After update to iOS 13.5.1 battery drain is ridiculous and phone overheats

Hi Bella_1954

Sadly some updates do cause iPhones to work harder [generating heat], they usually settle down after a few recharge/restart cycles.

If you contact Apple Support they can diagnose any battery issues or whatever.

Turning off Push and changing to Fetch Manually helps [see SravanKrA's tips above] as well as turning off Background App Refresh.

Check Settings>Battery to see what is using the most power and adjust that app if you can. If you know an app using the most power is one you close properly then definitely do a Force Restart - this clears up any legacy issues that have carried over from before the update [if you left a lot of apps 'open' when you update, this can happen] -

Force Restart: In quick succession: Briefly press & release the Up Volume, then briefly press & release the Down Volume, then press and HOLD DOWN the Power Button, and keep it held as the screen shows the power off slider, still keeping the Power Button held while the screen goes dark and keep it held until the Apple logo appears, then release it. The phone will restart, hopefully a lot cleaner than before.

best of luck.

Of SravanKrA's tips setting your phone to manually fetch mail etc and turning off background app refresh are ones that save a lot. Settings>Battery usage will indicate which apps are drawing the most power and you can maybe adjust those temporarily until Apple fix the issue [or the phone gets used to the new software - not sure I subscribe to that idea!]

Did you try a Force Restart just in case there are legacy issues hanging over from before the update? In quick succession: Briefly press & release the Up Volume, then briefly press & release the Down Volume, then press and HOLD DOWN the Power Button, and keep it held as the screen shows the power off slider, still keeping the Power Button held while the screen goes dark and keep it held until the Apple logo appears, then release it. The phone will restart, hopefully a lot cleaner than before.

It is always best to Contact Apple Support directly for assistance when abrupt changes in phone behaviour happen - they can run diagnostics on your battery and make specific recommendations. Also, the more people contact them the better idea they get of the scale of the problem.

Stay Safe

Having the same issue. Went into the battery stats and it says that music background activity accounted for around 60-80% of battery consumption even when I was asleep! Also the phone was running insanely hot.

i turned off notifications for music as well as using cellular data and updating the library. Recharged the phone and reset it. All of a sudden there’s no music listed as a draining resource and it’s running remarkably cooler. Hard to say about the battery life as this is all happening today but just the fact that the phone Isn’t burning hot is a major improvement!!

Same problem (iPhone 11 Pro Max) - I’ve been researching this for some time. I now believe it is some sort of synchronization thrashing problem. This worked for me:

Log out of your Apple account.

Log back in.

I chose to “remove” data like contacts, etc. which is an option when logging out of your Apple account.

Another poster elected to keep local data and then did a “merge” when he logged back in Which worked for him.

I also reset my network settings but I’m not sure this was necessary.

Article I read in Forbes:

First spotted by MacRumors, a growing number of iPhone users are reporting severe battery drain problems. It centers on Apple Music and you don’t need to be a subscriber to be affected. The preinstalled app is monopolizing battery resources regardless (even if you delete it) and badly hit iPhones only last a few hours on a full charge. Apple Support is acknowledging the problem, but currently the only workaround it offers is a full factory reset - aka the nuclear option.

07/12 Update: Apple has confirmed to me that it is aware of the problem and is investigating. iOS 13.6 and iPadOS 13.6 were expected to launch last week, so it is unclear whether Apple is trying to make a last minute addition to the code to fix this issue or whether the company can address this remotely. As mentioned below, server side faults are normally fixed quickly but reports are still flooding in across social media with user anger growing over the "insane" and "ridiculous" levels of battery drain. Some are also calling out Apple for "ignoring" the problem- which I can confirm it is not. What makes this more complex is some users are totally unaffected, while those affected include both Apple Music subscribers and non-subscribers across all models of iOS 13-supported iPhones, so there's no clear pattern here. Apple needs to fix this, and soon. 

Moreover, the problem seems to affect all supported iPhone models (and some iPads) across multiple versions of iOS, including both iOS 13.6 and iOS 14 betas. And the issue appears to be spreading quickly. 

Since the MacRumors report, users have flooded Twitter, jumped on Reddit (1,2,3,4) and mentions of the problem on Apple’s own Support Communities forum has seen one thread grow to 11 pages with more than 500 users saying they have this problem, while another has passed 30 pages at the time of publication with over 1800 users saying they have the problem. Comments on MacRumors’ article also blew up.

If you’d like to diagnose whether your device is affected, navigate to: Settings > Battery > Show Activity. Affected users will see Apple Music background usage is off the scale. Some users have found that doing an iCloud reset helps, others have got usage back to normal by deleting the app but, as mentioned above, for others this makes no difference. Apple Support’s factory reset suggestion also works but should be a last resort. 

This is a user forum. Unless a user comes across a magic fix and posts it [very rare] it is always best to Contact Apple Support directly for assistance - they can run diagnostics on your battery and make specific recommendations. [also, the more people contact them the better idea they get of the scale of the problem].

Of SravanKrA's tips setting your phone to manually fetch mail etc and turning off background app refresh will help a lot.

Try a Force Restart just in case there are legacy issues hanging over from before the update. In quick succession: Briefly press & release the Up Volume, then briefly press & release the Down Volume, then press and HOLD DOWN the Power Button, and keep it held as the screen shows the power off slider, still keeping the Power Button held while the screen goes dark and keep it held until the Apple logo appears, then release it. The phone will restart, hopefully a lot cleaner than before.

Contact Apple Support, they may know if a fix is coming.

This is a user forum and I think we all agree with you.

Have you contacted Apple Support directly for assistance? Always best to do when abrupt changes in phone behaviour happen - they can run diagnostics on your battery and make specific recommendations. Also, the more people contact them the better idea they get of the scale of a problem.

Of SravanKrA's tips setting your phone to manually fetch mail etc and turning off background app refresh are ones that save a lot. As you probably know in Settings>Battery it shows usage indicating which apps are drawing the most power and you can maybe adjust those temporarily until Apple fix the issue [or the phone gets used to the new software - not sure I subscribe to that idea]

Have you tried a Force Restart just in case there are legacy issues hanging over from before the update? In quick succession: Briefly press & release the Up Volume, then briefly press & release the Down Volume, then press and HOLD DOWN the Power Button, and keep it held as the screen shows the power off slider, still keeping the Power Button held while the screen goes dark and keep it held until the Apple logo appears, then release it. The phone will restart, hopefully a lot cleaner than before.

I don't use my phone a lot but after a Force Restart and adjusting fetch and background app refresh am running on a charge from Wed, 20:00 GMT [UK] and now down to 50% so something worked.

Stay Safe

Hi Bella_1954

Following SravanKra's tips won't do any harm anyway.

You don't mention if you have identified which apps/processes are using the power. If you go to Settings, then Battery, down below the Bar Chart it shows you Activity By App. You can touch the blue heading at the top of the minutes/% column to toggle between time an app is active and % of power used. It may be an app is misbehaving or a setting can be tweaked.

You don't mention if you have done a Force Restart [my 30 Jun reply]. That is worth doing. My iPhone battery usage improved dramatically after I did.

Stay Safe.

FIXED: Turn off dark mode then turn off the iphone and back on. Worked for iPhone 7plus.

I will sure miss the warmth of my burning hot iphone on a cold night but I guess it'll be nice to have more then 2 hours of battery life and a pocket without burn marks. Apple bug... you will be deeply missed. Thank you for not burning my house down while I slept. :)

More details: I had already done a full reset and only re-downloaded only the apps I actually use but the problem was still there. So for those of you who are about to try a full reset, maybe try switching off dark mode first.

The issue might be different than what is mentioned in this thread.

Go to Settings > Battery.

Check out Battery Activity.

I suspect you will find an app or two that are using significant battery in background mode.

The only solution I have found is to delete that app.

There are a number of threads about this issue. Some I've read, no one seems to have any better solution. I've heard this issue will be fixed in the next iOS update.

Maybe this will help.

Neal

Just wanted to share with those of you experiencing the battery drains that I updatedi my iphone 7plus and ipad with 13.6.1 and all of my issues are now resolved. Hope this works for othes. Thanks to all for all of the sharing.

I just turned off dark mode and the battery fast decline seems to have stopped. Hopefully I won’t be dead tomorrow by 10:00am!!

Try the force restart. I had exactly the same in my iPadPro and that fixed it within two minutes!

Hi DMC_ATL

I have the same problem with an iPhone X - as soon as I updated to iOS 13.5.1 battery life bombed.

SravanKra has given you a lot of standard steps to achieve good battery life but have you contacted Apple Support directly? They can try to deal with the issue by running diagnostics on your phone and I would recommend it. Then they get a direct idea of the issues we are having!

Apple Support advised me my battery was more than OK but warned that updates do initially demand more power from phones and it should settle down in a couple of days [ pinch of salt with that one?] However, they ran through a "Force Restart" procedure with me that I have more hope for -

IN quick succession - Briefly press & release the Up Volume, then briefly press & release the Down Volume, then press and HOLD DOWN the Power Button, and keep it held as the screen shows the power off slider, still keeping the Power Button held while the screen goes dark and keep it held until the Apple logo appears, then release it. The phone will restart, hopefully a lot cleaner than before.

Sorry I have nothing more than that and sympathy to offer. Apple do seem to keep messing things up don't they? It's all very well developing fancy virus tracking apps for media releases but messing up all iPhones' battery life needs more press attention - like the iPad iOS Photos sync debacle of last year, that is still not fixed. Hey Ho.

I have the same problem with my iPhone 11 Pro Max ever since the last update (I’ve also seen several similar postings). Setting>Battery shows me that Siri is using 78% of the battery which continues to be the case even after turning Siri and Keyboard Dictation completely off. I’m currently trying another cycle with Application Background Update turned off. We’ll see.

**I did see a posting by someone who said they fixed this problem by logging out of iCloud and then logging back in (merging data). I’ll try that next.**

By the way - in my opinion you can ignore the responses by the “experts” on this forum. Every one that I have seen so far simply repeats the same old “how to improve battery life” steps already published by Apple. That is not your problem as you described it.