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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

Dec 20, 2020 5:11 AM in response to deggie

crazy problem is not my phone but those update 14/2/14/3 my iphone is like new !!!! when 14.1 and before all was fine !!!!!

we are all in this case, only help is APPLE UPDATE !!!! not to check the battery health or drain battery till 0% or reset iphone like new !!!! when most of our iphone when 11 pro or other not so old are 97% left !!!! like someone said there are many genius bar here ..... just hope APPLE works on this update cos it s not acceptable to have iphone like that and have to use my 11 pro with ENERGY ECO till drain bug is fixed, my battery is 70% now and normally i m 85/90% when at home and just do some check.



[Edited by Moderator]

Dec 20, 2020 9:01 AM in response to cpergram

When are they going to fix it....


More likely after they fix the Youtube issue with Apple TV...

On a serious note: I've noticed a drastic battery drop after 14.3 upgrade. Good thing that I have a battery cover - that helps a bit.

Otherwise, it goes from 100% after disconnecting from the charger down to 28% in about 2 hours.

I've ordered a replacement battery, since the original battery is four years old (2016 SE) but Apple is getting worse and worse with its updates/upgrades. I am scared to upgrade my Mac to Big Sur after reading the horror stories of people reporting their good working machines getting bricked. And Apple tech. support blows. I spoke once with an idiot who was replying "LOL" when I was describing the issues I was dealing with. I think Apple needs to concentrate on quality control...

Sorry for the off-topic.

Cheers.

Dec 21, 2020 7:29 AM in response to kennethklondon

Same with me I left my 6s with 14.3 on charging when it was 1% on friday night, In morning when I took it up and remove from charger It shows hundred percent and than it suddenly shutdown when I open messages app .... with connect to charger empty black screen display.... I press and hold power button apple logo display and battery again shows 100%.....

Dec 21, 2020 12:04 PM in response to AzizBhimaniMax

Good for you AzizBhimaniMax, but for many of us the battery drain extremely fast since iOS 14.2 and iOS 14.3 doesn't provide any fix yet. I have a brand new iPhone SE 2nd generation. I've ran some tests over the phone with Apple support and everything is in order on my phone, but the customer support agent did agree that my battery was draining way too fast for absolutely no reason!


So yes, there is an issue for some users.

Dec 21, 2020 12:11 PM in response to AzizBhimaniMax

Lucky you, consider yourself a needle in a haystack because everyone is experiencing problems with battery life on 14.2/14.3.

I myself had to downgrade from 14.3 to 14.2 (which worked fine since the beginning on my iphone 11) cause my battery went from lasting two days to only a few hours. For all those who are experiencing this issue, grab 14.2 ipsw from.... you know where dot me and do the thing to correct the thing apple is doing with the thing that is controlling the other thing that powers up de device. :) they keep deleting my posts.

Dec 21, 2020 12:12 PM in response to b.desroches

I understand for many users battery is draining faster but for the time being you have to use different alternatives like Turning off location, turning off background apps refresh, go for low brightness, use dark wallpapers, turn off vibration while call ringing and others, this will save them alot of battery and these are basics for Iphone.

Dec 21, 2020 12:20 PM in response to amberge

I had problem in 14.2 but now with 14.3 its fine, Apple are powering up their devices yes its true but its still fine to use, even Samsung with all their powers have not reach 2 Trillion worth so think about it, their software is everything otherwise it would not be the company which it is now, use it, if you dont like then look for alternatives, I moved to S20 and guess what i came back to my Xs Max because of the software so smooth even without 120hz it feels better with smooth gestures and app handling, so understand it.

Dec 21, 2020 12:26 PM in response to AzizBhimaniMax

Dude, this is clearly a bug, I´m an iphone user since 3g, so I dont have a problem that would led me to go for another brand. I´m just trying to hepl other dudes since this is historically a common issue on ios updates, this is not new (at least for me) and notice that a big part of the people having problems, comes from devices like 6s, 8, x and xs, even my 11 so I think this is not apple powering up devices via os update, this is a bug.

iOS 14.2/14.3 battery drain bug!

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