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.
***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)
Just so you know that I’m not ‘ranting’ just for ‘rants’ sake, I have been busy determining the TRUE cause of this battery drain.
After some extensive testing (different settings) I have come to the following conclusion, but your NOT going to like what I have discovered! ;-(
Remember my last statement/suggestion of (sarcasm) just turning the Wi-Fi OFF?
Well guess what? By doing that, the battery drain (basically) STOPPED!
There was NO more (measureable) battery consumption WHATSOEVER while the Wi-Fi was SHUTDOWN!
That is to say that the battrey usage was/would be similar to having the iPad TURNED OFF rather than accepting their excuse as to “Well it’s going to be indexing things for a day or two so the battery will be used more somewhat
and you should just expect/accept this to be the case” the REAL cause of the excessive drain.
What I have determined is that it is due to “Background App Refresh” in that Apps are connecting to the Internet
and acquiring new content no matter if I wanted them to do so or not!
Now you’d expect them to do so IF the App was another task that I had started and left running ‘in the background’
but the TRUTH is much WORSE than that.
I went and turned OFF “Background App Refresh” for ALL my installed apps as well as set my mail Apps
to ONLY acquire new content MANUALLY but what I’ve discovered is that this iOS (12.1.4) version
does NOT appear to be paying ANY attention to the “Background App Refresh” setting and instead is accepting ’pushes’
(from Apple’s Servers) of ANY app’s data whenever it occurs!
Yea, you say “but what does that really mean?” It means that for EVERY installed App, when NEW data is available, it is “Pushed” to your device so even if yoy aren’t ‘running’ ANY apps in the background, ALL of your installed “Background App Refresh” capable apps are STILL acquiring NEW data whenever it is present!
Ok, just how BAD can this get to be? Well try this on as an example:
For every NEW mail (be it an Office Exchange or a GMAIL account) item, it gets ‘pushed’ to my device even if
the setting is for MANUAL acquiring of items! <— some more battery usage right there
Now add to THAT consumption the following ‘busy’ apps:
Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest (just to name a few) <— more battery consumption
follow that up with installed ‘virtual’ books/magazines (like Apple’s Books, Kindle, Nook, etc) <—- even more consumption
what you end up with is that for ALL INSTALLED APPS if they are “Background App Refresh” capable,
they will be doing this no matter IF they were/are running in the BACKGROUND (as active tasks) or not!
Naturally, the “Battery Usage” section ONLY shows the Apps that are running as active Background tasks,
and not reporting on the TRUE usage of the battery, since it is not monitoring those other apps
yet the reality is that for EVERY BACKGROUND REFRESH CAPABLE app
(that you have installed) they ARE connecing to the Internet and Actively getting NEW content.
This is akin to having you device (actively) running EVERY installed app at the SAME TIME in multiple processes!
Just imagine how much battrey resources will/would be needed to provide that kind of support!?
I don’t wonder WHY the bsttery is dropping so fast, but rather am relieved
to think that my iPad Pro can (for a while anyway) keep up with the (excessive) demand till it is (finally) drained dry!
So there you have it!
I sure hope that they fix this (major) problem soon, but this is my experienced, extensive diagnostic results report!
Hi vipul friend and lan man. I think your analysis is maybe getting to the root of the problem . Some heavy background activity not shown in the stats. Even then turning off wifi or background refresh is having different effects.
Youre going to shoot me down for asking but is either of you brave enough to reset those back to factory settings to see it its a third party app doing the damage?
Still no one single solution posted...
Thats because there isn’t a single solution. It is a symptom, and many different issues can cause that symptom. You have to find the solution to your specific issue. Restoring the phone to factory settings will fix it. So will restoring from a backup fix it for most users. Just restarting the phone will fix it for some. Deleting Facebook fixes it for a lot of users. And just waiting a few days will fix it to give the phone time to finish its housekeeping.
Throwing up up your hands and saying “APPLE FIX IT NOW” is the least effective solution.
Update - after changing a few settings (most of my settings were already set to save battery life) late Thursday woke up yesterday and it had dropped from 95% to 36% (still terrible considering nothing should have been running - battery showed it dropping steadily overnight with no usage - powered the phone off - then on - charged the phone most of the day yesterday. Went to bed at 83% power last night and woke up to 83% power this morning - success.
iPad on All day but not used before IOS 12.1.4 100% battery at end of day.
NOW AFTER IOS 12.1.4 BATTERY 26%.
ipad plugged in all night, the unplugged each morning.
who cares what apps are running! The only difference is the IOS version!
iPhone after IOS 12.1.4 dead after 8 hours, before 38% after 16 hours.
Can I get the prior IOS version?
Want to share u all what happened yesterday night that battery charged to 88% and removed from plug and morning 5.30 I have seen cell, battery was there at 4%. And immideately it got switched off and it took 2 hours to switch on after plug in.
It never happened in 4 years and it is happening after this 12.1.4 update. As I know, nothing to do with application or settings there is problem with new software
What you CAN do is read the thread and see what has been suggested. Being totally the same as someone else who has not read the thread leaves you totally in the same place.
It IS the upgrade but only affects a few people so is probably app related. Other were affected by previous updates.
If you want to restore as new you can fix it. If you don't want the 2 hours away from your social media then leave it alone and wait for the fix.
I charged my phone last night to 100%. Unplugged my phone and went back to sleep. Hour and a half later (with zero phone usage) I wake up and my battery is at 84%. It’s draining quickly with no usage. So frustrating. This never happened before the update. It would still be at 100% and then after using all day and no charging, I would come home and it would still be above 50%. I find myself having to charge my phone during the day to keep up. No change to my activity levels. No new app downloads. Nothing changed other than the update was downloaded to my phone so I can only speculate that is what it causing my battery to drain after not using it at all. Again, super frustrating. I wish my phone never did the update.
Hi David, just testing a theory here - does it get noticeably better if you turn off wifi and mobile data? Kind of counterproductive to having a smart phone, I know, but I mean as a way of narrowing down the source of the problem ;-).
Peter,
I agree with your statement:
If either of those conspiracy theories were correct it would
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.
Hi All,
I finally set up an appointment to see someone at the Genius Bar, not because I thought they could fix the issue but more so I could have them validate with their own eyes the issue that was legitimate.
After walking them through ALL of the troubleshooting I did on my own, they suggested to replace my battery as a last ditch effort. We replaced the battery and confirmed again that it did not resolve the issue. The folks at the store definitely were empathetic, but advised that at that point that I would need to get on the phone with iCloud support for further troubleshooting.
As a last-minute idea, one of the people helping me suggested that I try one last thing - do a factory reset through iTunes rather than through the phone settings. The reason for this is that a factory reset through the phone settings will only remove the data from your phone but does not replace the OS, while resetting through iTunes does replace the OS. He recommended that I set up my device as new after doing that and only sign into iCloud - do not restore my backup for about 24 hours to confirm that the issue is fully resolved. I immediately ran through a backup and factory reset through iTunes as soon as I got home, and so far it seems to have worked! I've been hammering my phone pretty hard since I did this and the battery drain seems to be normal. I just restored from my backup as well, and so far everything seems to be fine.
Hopefully this was the issue - just needing to re-download the iOS - and we can all be over with this ridiculously annoying problem. I will report back if the battery starts draining again, but otherwise I hope to be happily using my phone as normal.
I did read enough to learn that the iTunes reset won't necessarily fix this issue. My iPad was fine before the update, and now it has this problem. I don't see any reason to subject myself to the aggravation of an iTunes reset when it doesn't appear to resolve the issue.
Please note an addendum: this problem *is* intermittent, for me. For the most part, battery drain is fine, but from time to time (perhaps when I cross wifi zone boundaries?) the iPad will grow warm, my system monitoring app shows nearly 100% activity, and the battery drains very quickly. This did not happen until the latest update; therefore, I will point to the update as a probable culprit and/or trigger for the issue.
Sounds logical. Except for the fact that when I installed iOS 12.1.4 as new, loaded no third party apps, changed no default settings, I had the same battery drain issues. So if it is not a third party app issue, not a phone model issue, not a setting issues, that leads me to conclude that it is an OS issue fixable by Apple. (BTW, it has been stated that Apple reps do monitor these discussions.)
Yes, I think you need to completely sign out of iCloud in order to restore battery life to a normal level (i.e. 8 to 10 days of standby time for a new(ish) battery). Have you tried that?
Just turning off individual iCloud settings for calendar etc. does not help.
Which apps? Are your top 3 using the battery and how long is each one on?
iOS 12.1.4 battery drain
