iPhone SE 2020 battery drain

Hi, I too recently bought this phone and it has one of the worst battery lifes I have come across. It shows Up as fine in Apple diagnostics so they say there is nothing you can do and you are pretty much stuck with the phone.

really disappointed in both product and customer service on this clear issue

An update to my post from Jun 30, 2020 2:04 PM

I had the phone replaced with a new at my phone provider this afternoon. As stated previously Apple couldn't/wouldn't help and referred me to my phone provider where I bought the device. I've exchanged e-mails and called them a handful of times and they finally agreed to replace the device.

I'm keeping a close watch on the device in the upcoming days. I clearly suspect that the initial device I had gotten, had a defective battery or the similar. With all smartphone features disabled and functionality reduced to the level of a Nokia 3310 it's not supposed to spend 30% of battery when idling in your pocket for 2 hours.

My encouragement to other customers having a device of this character and facing the same problem. Be persistent and log/register all of the abnormalities. You're not supposed to adapt to your phone, it's functionality and crazy charging patterns as if it was some kind of strict crazy diet you're forced to follow. Good luck!

I did migrate from Android to iOS recently by getting an iPhone SE 2020. The battery drain issue is serious.

I got the phone 3 days back and there are no much apps installed except for WhatsApp. The reviews all speaks out of how small the battery is but never expected the battery issue to be this serious. I could notice a 4-5 mins call drained the battery like 4%.. Seriously?! As I am new to iOS, I'm not really sure if this is expected. The battery even drains considerably(nearly 10%) when in standby, which is not expected. Being a new user to iOS, I wouldn't recommend iPhone SE to anyone anymore.

Just got off the phone with a senior advisor named Melissa. Very helpful. Doing a factory restore right now using my MacBook to put a clean version of the OS on my phone and going to see if it makes any difference in battery performance. I really hope Apple fixes this with either an OS update or a hardware fix if it is an incompatibility issue between the battery and the A13 chip.

I deleted the music app and I have been using my phone just regular use. I took it off the charger last night at 9pm (shift worker), and it’s now 3:40pm the next day and I’m at 69%. Much happier with it since the reinstall. And the health went back to 100%.

I have bought iPhone SE for my partner to replace his old iPhone 6 that bettery was bad. But it's like jump out of a frying pan into the fire. Lost 50% in one night without using it. His phone has less than 10 applications. I helped him to turn off most of the notification and location serivce.

IS THIS NEW APPLE STANDARD???.

Mine did the same thing for the first 3 weeks and then started acting “more normal”. No explanation as at first I kept removing programs trying to reduce the battery drain. I finally gave up and reinstalled everything that I had been using on my iPhone 8 and decided to give it one more week before demanding a refund. At the end of that week it was no longer draining. I am back to getting 2 days between charges as long as I am in wifi and not playing games.

I am having this problem too with my 2-3 months old iPhone SE 2020. It started about 2 weeks ago when i noticed that my battery was draining so fast i had to charge it 2-3 times a day and also the phone felt the whole day hot at the back. When i checked in the battery settings it showed that the battery was draining fast even when not using apps (idle). So i contacted Apple to see what there thoughts were. The Apple engineer guided me through all the basic stuff (turn down brightness, disable location tracking etc etc). Of course that didn't help. So i factory resetted trough iTunes. And didn't restored my iCloud backup. I only signed in to iCloud afterwards to get my contacts and WhatsApp history back.

When i installed everything back the idle issue looks to be gone. When i go to bed with 84% i wake up 8hrs later with 80% (i guess thats pretty decent). But the issue still occurs when i am using apps. The battery is draining so fast that i just see the percentage ticking down. Even when i am only listing to music the battery drains very fast. Also when i just watch a video on Youtube or Netflix the phone feels hot on the back.

Hopefully Apple is bringing a fix out in the near future (if its even possible to fix this).

If Apple developers read these forums it is on their own time, not due to their job.

These are user to user forums, and the correct thing to do is to contact Apple Support directly:

Contact - Official Apple Support

Drew- what update are you referring to? I am currently on 13.6 and after the few few terrible weeks my phone is now running on par with my previous iPhone 8. The only time I need to charge daily is when I am not in WiFi the majority of the day. Granted, I am a relatively light user. I don’t play games on my phone. But it’s as if the phone needed a break in time at the beginning before it settled in and started to perform acceptably.

Hello,

yes, I agree with above comments. I love the phone and have worked with “underpowered” battery with no real complaints and adopted similar tactics for keeping the phone powered. However, something serious changed with my iPhone SE after the last update. The phone drained to almost zero twice in one day without basically any use - just turned on all day, a couple texts sent/received, a couple brief phonecalls. A markedly different, and far worse, battery performance than up to the last iOS update.

the uk covid app has a 3% overhead. If you don't use the phone apps much it may look like 20% but it is 20% of a smaller amount.

It just points to a lot of unregistered non-app background processing like Spotlight or photo processing.

OK let's just sort out where that 67% figure came from

If you are looking at the battery usage graph in Settings, Battery then any percentage figure is a percentage of battery used in that period. 67% of a smaller amount may or may not be serious

If you are saying the phone was, say, 90% charged then you made an hour's call and it was then 23% charged at the end of the call then that is excessive.

Despite the claims of battery longevity, in my experience of all mobile phones over 35 years a one hour phone call should be expected to use 20% of battery charge.

Most manufacturers' figures are achieved in laboratory conditions hence the "up to" phrase. Likewise internet speeds and automobile fuel consumption.

But yes 67% actual battery usage for an hour is too much in my opinion.

Make a warranty repair claim with documented written and graphical evidence.

I have a theory here. I think Apple messed up. How?

They used old tech batteries, with a behemoth of a chip. Since the battery is so small, and possibly older tech, it can't sustain A13 (and newer apps) when it starts to ramp up the power. And in there was the critical flaw.

I would have loved the 12 Mini. But I got me a Pro just because I don't trust Apple with their power management anymore.

“…. I believe, this shouldn’t be happen until the excessive or extraordinary use of phone or after completion of 500 charged cycles.

am i right ?…”

No, that is incorrect, battery health decreases from day 1. They are designed to leave at least 80% capacity after 500 full charge cycles.

Rate of loss is about 1% a month if you use most of the charge in a day.

Same on all makes of phones but not all phones have the facility to show it.