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iOS 14.2/14.3 battery drain bug!

Not sure you know anything about this, but my iPhone 8 battery randomly started to be really bad.


One day my battery was working great and randomly it’s draining battery at a super fast rate...


I didn’t download or change any settings. My settings are the best for battery saving...


I’m hoping it’s a weird software issue!


Know why this could be happening out of the blue?


UPDATE: I have since update to the iOS 14.3 RC/GM and my battery has been much better but the issue is still there not 100% fixed!

iPhone 8

Posted on Dec 9, 2020 1:18 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 20, 2021 2:24 AM

A little follow up on my previous post.

In my company we have more than 100 users with iPhone 11 purchased on July 2020 and many (me included) have raised an issue that the phone is inadequate for our work due to fast battery drain.

We mainly use the phone for e-mail and messages between us (5 to 10 per hour) and access to a site over the browser to enter some data 5-6 times a day for about 10 minutes per time (plus phone calls off course).

With these many barely get through the day (80% to 20% charge) and some don't even reach the afternoon.

So our technicians performed some operational tests and came up with the bellow:

Main Settings:

Newly reset 6 months old iPhone 11's with Background app refers off, Location services only maps, WIFI calling, find my iPhone and share my location on, raise to talk off, Siri search off, App and IOS update off, Bluetooth off, 1 mail account and iCloud on.

stand by drain 14-20% per 12 hour.

Enabling airplane mode (working with wifi calling) stand by drain 6-12% per 12 hours

Disabling notifications stand by drain 2-4% per 12 hours. (actually my phone went from 93% to 55% in 5 days stand by).

So notifications seems to be a major culprit here but we do need them so turning them off is out of the question and obviously airplane mode is out of the question for people on the road most of the time.

Based on the notifications finding techs began to suspect the screen-on, battery usage.

So they put 5 iPhones on home screen without any widget, dark mode on and 20% brightness, no open apps and all above settings as described and let them on for 1 hour. The battery drain was 22-36% . Even continued the test until the phones went off and it took them 3.5-5 hours in total (sitting there, doing nothin with the screen on). That's a screen battery drain of above 1% per minute.

Now further to the above we performed the same test with safari open on a news page that auto-refresh and the results were double as bad. No phone lasted more than 3 hours.

To conclude they checked the battery status with iMazing and they found that the battery health displayed on the iPhones was 2 present above the the health reported by the program ranging from 90% (124 charging cycles) to 96% (47 charging cycles).

Out of curiosity Techs performed the same test on a same lot brand new spare iPhone and a coworkers iPhone still on iOS 13.

The new iPhone performed much better but still way less than the IOS 13 one which by the way had 99% (98 according to iMazing) battery health after 93 charging cycles.

Their opinion is that IOS 14.3 is too heavy on the battery and actually it kills it as the battery health seem to degrade much faster than the !OS 13 one. That's why it performs so much better on new iPhones were the battery is on its peeks.

With the above results the management decided to return all affected iPhones (42) to our ISP supplier and get them back only when they are functioning within described specs and all necessary settings on (the claim is that we buy phones based o functionality and operational performance to meet out needs and not technical data), so we wait a response from them.

For the mid time i got from the Techs a mid range android phone on Monday morning, fully loaded with my apps and i am charging it now for the first time from 27% battery. If i get used to the android UI and logic i think i will ask to stick with this one.





227 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 20, 2021 2:24 AM in response to stavros98

A little follow up on my previous post.

In my company we have more than 100 users with iPhone 11 purchased on July 2020 and many (me included) have raised an issue that the phone is inadequate for our work due to fast battery drain.

We mainly use the phone for e-mail and messages between us (5 to 10 per hour) and access to a site over the browser to enter some data 5-6 times a day for about 10 minutes per time (plus phone calls off course).

With these many barely get through the day (80% to 20% charge) and some don't even reach the afternoon.

So our technicians performed some operational tests and came up with the bellow:

Main Settings:

Newly reset 6 months old iPhone 11's with Background app refers off, Location services only maps, WIFI calling, find my iPhone and share my location on, raise to talk off, Siri search off, App and IOS update off, Bluetooth off, 1 mail account and iCloud on.

stand by drain 14-20% per 12 hour.

Enabling airplane mode (working with wifi calling) stand by drain 6-12% per 12 hours

Disabling notifications stand by drain 2-4% per 12 hours. (actually my phone went from 93% to 55% in 5 days stand by).

So notifications seems to be a major culprit here but we do need them so turning them off is out of the question and obviously airplane mode is out of the question for people on the road most of the time.

Based on the notifications finding techs began to suspect the screen-on, battery usage.

So they put 5 iPhones on home screen without any widget, dark mode on and 20% brightness, no open apps and all above settings as described and let them on for 1 hour. The battery drain was 22-36% . Even continued the test until the phones went off and it took them 3.5-5 hours in total (sitting there, doing nothin with the screen on). That's a screen battery drain of above 1% per minute.

Now further to the above we performed the same test with safari open on a news page that auto-refresh and the results were double as bad. No phone lasted more than 3 hours.

To conclude they checked the battery status with iMazing and they found that the battery health displayed on the iPhones was 2 present above the the health reported by the program ranging from 90% (124 charging cycles) to 96% (47 charging cycles).

Out of curiosity Techs performed the same test on a same lot brand new spare iPhone and a coworkers iPhone still on iOS 13.

The new iPhone performed much better but still way less than the IOS 13 one which by the way had 99% (98 according to iMazing) battery health after 93 charging cycles.

Their opinion is that IOS 14.3 is too heavy on the battery and actually it kills it as the battery health seem to degrade much faster than the !OS 13 one. That's why it performs so much better on new iPhones were the battery is on its peeks.

With the above results the management decided to return all affected iPhones (42) to our ISP supplier and get them back only when they are functioning within described specs and all necessary settings on (the claim is that we buy phones based o functionality and operational performance to meet out needs and not technical data), so we wait a response from them.

For the mid time i got from the Techs a mid range android phone on Monday morning, fully loaded with my apps and i am charging it now for the first time from 27% battery. If i get used to the android UI and logic i think i will ask to stick with this one.





Dec 14, 2020 11:53 AM in response to FinalCutPro7473

I’ve experienced this on an iPhone 11 Pro Max and iPhone 12.

while the heat issues have subsided, my battery life is 30% lower now.

the only “solution” is low power mode; there appears to be drain with core apps - photos, Messages, and phone - along with idle Home Screen.

chrome is also using more than it used to.

There is a Reddit thread on this.

Dec 10, 2020 5:55 AM in response to FinalCutPro7473

Hello,

These are the standard steps for short battery life:

1) Have you tried a restart?  If not, do it now.

2) Go to Setting > Battery > BATTERY USAGE BY APP to see the apps that are consuming your battery.

3) Check “Battery Health” in the link: 

iPhone Battery and Performance

4) If all else fails, consider a battery replacement:

iPhone Battery & Power Repair

Good luck.

Dec 21, 2020 1:09 PM in response to JazzSoft

It's not on the release notes of 14.4 beta yet.


https://developer.apple.com/documentation/ios-ipados-release-notes/ios-ipados-14_4-beta-release-notes/


Some people reported that rebooting iPhone will increase the percentage numbers drastically. If so, it's just a battery info issue and not draining actual battery. I hope that's the case but not sure.


My iPhone is currently fully charged. Can someone try rebooting the iPhone and share the result?


Dec 30, 2020 5:32 AM in response to FinalCutPro7473

I also have the (quite massive) battery problem, which is only remedied by turning on the sluggish "Low Power Mode". Then the battery lasts for one whole day (als before) - in any other case, it gets empty in two hours by just using the standard iOS apps. It seems to be an Apple iOS problem, as it startet with iOS 14 and still persists. Before that, everything was fine. My battery is still perfectly OK with 90% capacity and no sudden power losses (or at least it WAS before iOS 14.). Hopefully, Apple is working on a fix, as I don't want to ditch my iPhone SE just yet... You could always try filing a bug report via the "Product Feedback" form (https://www.apple.com/feedback/) - maybe they'll do something about it if enough persons complain.. Let's hope it's not a case of "planned software obsolency".

Jan 20, 2021 1:52 AM in response to AdryKrow

I had a long chat with the Apple support and he tested my phone with the Apple inspector and a battery check but he can't find something wrong. Then I had a chat with his boss and after that I got a call from Apple from a guy from the Apple care team (I don't have Apple care). We are talking long about that issue and in the end he gave me to tips:


Create an Apple bug request

Write an feedback <- very important


https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html


He told me that Apple takes care about the feedback issues and when a lot of people writing a feedback for the same issue, the developers taking care to have a look and try to fix it. But it's only necessary over this ways (Bug request, feedback formular, get in contact with the support). He told me that they ignore the Apple Support Communities for that. a

Dec 16, 2020 5:11 AM in response to lindros2

I have iPhone 11 Pro. After the ios 14.2 my battery drain almost 40% over night. It used to stay 99-100% overnight. And I need to charge my phone twice a day. I used to charge my phone every other day before 14.2. My battery is at 95% health capacity. I updated to iOS 14.3 and the battery drain is still the same. Almost 40% over night. So I wiped and reset my phone yesterday. Still battery drain over the day and night. It doesn’t even tell me what was draining my battery. Just blank on the battery page. When are they going to fix it....

Dec 17, 2020 12:55 AM in response to FinalCutPro7473

I updated my 3 month old iPhone 12 to iOS 14.3 yesterday morning, while I had a full battery. 2hrs later I had just 16%. And a hour or so after that is was completely dead. I charged my phone all night, and woke up to 7% battery.


I have checked the health of my phone & it is at 100%.


No apps were open or running all night & no app show they have used more than 1% of battery.


iOS 14.2/14.3 battery drain bug!

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