battery drain iphone 6s 13.1.2

OK so I (erroneously) upgraded to 13.1.2 and I STILL have a battery issue with my Iphone SE. What I find is that if I use maps or some other application the phone battery level drops incredibly fast (minutes) to about 10%. The phone then enters 'low power mode'.

If I de-power the phone and reboot it then reports ~80% or some similar number. My phone was fine on the 12.x IOS so this is definitely a bug.

Apple, please sort this out. You are making your products less and less attractive and you are going to lose customers unless this is fixed. It is obviously a software BUG since this does not happen on IOS 12.x.

I have exactly the same issue on my 6s. 13.1.1 was actually working OK. I foolishly decided to upgrade to 13.1.2, and it became horrible. I finally decided to do a Backup/Restore. It got a little better, but still very bad.

I have the same problem - iPhone 7. after installing 13.1.2. In 12.* it worked perfectly.

It was fully charged last night as 11pm. This morning at 6am there were 1% left. Battery health is 85%. All apps was closed.

I have now (factory) reset my device and hopes for the miracle.

VERY annoying to spend so much time on this.

Factory reset did not improve. I have now disabled background refresh for most of my app's, and this seems to have reduced battery drainage a little.

Prior to iOS 13.1.2 i had nothing disabled in Background refresh.

Same problem here with a 6s. Had 94% battery health prior to upgrade, now it's a 89%. Have spent hours, HOURS on the phone with Apple Support and a solid 90 minutes in the store. Absolutely a waste of time. They have nothing to offer and they refuse to admit it is a problem. Support has now done remote diagnostics on my phone three separate times and keep swearing they're working with their development teams to find a resolution. A complete lie, all of it.

I have an Apple branded battery-phone case that is now flaky. If you put the phone in the case while the phone is powered on it does not recognize the battery case. If you bounce the phone (power cycle) it'll recognize the case and start charging. However as soon as you remove it and replace it, even for a second, it won't charge again. Even worse is that my battery was at 20% when I put it in the fully charged case. The case went down to 40% and the phone only managed to go up to 48%. So it took 60% of the case's capacity to charge the phone 28%? I know the battery case's capacity is about 80% of the phone, but this is utter garbage.

Every time I'm on the phone with Apple Support I call out the battery percentage as it drops. I also take screen captures at the beginning, during, and at the end of the call. During a 40 minute phone call the battery went from 28% to 12%. Around the time I announced 18% the support person was laughing.

None of it matters though. They have no solutions. Don't bother taking it to the store, they won't be helpful and they'll just tell you to call Apple Support. The first thing they'll ask is if you did an upgrade and include your old data. They'll want you to wipe the phone and start from scratch, meaning having to download all of your apps again, set them all up, sign in to them, etc. Don't. Just flat out refuse to. It's a waste of your time and energy. I did this on my backup 6s. Complete wipe, went into DFU and loaded the IPSW manually, then downloaded all of my apps. Did not sign into a single app or touch any of Apple's default settings. That phone sitting on a desk dropped 7% in an hour, doing nothing. By the next morning it was down to 65%, with cellular, wi-fi, and bluetooth all turned off (not disabled, but actually off).

This is Apple forcing planned obsolescence. I like my 6s, it's the size I like and I like the fingerprint reader with 3D touch. No way I'm going to spend hundreds of dollars to keep those features with an 8. Cause you know it'll be in the same situation as the SE's and 6's are. Even though the chips are "64-bit" I don't think the OS is optimized to run on them correctly. Why else would your battery drop 5% just opening something like Safari?

Just to demonstrate how flaky, unstable, and unreliable iOS 13.1.2 is on a 6s I fully charged my phone and put it in Airplane mode. It sat for a week and the battery went down to 50%. I enabled wi-fi and bluetooth (still in Airplane mode), it "thought" for about five seconds then shut off. When I went to start it back up I got the "plug in charger" graphic. I plugged it in, and when it auto-turned on the battery was at 10% not two minutes later. In five minutes it was up to 25%. I power cycled the phone again and it jumped to 50%. Got screen caps of all of it. Not that giving Apple hard evidence they can't refute will do the slightest bit of good.

Seriously, we are all the [proud] owners of expensive paperweights. Go ahead an thank Apple for it. And good luck reaching anyone at Apple that'll care to help. Notice how there is only one number to call for any kind of issue? Not even a number or a way to reach Customer Relations. They just shuffle you to a Support person who won't offer any kind of consolation or compensation.

If you do happen to work up to a Senior Tech Analyst make sure to document everything. I got one that told me they'd call me back in 48 hours. When I didn't hear anything I started to email them with the reference # they gave me. The person called me back three days later stating he wasn't at work those two days and he told me he worked four 10 hour days. Another load of crap. If you told me that you wouldn't be at work, then why did you also tell me you'd call me back on the day you'd be off? They lie through their teeth. Don't let them off the hook when they say "they'll let you know when they hear something". Get a number, get an exact date. Have them proclaim something definitive, as it's being recorded, and they'll be on record with it. Even getting them to do that is a challenge.

I really do wish the best of luck to all of you. But having now dealt with this for the third time (iOS 11, 12, and now 13) I can tell you from experience there is nothing Apple can or will do to fix your battery problem. Nothing.

rdrahn wrote:

91% good. As with others posting here, there were not any issues with my phone until IOS 13 came along.

Contact Apple and make arrangements to have them do a battery diagnostic. They can do it remotely.

https://www.apple.com/retail/geniusbar/

An update on my 6s battery journey: I hope this information will help some of you.

I decided to try and only charge my battery overnight and not do sporadic charging here and there like I used to. Here’s how it’s been working for me:

• • Let phone charge overnight. Unplug it in the morning, and just use it till it dies. I completely ignored whatever the phone was telling me for charge percentage.
  • 9:00 am full charge. Commute to work for 1.5 hours. Used it the entire time for podcasts and music (both previously downloaded to phone. No streaming) Make Bluetooth phone calls as usual. Arrive at work, phone is at 74%. Ignore it.
  • After lunch. Phone gets down to 34%. Ignore it.
  • End of work day: Start commute home for 1.5 hours. Phone is at 18% and recommends low power mode. I enable low power mode. Use phone consistently for downloaded podcasts, downloaded music, Bluetooth phone calls, phone gets down to 7%. Ignore it.
  • Use it a little more in evening. Phone gets down to 3%. Plug in to charge overnight.

I did this every day this past week and noted that although the battery percentage changed slightly from those numbers, I was able to use my phone each day for almost the whole day. Note: On some days, I lowered the screen brightness to help it last throughout the day.

One day, I even started my commute home with 3% and was able to listen to podcasts, music, and phone calls for 1.5 hours and the phone was fine. It was at 1% when I got home, and I still used it lightly for another hour before plugging it in again overnight.

I did a clean install of iOS 13.2, restored to factory defaults and then restored my files from backup. This didn’t seem to make any difference.

Last night, after my phone was in airplane mode all day, I turned off airplane mode, phone was at 34%. I checked my email, and the phone dropped to 24% and then 16% in minutes. I enabled low power mode when the phone prompted me. It stayed at 16% for the rest of the evening until I plugged it in to charge overnight.

It seems that like most folks here, the hardware (battery) seems to be fine. The iOS battery management software doesn’t play nice anymore. Maybe Apple will fix it in a future release. I doubt it. But if I ignore the scariness of low battery percentage, it looks like my 6s can still make it most of a standard day without requiring multiple charges.

I’m never too far from a charger on most days. I can charge in my car, at my desk, etc. I’m not really nervous about being stuck with a dead phone. I’d be more nervous if I was traveling or out and about for a whole day. The unfortunate solution might be to just buy a new phone sooner than I was planning to. That’s a real shame because iOS 12.4.1 was fine and I really like my 6s.

The other much cheaper solution for those who are really worried about their phone lasting a whole day, is to buy a portable

battery pack charger for around $30. There are some really good ones at that price point. Much cheaper than a new phone, pretty slim and light, easy to carry with you, and will banish your fears of being stuck with a dead phone.

Sorry this was so long. I hope it helps some of you.

That's a nifty case. I'll have to look into it. Thanks.

I'm bothered by a few things:

1. Why couldn't Apple just not have rolled out iOS 13 to the 6s and below? I would've been fine staying on iOS 12.4.1
2. Now that it's an issue, why can't Apple allow 6s users to downgrade if they so choose? what would be so terrible? (I know, I know. never gonna happen)
3. Why can't Apple admit that there is an issue here? It would be so satisfying to hear Apple say, "We know about. We apologize. We're working on it." I can't stand the denial I get from the Apple store and from all of the Apple support denial reported in this thread.

The truth is that I'm a small phone kind of guy. I like smaller phones and was always hoping they'd come out with a new SE. Rumors are circulating that there will be a new SE in March 2020, but it'll be the size of the current iPhone 6s, 7, and 8, and won't be the size of the current SE. We'll see what it is in March. I may be ready to upgrade by then (and my current battery will probably be sufficiently murdered by iOS 13. ;-)

Thank you all for continuing to report your experiences. my 6s Battery issues have been all over the map in the recent weeks.

• The funniest one was when my phone dropped to 1% even though I hadn't really used it. I knew that it couldn't be right and I figured I'd try to use at as long as I can to see what happens. I used it for the next 25 hours with the phone saying 1% the whole time.
• Other times, I've had the phone drop from around 80% to 30% to 17% in about 20 minutes. I was going on a bike ride and didn't want to take any chances. I charged it to about 96%, went for a ride, and 45 minutes into the ride, the phone died and wouldn't restart until it was plugged in for almost a half hour. I had that 'empty-battery-with-a-sliver-of-red' icon and couldn't get the phone to power up.
• Other days, it seems to be normal.

In any event, I don't trust this phone at all. I'm holding out to see if there's a smaller iPhone SE2 or whatever that will be introduced in March. I really don't want a bigger phone.

• There is clearly a software issue. The batteries are fine. I noticed that iOS13 seems to retrieve email totally differently than all of the prior OS's. It seems to load from scratch several times a day on my phone. I'll launch the Mail app and will be greeted by a blank mail screen, and then it populates as if it's getting all of my email for the first time. This never happened before. Do any of you have this experience?
• Once again, I deleted all of my mail accounts and used my phone with no email for a day. Then I added my accounts back one by one, but this did not change anything. I'm positive that this is one of the ingredients in the whole battery drain issue.
• In settings, every time I check the battery, it shows that the Mail app has the highest usage even when I barely use it.
• What's funny though, is even on the day when I had no email on my phone, it drained and died just as fast.

Unfortunately, I don't think any solution is coming. I'm just sad that Apple has never even addressed that there might be an issue. It's as if we're all imagining it, right?

I’ve been experiencing the same issue over the last few months especially after the last update, so I decided to try every possible solution.

After many failed attempts I finally solved the problem, the steps that worked for me are:

1. Do a backup from my phone (iPhone 6s)
2. Put the iPhone into recovery mode
3. Connect the iPhone to iTunes
4. Restore as new phone (Not from backup)
5. Once the iOS installation is done restore the data.

Hope that this solution works for you as did for me, I did it two weeks ago and no problems after that, my battery last as new.

I haven't posted here in the past several weeks, but I have been following every post to this thread. Thank you all for sharing your experiences.

So, my battery experiences have gone from bad to worse. I took it to the Apple store again where they ran the full diagnostics and told me my phone is in fine condition. "The battery is great!" they said. Here are some of my experiences over the last two weeks:

• My phone started dying on me even with a 100% full charge and shows the red battery icon indicating I need to plug in to power to restart. I plug in, the phone shows it has 8% charge. I restart and the phone shows 97% charge.
• Sometimes my phone charges overnight. Shows 100%. I unplug it, and it drops to 97% immediately.
• Sometimes my phone loses charge while it's plugged in? That's a new one to me.
• My phone often loses charge at a normal rate until about 46%, and then drops like a stone to 12% or lower.
• Besides the charge percentage wackiness, it overall performs fine throughout the day, as long as I charge it in the car on the way to and from work.
• I recently went on a 10 hour drive, and the phone played an audiobook the entire time unplugged with only brief charging after 6 hours of playtime to juice it up a bit.

To try and fix the problem, I did a full DFU restore through iTunes with iOS 13.3. That didn't change anything. Updated to iOS 13.3.1 didn't change anything.

My latest fix actually solved the problem though: My daughter recently purchased an iPhone 11 and gave me her old iPhone7. I had to purchase several new accessories due to lack of headphone jack, but battery life seems to be much better. Not as good as iOS 12, but much better. The iOS 13 Mail app is also snappier on the 7 than it was on the 6s. I still think that there is a connection between the Mail app and the battery drainage, but what do I know.

I've considered purchasing an android, but I still like Apple phones. I just don't like that they nuked my 6s that I loved and was perfectly content with. I'm going to keep my eyes open for the rumored iPhone 9 in March, and perhaps the 7 that I'm using now will tide me over to the next big announcement in September.

Here's a fun thing I did.

Now that I'm using a different phone, I decided to try an experiment with my 6s:

1. I erased the whole thing and restored to factory settings. I did not set up the phone at all for a user. Just left it bare bones.
2. I then deleted every app possible which leaves only about 5-6 apps on the phone total (Phone, Clock, Messages, Health, Find My, Safari, etc.) as those are not removable.
3. I put the phone in airplane mode, disabled WiFi, disabled Bluetooth, and charged the phone to 100%.
4. While the phone was still plugged in and at 100%, I powered down completely and then unplugged the phone. (So here we have a phone with nothing on it, not sending or receiving any signals, and is completely powered off.)
5. I turned it back on 3 hours later and it showed 74% charge. It dropped to 73%, 71%, 67% right before my eyes. I then powered off again and left it until this morning.
6. This morning I tried to power it on, it struggled for a bit, blanked, and then gave me the red sliver battery icon showing me that it need to be plugged in. I tried to restart it and it wouldn't go.

So there you have it. It has nothing to do with apps, background tasks, etc, at least in my case. I'm completely baffled how it can lose charge when powered off? It doesn't even make sense that an OS can do that?

I'm actually tempted to pay for a battery replacement to see what happens even though I shouldn't need to replace the battery as I replaced it a little over a year ago.

On a totally different note, the used iPhone 7 that I'm using now holds a charge for 2 days or more. I had forgotten what it's like to have a dependable phone as I've been fighting this battery issue since last September.

I wonder if there's a certain run of the 6s that is subject to these battery issues, as it seems that a lot of folks weren't affected. I guess we in this thread were lucky, right?

Great post. Seems the 6s is most affected

I bought a power case for mine and this keeps me supplied with juice for the day. It makes the phone heavier but it’s not too heavy and it works really well. It charges both phone and case when the case is plugged in. ( I leave the phone always in the case )

Then the case can be switched on and off to top up the phone through the day when needed.

I agree about the battery itself not being the issue and I think the percentage gauge is not accurately reflecting the charge. If you power off the phone and then power back on it shows a different percentage value; higher on power up.

I'm having the same isse for more than a month. Mine is an iPhone 7 and updating to iOS 13.3 as well as replacing the battery didn´t seem to solve it. It keeps getting warm to the touch even when not using. I took it to the service provider that ran the diagnostics and it was everything ok.

Today, I did a factory reset, installing iOS 13.3 from the ipsw file, unplugged it by the time I went to bed (100% charge), did nothing, and woke up with 20%. Here's the graph:

This is ridiculous. There are a few thousand people in the community with their phones rendered unusable and Apple don't seem to care. This is a serious bug!

In the same boat here. iPhone 6s, setup as 'new phone' after updating to 13.3 Battery Health is holding good at 94% and I've been cruising at 1% charge for the majority of the day. I think some serious battery level re-calibration code needs to be injected into the next ios release for our older gen phones. If anyone has any possible work-arounds/suggestions out there, they would be greatly appreciated.