ios 14 MASSIVE battery drain

Hi there,

I experienced the same issue for about three days! I would recommend following these steps to get back on track:

1. Restart each device
2. If that fails, reset your Apple Watch to factory settings and re-pair.
3. If that fails, it's time to restore your iPhone.

Step three was required for me. Let me know how it goes!

I was also seeing battery drain > 50% over a day from Exposure Notifications on iOS 14.0.1 (iPhone SE 2016) - this was never a problem under iOS 13. It only started after I upgraded to iOS 14.

The solution for me was to DISABLE Exposure Notifications (Settings > Exposure Notifications > Turn Off Exposure Notifications), followed by a restart (power off, power on) and then re-enabling Exposure Notifications through the COVID Alert app (I’m in Ontario, Canada).

So far battery life looks to have resumed back to normal. Hope this helps someone.

I have this same problem. After trying to disable the new ‘Exposure Notifications’ from Apple and rebooting/restarting etc. This did nothing to solve the problem. I had to uninstall the COVID-19 app and disable the “Exposure Notifications’ for the day restarted te iPhone. this verified the battery drain because instead of waking in the morning to 1% battery the iPhone maintained the battery level at 75%. I just reinstalled the COVID app again to see if it plays nice now or not. I did notice that in the ‘Exposure Notifications’ the ‘Availability Alerts’ is off (this time as it was on before, as I turned it on to see if it was this that was causing the issue) maybe it is this part. Here is a screen shot of overnight when it was at its worse. But I had to uninstall reboot a few times in order to get hold of this power drain.

Same thing here. I went sleep at about 25% and I woke up at 1%. Mine wasn’t charging, but there were no apps opened. The battery chart shows a single app activity: Exposure Notifications. I will disable it to see if “fixes” the issue.

So I disabled the fitness widget and it magically fixed the battery drain issue. I also had 3rd party sleep apps installed. Not sure if they clashed but I felt it had something to do with sleep app and pulling data for the widget

Of course after trying a few tests, I have to question the bluetooth connectivity. The battery took a 5% decrease checking my Fitbit Versa Lite and another 5% hooking up to my bluetooth speaker as I was starting my treadmill 5kms run this AM. So, I noticed this COVID app also uses Bluetooth and on Friday I was driving in my car and the phone was connected to the cars bluetooth. HMmm. I am glad I don't work at tech services and I don’t like those standard answers like reinstall everything. Fix your broken op system Apple. I had a problem like this with I think it was iOS 12. The battery drain ended being, I think, my 5G WiFi which I don't use anymore except when absolutely necessary and the 2.4G ain’t doing it. My iPhone is a 2016 SE.

Why should I have to reset and restore anything? This battery drain thing only started with the latest iOS update. I’m on an iPhone 11 less than a year old. I use my phone all the time. It doesn’t even charge properly when plugged into usb on my laptop. I don’t always have access to a plug socket. Please fix your update Apple! This is getting ridiculous

Thanks. I will leave it off for now anyway, I have not seen other people besides my wife for months and the cash register lady does not count, it is all too short to log. A non-drained battery is currently healthier for me.

Besides this all I think it is a laugh that Apple did not make sure this could not happen. Prolly due to very poor testing quality.

I don’t have the watch and I’m experiencing a regular battery drain from the exposure notifications ... some days as high as 40% of daily battery use. My phone sits on charge during the night and I wake up to 100% battery charge. Within a few hours it drops down to 60% or more, whether I use the phone or not. I’ve turned off the exposure notifications while I know I’m in a safe place and see if that makes a difference.

Same here: my original iPhone SE was killed by ios 14.2. Battery lasts less than 1 hour. Sum this with lots BT related bugs that came ONE YEAR AGO with iOS 13 that Made Siri + calls useless on my Apple Watch 4 (There’s a long thread here on this forum)... et voila: the shame is served. I HAD TO buy a new iPhone because I need To work.

At Apple support they confirmed that they knew the issue with iOS 13... one year long promising a fix with “a next update”. Here it it is: after dozen of updates that didn’t solve, this one has definitely killed my (less than 4 year Old) iPhone. When I ordered the new iPhone by Apple Store online (by phone, in a pandemic time i can’t go to an Apple store, Too far from my living town, I’m visually imparerd) they refuse to consider my support ticket Number. So no compensation. I can’t accept this. I’ll digg into this

Both my wife's 6S and my X see the same issue and the only fix we have found is to disable the exposure notifications. We first wondered if this had to do with our two phones communicating with one another all day while we work from home, but disabling the EN on just one phone did not fix it for the other. We also did not have this issue while running iOS 13.

Too bad because the idea of this anonymous contact tracing is a really good one.

I have decided to again disable the exposure and nhs completely due to continuing drain. This time I will not reinstall. It may be a coincidence but I am now told that my battery has seriously degraded and needs renewing but all my problems started with that Apple update. At least it still works when plugged into the mains.

My phone Xs just started losing its charge after the most recent upgrade to iOS 14.3 and I didn't think to look until yesterday about the exposure notifications draining it; but that's what's doing it. And now my battery health has dropped down to 83%.

Apple diagnosed a decayed battery in mine in the end and a new one, plus any update they did ,solved all problems. Excellent service returned within a day but the initial posting box took 9 days to come by Royal Mail! Still suspect the original update put the oldish(3 years) battery under too much strain.