iOS 12.1.4 battery drain

Am I the only one with this issue? Yesterday, or the day before that, I updated my iPhone XR. One thing I've come to notice is that, since I updated it, the battery drains pretty fast. I'd say I'm an average user and I could go the entire day and it wouldn't reach 20%. Now, around 4PM, after being fully charged around 5AM, it's down to 50%. I just find it weird, knowing that I'm an average user, my average screentime is around 2 hours a day, so I don't know what's up.

Posted on Feb 10, 2019 3:03 PM

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Posted on Mar 9, 2019 12:42 AM

***Sorry, posted too soon. Trying again***


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 battery continues to drain


Turn on Airplane Mode + open an app and pull down to initiate data fetch/download connection oddly enough, this doesn't always seem to work in interrupting whatever process is trying to download new data, and in some of my testing the battery would continue to drain.


Turn on Low Power Mode (Settings > Battery > Low Power Mode) + open an app and pull down to initiate data fetch/download connection this has been the only solution that I have been able to use to consistently and reliably keep my battery from draining. If the device is plugged in and charging, it will turn Low Power Mode off once it reaches a certain percentage (89%? 90%?) so you'll need to turn it on again once you unplug


Switch to a different device with <iOS 12.1.4 I have a spare backup iPhone 6S which is still on iOS 12. Apple will not allow me to restore from backup without updating to iOS 12.1.4 so I did not complete this test


Factory reset + restore at this point I did not have the time nor the patience to attempt this, but I did see that it did not resolve the issue for another user


Again, it seems like the only way to reliably stop the battery drain is to break or interrupt whatever connection is trying fetch new data by turning on Low Power Mode. I do have a lot of apps on my phone that I use regularly, which I'm assuming is the reason I may be impacted more than others since there is a lot of background activity happening with each additional app.


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tl;dr the battery seems to drain significantly when downloading new data or making a connection to fetch new data (unclear which it is, specifically), and the only workaround that reliably helps is to turn on Low Power Mode (Settings > Battery > Low Power Mode)

424 replies

Feb 13, 2019 3:15 PM in response to xtrasolar

I also have (had) this issue, unusual battery drain after installing 12.1.4. Luckily I was able to revert back to 12.1.3, and my battery usage is now back to what it was before installing 12.1.4. (I have a 6+, and one of the things I *liked* about iOS 12 was greatly improved speed and battery consumption! <sigh>) Hoping for a fix in the next update...

Feb 14, 2019 3:37 PM in response to LD150

While I can’t vouch for ALL users of iOS 12.1.4, add me (with an iPad Pro) stating the same EXACT low-battery/quick discharge life after updating to this version!


I do expect Apple to offer up a ‘fix’ (in the NEXT iOS release, sigh)

but DO NOT let Apple convince you that YOUR usage is the the ‘problem’

as it’s obviously a result of THIS version and nothing else!


I think that it’s fairly pathetic how ‘little’ they test/try out the differences in battery usage

and rather ONLY focus on security issues to quickly fix/address.


If they spent as much ‘serious’ effort in addressing battery consumption as they do security patches,

then we could meet in a happy ‘middle-ground’ where ‘some’ battery usage was traded-off for security

rather than this ‘extreem battery-sucking/draining’ release.


Feb 15, 2019 8:33 AM in response to LD150

Every update since I can remember on Apple Android and Playbook forums, users have blamed the latest update for battery drain. It’s some sort of tradition.
If nobody wants to post a screen shot of battery usage from settings there is little anyone can advise except wait 2 days for the search indexing to finish and if you still believe your device has a problem either restore from backup or restore as new and the fresh copy of iOS will be fine.

Yup, everyone wants to complain about the latest update. Very rarely are they willing to do any troubleshooting.

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iOS 12.1.4 battery drain

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