now, it may be that the link with wifi is coincidental and the issue is not with wifi per se but that I unwittingly disabled an app that was e.g. permanently calling home after the upgrade due to some incompatibility. I guess I could find out by going through the apps one by one and enabling mobile data for them or by biting the bullet and adding them one by one after a factory restore. For the moment, I am not doing any of the kind ... I will just wait for either the iOS or the offending app to come up with an update that fixes this. If we are still here in 6 months, I may change my mind, because I would like my phone back :-D.

In the meantime, maybe this helps somebody.

Update on my own post from 5 days ago - looks like the worst is over: NOT dropping like crazy anymore, even on wifi, yeah! So, what's changed? Sadly, I do not have a single reason, but I can share what changed in the last 24 h (see my earlier post for details of all the things I had tried before that did NOT help):

• I updated any app for which an update became available (at least a dozen of them yesterday)
• I also turned off background refresh for everything (somehow I had missed this in the first round)
• Kicked Skype off because somebody else in this thread said it had helped him (but I kept Skype for business)

I suspect that it was one of the app updates or turning off the background refresh that made a difference. Will keep watching.

It certainly looks like false information.

It doesnt explain why my 6S is behaving normally with the same OS.

Again if the phone looks like it is going crazy standard remedy is

1. Hard reset. If no help then try
2. Backup and restore then try
3. Restore as new (factory settings) if still misbehaving then
4. Take it to Apple Store.

Your description above seems to indicate that there are at least two different pathologies which can be triggered (not necessarily caused) by upgrading to 12.1.4:

• In my case, I experienced rapid battery drain without usage for a week and a half after upgrading; after a while I found that I could turn this behavior on and off by de/re-activating wireless (as in: no drain without wifi); a few days ago the problem disappeared after a round of automatic updates for more than a dozen apps (or me turning background refresh off - both actions were simultaneous and I am in no mood to figure out what would make it worse again - enjoying my return to connectivity).

• In my initial quest for answers about 2 weeks ago, I came across one post which described pretty much what you outlined for your phone - a misreading rather than a real battery drain. This seemed plausible to me at first (after all, there were some changes to battery monitoring), but after burning through a whole external powerbank in one afternoon with almost no usage I gave up on that theory for me (also, the phone was getting rather hot during the first 2-3 days after the upgrade - yes, I know background downloads and indexing, but this was uncomfortably hot, so much so that I thought my battery was about to die ... but it wasn't and it has been nice and cool for over a week now.

In summary, that's what makes me think that there are at least two possible pathologies. Also, reports by happy users like Peter make me think that it is certain hardware/software/profile combinations that allow this to happen. Only advice I can give on how to confirm if it is really the battery or just the reading is to use an external power pack with known capacity ... if it drains that down then it's probably real ;-). Good luck!

If either of those conspiracy theories were correct it would

1. only affect older models and
2. it would affect every phone in that model.

Neither of those is true,

it affects a small number of users of all models including brand new phones and ipads. Why make an iphone X obsolescent??

it is app related. A mess-up by some developer but not intentional!

Try a Restore as new and take care what you re-install

Peter,

I agree with your statement:

If either of those conspiracy theories were correct it would 

1. only affect older models and 
2. it would affect every phone in that model.

However, I did a restore as new and loaded no other apps beyond what Apple installed as new. The battery drained just as it had previously. As I said earlier, the only thing that works for me is to run in Low Power Mode.

I have been part of the group that has been impacted by severe battery drain of ~1% every 5-15 seconds since updating to iOS 12.1.4.

I tested the options mentioned in this thread, and have found that the issue seems to be related to app data download connections and/or downloading new data on the device (downloading an app from the app store, opening an app that needs to fetch new data, fetching new content by pulling/swiping down to refresh within an app, background app refresh, etc). I have confirmed that this issue occurs in both native apps such as Mail, App Store, Podcasts, as well as 3rd party apps.

• • Close all apps this did nothing, and the battery continues to drain. If not immediately, on the next background app refresh.

• • Power cycle (restart) device you can see evidence of some people's theory that there may be something going on with battery percentage calculation. After the battery appears to have severely drained, a power cycle will show the battery percentage back closer to what you would expect the usage to be prior to the draining event. A power cycle will likely still result in the device attempting to fetch new data, and more often than not will resume battery drain

• • Turn off Fetch New Data (Settings > Passwords & Accounts > Fetch New Data > toggle Push to off) + Power cycle device battery continues to drain

• • Turn off Background App Refresh (Settings > General > Background App Refresh > Background App Refresh > Off) + Power cycle device At first I thought this solved the issue while I was at work for a few hours in the morning, but when I started actively using my phone a bit more the battery drain started again

• • Delete Skype for Business + Power cycle device This is where I discovered that the issue is not isolated to only 3rd party apps doing things in the background and adversely interacting with 12.1.4... I tried this because some people indicated that they thought it may be related to Skype. I thought this worked for a while as well, until I opened my native iPhone Podcasts app and it started downloading new podcasts. I then watched my battery start draining at a rate of 1% every 5 seconds (I could hear a clock ticking beside me and timed it)

• • Turn off Bluetooth + open an app and pull down to initiate data fetch/download connection battery continues to drain

• • Turn off Wi-Fi + open an app and pull down to initiate data fetch/download connection

• • Turn on Airplane Mode + open an app and pull down to initiate data fetch/download connection

• • Turn on Low Power Mode (Settings > Battery > Low Power Mode) + open an app and pull down to initiate data fetch/download connection

• • Switch to a different device with <iOS 12.1.4

nfortunately haven't found a reasonable solution or explanation based on the symptoms I have been seeing on my device. , and the only way to reliably stop the battery drain is to break or interrupt whatever connection the offending app(s) have made to fetch new data by turning on Low Power Mode

-------------------------

tl;dr - the battery seems to drain significantly when downloading new data, and the only workaround that reliably helps is to turn on Low Power Mode (Settings > Battery > Low Power Mode)

From Apple...

”Low Power Mode reduces or affects these features:

• Email fetch
• "Hey Siri"
• Background app refresh
• Automatic downloads
• Some visual effects
• Auto-Lock (defaults to 30 seconds)
• iCloud Photo Library (temporarily paused)“
• 
  

...so work from there

Hi Ian, no, you shouldn't HAVE to. But here is the hard truth: while it IS an issue, it only seems to affect a limited number of users, so no emergency fix will be coming. Which means you are left with a few basic options:

• Go to an Apple store - if you are OK with wasting several hours to maybe get a solution or not
• Wait - until the problem shakes itself out with an update from the offending app
• Troubleshoot - until you find the app or setting which causes this; if it were 12.1.4 by itself this would happen to everybody
• Vent your frustration in a users only forum - which I empathize with, but which will not solve the problem

I tried the troubleshooting approach and found a workaround to at least get me limping along until the app update (appdate?) arrived - which took 1.5 weeks from when the saga started. There may be more than one problematic app here, so just because it worked for me doesn't mean it should have worked for you. But if it was 12.1.4 all by itself I would still be having the problem.