iPhone SE 2020 battery drain

I had the same issue with my new iPhone SE 2020. Battery was incredibly disappointing for what I’ve known from my Apple products. I could see the battery percentage ticking down just reading articles (as some others described “a percentage point every 2 min” or so). Like others on here, I did the typical battery saving tips. Biggest clue for me was the first day I took it to work. I don’t have time to look at my phone at work except during my lunch. By the time I got home after 11hrs, I only had 20% battery life. Battery usage indicator told me that Apple Music was responsible for 87% of my battery usage. However, I had only looked at app for abt 3 mins during initial set up of my phone— never actually used it. The rest was background activity (even tho I turned off background app refresh for all apps). As a result of this finding, I uninstalled the Apple Music app. This DRASTICALLY improved my battery life. Next 11hr work day, my phone had only dropped to 78% with light browsing at lunch and a few txts. I used it to browse some social media/watch a few videos at home, but decided to keep off charger overnight. I’m writing up this comment right now with the phone having been off the charger for over 26hrs and I still have 34% battery life. This is much more inline with what I expected given how much i leave it in idle. Wondering if anyone else has the same issue with the Apple Music app possibly going rogue... uninstalling it helped me tremendously.

This is a thing. Seeing lots of chatter on various sites (Apple Insider, MacRumours etc). I checked my battery usage. Seems that Apple Music is running in the background continuously (even if you have used it in weeks) and draining your battery. I have the same phone and the same issue as you. My battery usage shows music as running in the background for 11 hrs (I haven't used music on my phone in over a week) and consuming 67% of the battery. This issue began on Saturday. After picking up phone in the morning with a 100% charge, it would be down to 75% in 80 minutes. I have dropped below 20% a couple of time a day since Saturday which is highly unusual for me. Yesterday I turned off Bluetooth but that did not help. This morning after looking at the battery usage stats, I turned off background app refresh and turned off sync library in Music. Did a hard restart on the phone. So far this seems to have helped. Not sure if this helps you or not, but thought I would share my experience.

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-9732

Yes, it’s a shocker. I contacted customer support and they did a remote scan and a chat with me about the issue. They took diagnostics and went away. Not heard from them since. I uninstalled Facetime because it heated the phone to uncomfortable levels. I switched off Siri in-app but kept her for searches etc. I also set the battery to automatically regulate itself, that’s in settings under battery. I also set an on/off time where the phone closes down over night as it charges, for me it’s from 10pm to 7am. I don’t touch it, it just charges. Apparently it learns how You use the battery and this is supposed to help, I doubt it’s effective with this battery though. If you’re using this phone with some heavy daily use the battery will be virtually dead 6-8 hours, which is ****. Light use not much longer either, which is also ****. However you call it the battery is underpowered for the phone. Full Stop. But I like the phone having come from ****** Huawei Android. I really like this phone. But the battery is a fail. So register your complaint and issue with customer service and set the timer for the phone to sleep over night while it’s charging. Things will improve a little I think. But don’t expect miracles. You could always send it back too. I hope this has helped somewhat and things settle down a bit. Post back how you get on. Cheers.

I had that same problem with my new iPhone SE 2020 but I seem to have fixed it! It became very noticeable playing Auralux 2, a game which relies heavily on touching and swiping the screen everywhere. My iPhone would heat up, so much that some touching and swiping gestures just wouldn’t register, and battery drain was faster than you should expect from a new iPhone, right?

Went to do the steps explained at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201263 and a LOT of my problems went away like snow in the sun.

TL/DR: force iPhone restart in recovery mode while connected to Mac or PC, ensuring you use the latest version of iTunes. When asked to Update or Restore, choose Update. Then wait until finished. Hope this works for you, too.

Check your battery usage. I was shocked to see that the Weather Channel app which I had on my iPhone 8 was using almost 50% of my battery compared to other apps. I uninstalled it and my battery life was more like what I expected. I reinstalled but within a day the battery usage dropped again so I have uninstalled again and sent an email to the Weather channel support to see if they have any solutions.

For all who are still experiencing this problem.

After almost a week, having the same battery issues, I decided to do a factory reset.

I did setup the SE 2020 as a NEW device this time, without restoring anything from my old SE. (took some time, I know...)

But after a couple of hours, it seemed to have stabilized the battery somehow, and battery life has been running as expected since.

"...All I can say by way of compensation is that you need to learn how to completely reduce all the power draining activities on the phone..."

We all have to do that for all phones, but I dispute there is an inherent problem other than we have a phone with an iphone 8 size battery and an iphone 11 processor.

If this were not a normal thing then nobody would have designed battery cases or portable charge blocks.

When my iphone updated to 14 it heated up and drained so I unsync'd and purged all photos and music for a few days, and got rid of apps that showed up in the battery settings as power hogs and contacted the developers.

It's back to normal now and photos re-sync'd

If you transferred a large number of photos and other data acriss then the first few days will have a lot of hidden photo analysis and Spotlight search indexing.

That will not show on the Battery settings report but rogue apps may show up on there.

Keep brightness to a minimum.

Click on this link

iPhone Battery and Performance

“....I had received a new third unit from the official support last week, same battery and heating issues,...”

So it is highly likely something on your phone (apps or photos) is eating battery. Getting three bad phones is vanishingly unlikely.

Get it out of the drawer. Move your important data off the phone (I presume you did that already) and reset it to factory settings. Build it up from there,

If you restore from backup you’ll just reload whatever is causing it

Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings

There won’t be a solution. There is nothing wrong with the battery as such, it’s just too small for the phone. Switch off background apps, charge at same time each day. Turn on low power mode if necessary. Switch off overnight. Keep charge within 40% - 80%. I’ve had my SE since it came out. I had the same issues. Now the battery issue is as settled as it will be. That’s it. The phone is great. The battery is a little underpowered.

"Finally never leave your phone off charge overnight. They are designed to charge overnight, every night." this is untrue, i believe. i have had the same issues. i bought the phone from release about a year ago. i was told by technicians at Apple it is not necessary to leave the phone on charge overnight. i was also told it is not good to always charge your phone to 100% all the time, nor to let it run down all the time. the advice i received from these technicians at Apple - regarding my battery issue, was to almost charge my phone to 100%, say to about 85/95% and to not let it run down below about 45%. the battery issue of which everyone is talking has been around since its launch - i should know, because that's when i bought it. the phone itself is great, i love my SE. but the battery issue as far as i can tell, is very simple: its too small or underpowered - whichever, for this phone. my battery is stable, but runs down quite quickly, once i start using it heavily - which is not often. i charge on average 1-2 a day for a boost. and at night i completely power off. i charge in the morning over breakfast. and within about an 40 minutes to an hour i'm up to about 85/90%. my charge as i write this is at 69%. its late afternoon, i haven't really used it a lot. some texting and OneNote, some music. this battery issue will be around for the duration of the phone and i suspect that if i get a new battery it will respond the same. hey-ho! such is life. great phone - small battery.

Your iphone 6 had a very similar battery but the SE has a more powerful processor.

It may not last all day. However running down inside an hour is a fault in *your* phone not all SEs

Apple has recently updated the battery KB article, and it’s really quite good. iPhone Battery and Performance - Apple Support

If in doubt restore as new and start again like you will have to if you go android

what helped my iPhone se is if you turn off most of the location services and when you have no service turn of airplane mode or low power mode on

I have been experiencing similar issue with battery drain. Spent a lot of time trying to understand why and what.

For my case; the battery drain was amplified when I was out hiking between the hills and 4G signal strength was not stable. Otherwise drain is almost 1% every 4-5 minutes .

One solution I found and that stabilized the battery drain was switching off 4G when at office or at work; using WIFI-Calling for phone calls as my network operator is supporting it. And using my phone for music / Netflix ( downloads) / browsing with low power mode.

I still need to quantify the effect in the next 2 days but today at

15:03 my battery was 81% ; I stopped charging

And now at 22:04 battery is at 53% .

I think now I will only charge my phone tomorrow morning.

Otherwise I am pretty satisfied with the new iPhone SE 2020.