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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

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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 23, 2020 3:39 PM in response to lukyimr

Just wanted to provide a brief update. As I wrote yesterday, I ended up replacing the battery (1st gen SE 2016). Today, nearly 12 hours after it was disconnected from the charger the battery is at 59% after a number of phone calls, messages, emails and Safari use.

I do believe that the 14.3 update has caused the battery drain rate to increase exponentially; before the update it would drain from 100% down to +/- 30% in the same amount of time.

Cheers.

Dec 23, 2020 4:07 PM in response to valbmmet

Well I was thinking of having my 6s battery changed and see if it might help with the battery nearly completely diminished over night since the 14.2 and then worse 14.3 update. But those who have done it dont see and improvement in the consumption rate so I'll wait for the next update. Lesson learned, do not update IOS unless you absolutely have to.

Dec 26, 2020 6:54 AM in response to FinalCutPro7473

Adding my voice in the hope Apple might actually take notice and sort this issue out.


This has been going on for me since 13.7 – I had a great iPhone SE that has been all but useless since then. This latest update is the worst it has been... my phone was at 91% when I went to bed last night, I woke up to 33%. This has zero to do with indexing after an update. It has gone on for weeks after all of the previous updates. Open any app, and the battery percentage starts running down right in front of my eyes, literally like a stopwatch.


I'm so tired of patronizing Apple Expert advice about adjusting screen brightness, turning off background app refresh, yadda yadda. I've owned iphones since day 1 and have always taken those precautions to conserve battery life. I am not using my phone any differently. This is something Apple has done/is doing to phones to force obsolescence on them just like they did a few years ago. I will probably have to upgrade my phone, since a device that runs out of charge while doing absolutely nothing is of no practical use to me.


I have been a loyal iPhone user for years, but this is likely the last iPhone I will purchase.

Dec 26, 2020 7:41 AM in response to Chrisyaxley

Essentially the same for me w/ the iPhone 12. However, my older iPhone 10 had essentially the same problem after updating to iOS 14.2 I'm convinced that the problem is iOS 14.x not the device but this needs to end. A $1000 phone should not be this unusable. The only way to get ANY use out of thr phone is to leave it in Low Power mode all the time.

Dec 26, 2020 9:13 AM in response to kennethklondon

Unfortunately low power mode made no difference. Phone shows 100% charged while plugged in; dies in m y hand the second after I unplug it. I am in chat right now with someone at Apple who is running a diagnostics check.


Thank the Maker I warned my son against updating to 14.3. Having it ruin my phone is bad enough but listening to a teenager whine about it would be infinitely worse.

Dec 26, 2020 9:25 AM in response to Moonspinner

Low power mode seems to work for me BUT you have to be vigilant. When you charge the phone, iOS automatically turns off Lower Power mode when it charges past 80. So, if you begin in LP mode, put the phone on a wireless charger overnight, what happens is that the device will charge but when it hits 80%, iOS goes into normal mode and the battery drains far faster than it can charge. Thus, when you wake up, the power may be at 15%, 7%, whatever. There doesn't seem to be any way to lock it into LP mode. So when you charge it, turn on LP mode when it gets past 80%. Also, the wired charger seems to add more juice than the new MagSafe charger I'm using so, if plugged in, it will charge slightly faster than it drains, even in normal mode. BTW -- I'm running diagnostics on the device as per an Apple Support chat but I strongly doubt that it's a hardware issue as the same thing happened to my iPhone X just after installing 14.2. In fact, the sudden drop in battery life but 2 other relatively minor issues are why I got the 12 to replace the X in the first place. Sigh...

Dec 26, 2020 9:03 PM in response to kennethklondon

It looks like I found the problem, at least for my iPhone 12 Pro. As Apple suggests, look in Settings/Battery and see which apps are using a lot of power -- esp. any marked with "Background". In my case, the Wahoo Elemnt app (connects iOS devices to exercise equipment popular w/ cyclists) was constantly running in the background. To fix it, I just went to Settings, Background App Refresh, and turned Background Refresh off for that one app (everything else left on). I also noticed that Wahoo released a new version of the app 5 days ago. It didn't specifically mention battery drain so, for the time being, I'm leaving Background Refresh off for that app but it's possible that they fixed it. In the meantime, I'm just happy that my phone works as it should. Bottom line .. look for a rouge app that is using power in the background.

Dec 27, 2020 12:59 AM in response to stevepo

Hey guys


I don't read all the others posts but I have the same issue with my iPhone 11 Pro since upgrading to iOS 14.3 from iOS 14.2.


With iOS 14.2 = Battery for over two days

With iOS 14.3 = Battery for one day max!


I tested it the last days and the battery is definetely very bad (this happens immediately after upgrading to 14.3). Something is wrong. The phone is not warm/hot, no unusual thing in the battery check and I don't use it more.

Dec 27, 2020 1:42 AM in response to Overlord85

For me (11 pro max) the issue is pretty obvious and it all started with iOS 14.

I don’t have severe battery drain and it would still last me a day. But I notice a huge difference with mobile data turned off.

During the night with mobile data turned on, battery drains 30% on avg. With mobile data off battery drains only 4%.

At home my phone is always connected to WiFi so I got curious why turning on / off mobile data makes a difference. After many hours of diagnosing I noticed with mobile data ON and in sleep mode, my phone keeps reconnecting to WiFi every 10 seconds. Won’t do this whilst using the phone or mobile data off. You can only notice this by monitoring clients list on access point and see the iPhone device reappearing every 10 seconds. I can well understand how this constant reconnecting to WiFi drains the battery.


Why this behavior I don’t know and I guess that is the problem (at least for me). I tried other brands of APs and same behavior.


I also tried full reset and recently upgraded to 14.3 and issue persists.


I encourage others to try this. Before you sleep turn off mobile data (with WiFi on) and compare battery drain to prior nights with mobile data on.

Dec 27, 2020 4:30 AM in response to stevepo

not true if you charge during night your iphone will be 100% when wake up !!!! cos on the plug lol you FUNNY !!!

ok i tried something just restart iphone actually seems better i have to see other days, but IOS update is necessary i m sure.... it s 1:29pm i have 77% i used my iphone since 8:30am will see if ok till 23pm like 30% left is ok.

Dec 27, 2020 5:34 AM in response to stevepo

I have background refresh off for everything: I started doing that after 13.7, which is when I first started having battery drain problems. It's just awful with 14.3... though toggling Airplane mode on and off seems to have stopped the problem where my phone was dying the second I unplugged it, last night it drained from 100% to 11% while sitting on my nightstand. Nothing was running in that time, but the battery monitor shows activity in apps I don't even use and never have. Like the Mail app... I don't use the phone for email and in fact have never ever opened the mail app on the phone. Yet there was activity in the app overnight while I was asleep. What even?


I'm so furious at Apple. They want to charge me to replace the battery but the battery health is at 93% and the person who ran diagnostics for me yesterday says there is nothing wrong with the battery or the phone.

iOS 14.2/14.3 battery drain bug!

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