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Ridiculous battery drain/discharge rate with no clear culprit?

Recently, my iPhone SE 2020 started discharging at an alarming rate, for apparently no reason (according to battery information).


It literally can go from 100% to 0 overnight in low power mode. It'll shut down in the middle of the night and my alarm won't wake me up.



As you can see in this screenshot, battery settings only reports that translate is used overnight, but actually this is the first night where that was the case. On other nights it showed nothing being used at all.



My battery health is 88%. I have almost religiously not to charged my battery past 90% or discharged below 10%. Since I bought almost a year ago, I can count on 1 hand how many times I have charged it overnight... but now it looks like I will have no choice but to leave it charging overnight, otherwise I will be waking up to a dead phone every morning, and one night I remember it reporting another app running 5 minutes in the background every hour.



Not even a few weeks ago I could leave it at a 40% charge before going to sleep and I could wake up to something like 30-35%. This change is very sudden and very drastic. I have doubts that it would be directly related to the condition of the battery, but perhaps?


It's hard to say if this came immediately after an update...


Does anybody have any suggestions/ideas? What's going on here?


Thanks for checking this post out!

Posted on May 27, 2021 10:31 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 28, 2021 5:47 AM

Hello,

Hmm, maybe a rogue app is consuming your battery. See these steps:

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

2) Go to Settings > 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

Also, see this for some charging tips:

When to charge your iPhone or iPad

Good luck.

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6 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 28, 2021 5:47 AM in response to jacobmarciniec

Hello,

Hmm, maybe a rogue app is consuming your battery. See these steps:

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

2) Go to Settings > 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

Also, see this for some charging tips:

When to charge your iPhone or iPad

Good luck.

May 28, 2021 8:52 AM in response to jacobmarciniec

Here are a couple of diagnostic tests:

  • First, when you go to Settings/Battery, which apps are using the most energy, and how much (tap on an app to see how much)
  • Next, check for a battery self-discharge. Charge the phone to 100%, then turn the phone off completely (it’s best to do this in the evening so it won’t interfere with your use of the phone). Leave it off overnight. Turn it on in the morning and it should still be close to 100%. If it isn’t your battery needs replacing.

May 28, 2021 8:26 AM in response to MrBill3

Thanks for the reply MrBill3! I have tried restarting... both by choice and not 😆


As you can see in my screenshots, I have checked battery usage by app. It was not informative.


I also posted my battery health information. As far as I can tell, it doesn't suggest that I should've had such a drastic change in such a short period of time.

Jun 5, 2021 9:45 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

So I did the discharge test... it didn't drop a single percentage point overnight. I charged it to 99%, turned it off, and powered it on about 8 hours later in the morning. It was still at 99%.


The battery usage information in the settings menu is not helpful. As you can see by my screenshots in the original post, it does not report that any app in particular is using any large portion of charge. That is still the same to this day.


Thanks again for the tip on this test, indeed I think it was a valid one worth trying!

Jun 5, 2021 10:57 AM in response to jacobmarciniec

Also, most people connect their phone to their charger and leave it plugged in overnight; that would solve your alarm issue.


The screens show Google Maps used 45% of your battery; any mapping app is a huge battery draw as it continuously updates its location using GPS.


Try killing and not using Google Maps and see if that makes a difference for you.


Ridiculous battery drain/discharge rate with no clear culprit?

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