Ios 15.1 battery drain

I was chatting with Apple support yesterday and they steadfastedly toe the line that it's not the fault of the iOS, it's not the fault of Apple and it's down to the user. The sheer hubris from Apple is unbelievable and even when I called out the only difference is the version of the iOS, the answer was still "no it's not the iOS". Yesterday's battery stats for me are 3hr 24 mins screen on time, 32 mins of which was Safari and yet it used 32% of the battery in that time. Yes, there are other apps not optimised for 15.1 but they don't leak battery life as badly as Safari does. Other things which use excessive battery are all iOS native apps e.g. Mail, Settings, Home & Lock Screen etc. Unfortunately Apple just refuse to believe it's their issue and I need to switch off background app refresh, dim the brightness (even though I never have above 20% brightness), clear the Safari cache daily, switch off bluetooth (which I only switch on when I use my headphones). I was even given the "have you tried turning it off and on again?" routine. This is the first update I've had since getting my 12 Pro Max I've had with battery life. I'm very careful with my battery and it's only recently gone to 99% battery health (unsurprisingly it dropped to that when 15.1 was installed and before that was still 100%). It's a really **** poor attitude from Apple that they can't admit it's their fault and that they're looking into it.

I don’t buy into the not apple fault, they messed up big time with 15.1. Any of the 14 or 15.0 had no such issues and the support are giving customer excuses instead if involving the developers as they should.

They did not mention anything about battery management changes specifically in version 15.1 - it is mostly extra features for iPhone 13, etc…

The QA guys there don’t do the job and approve buggy versions, btw version 15.0.1&2 had other problems like app freezes and iOS crushes once in a while(I experienced those, though they might be related to apps incompatibility with iOS - iOS need to protect itself).

I’m disappointed with Apple(reconsidering the plans to upgrade to iPhone 13, if this saga continues - I’ll be better off with a google pixel).

Same here, I’ve had the iPhone 12 Pro Max since December (not even a year old.) And my battery has gone to ****, I used to get an easy 2 days out of my phone. Now I’m lucky if I can get 8 hours on a good day!! Weirdly enough it’s been happening since iOS 14.6 but apple refuses to fix their iOS and make it bug free!!! This might be my last iPhone because of how pathetic Apple is with this stuff. Spend months testing a new ios only for it to be filled with bugs and battery drain.

I had a call with L2 Apple support and they've observed the issue and seen just how badly Safari chews up battery. They've now referred this to their engineering group and they're gonna follow up with me. What I've been advised to do is back up my phone prior to their call as the likelihood is they'll ask me to do a ground up install of 15.1 as a brand new install as opposed to the upgrade executable that I daresay everyone applied. I'm not relishing the prospect of having to do essentially factory reset then restore my backup but at least engineering are looking at it. I would encourage everyone else to phone up Apple support so that they realise that this is not a once off user issue and is far more pervasive across different iPhone models/SKUs then hopefully they can release a patch to update this issue.

11mins Safari use from 2hrs 11 mins sreen on time should not equate to 21% battery usage. I've also been advised to use an alternative browser to Safari for the time being until product engineering get back in touch with me. Last night I observed my iPhone heating up (from being cold on standby) with about 10 mins Safari usage

I have stopped both battery drain, drainage and/or drop and heat. There are two aspects to my solution: 1. ‘Stop’ 15.0 turned functionality in 15.1: just work through ‘Settings’ and ‘turn-off’; 2. ‘Stop’ both Apple Apps and 3rd party Apps that are not compliant to the new settings imposed by 15.1, which were dormant in 15.0, 15.0.1 and/or 15.0.2. Main Apps which drain are Safari, Mail, Stock and associated News, 3rd party Anti-Virus, Settings and App Store.

For example, Settings then Battery switch off the setting for Lower Battery, by changing that setting cost me 5% battery. In short all the new fx of 15.x I needed to switch off in Settings, for me 15.x is not ready.

Do not upgrade to iOS 15.1, I have made that mistake.

Brand new iPhone 13 and now I have to keep my charger in my pocket because the battery drain is bad?

this is outrageous. A software fix must be available sooner than later.

iOS 15.1 is definitely a problem. On 14.8 my 11 Pro Max would run forever on 23 month old battery with 91% health. I waited for iOS 15.1 to come out before I did the upgrade, as I wanted to make sure it was stable; and my new iPad Mini 6 was doing fine on iOS 15.0.2 - but iOS 15.1 killed my battery life on both devices! I'm talking about a week or more after an update or wipe and restore, not just in the first few days with spotlight indexing.

Turning off background app refresh didn't help. Turning off location services for most apps didn't help. Turning off push for mail, and changing it to fetch only on power with wifi didn't help. Resetting network settings didn't help. I don't want to set up as new or reset all settings for what was fine just a couple of weeks ago - it's a lot of work to put everything back the way it was. LOW POWER MODE DIDN'T HELP, and I could see my 11 Pro Max or Mini 6 draining just as fast on the graphs regardless of power mode on both devices!

I went from having 20-30% battery left after a heavy usage 16 hour day with 14.8 (wake 10AM - go to bed 2AM the next day) to having 10% left after 10 hours of light usage (by 8PM). I am having to charge again to keep using it every evening; even if I only used my phone for 3-4 hours of "screen on" time. I kept noticing apps like Apple News (or Tile) now using 30% of my battery, despite showing only 20-25 minutes of background use, with background app refresh off and all apps being closed. I just set all the apps to only use location when using the app, but no help.

The battery use graphs don't show enough activity (20-30 min background for 2-3 apps) to account for all the lost energy. I deleted Tile App, since I'm using air tags for many but not all items I keep track of, but that didn't help the drain.

I am also seeing the iPad mini 6 drain at about 7% per hour when untouched, with all these power saving measures that I didn't need to do before on 15.0.1 or so. Before 15.1 it was draining at about 1-2% per hour on iOS 15.0.2. Just today my iPad mini 6 went from 100% to 27% in only 13 hours of complete inactivity today, without being touched and showing almost no on-screen or off-screen use on the graphs. Meanwhile my iPad Mini 4 on original 4+ yr old battery with LTE SIM connected to cellular (but on wifi with BT enabled) will go 14x longer, from 100% to 25% over 7-8 days of standby.

I didn't understand was Apple News running in the background and using so much battery on my 11 Pro Max if New is closed and background app refresh is off. Then an Apple fell off the tree and hit my head like Sir Issac, giving me the idea to turn off the News Widget on the the home screen that you get if you swipe right at the home screen first page. I was at 58% 2 hours ago in low power mode, and now my iPhone is at 56%, so the drain might be gone just from removing the news widget!

I will update on this solution tomorrow (or later today since midnight has passed).

I tried the same with the iPad Mini 6, and in the same time it's dropped from 47% to 38% battery, in low power mode, so it didn't help, but I only have background app refresh turned off and not turned off push mail yet. I shouldn't have to turn these off - it was fine before with background app refresh, and location, and push mail until 15.1

Yesterday I used 100% of my iPad Minii 6 battery for 15 min on screen, and 1hr 31 min screen off!

Turning off the Apple News Widget does seem to have fixed the "standby" battery drain. Both iPhone 11 Pro Max and iPad Mini 6 are at 100% after almost 3 hours unplugged from the charger this AM, without using low power mode. Mind you, I still have background app refresh and push mail turned off.

I was also seeing battery drain faster while using it with that process in the background sucking the life out of them. I'll now use them regularly through the day and see how well they last after this.

So, after not using the iPhone for 3 hours and it staying at 100% for 3 hours in standby, I then started using the phone normally. It's 2:14PM now and it's been unplugged since 9:14AM, and I've used it normally for three phone calls, reading email, reddit, and web browsing, and I'm at 88%. Yesterday I would have been down to about 65% by now, with it draining 7% per hour when in standby and low power.

This is definitely an improvement. It's dropped 0% in 3 hours of standby, then 6% per hour of use for 2 hours. Battery usage - Mail 20%, Reddit 14%, messages 12%, Safari 12%, App Store 6% background, photos 5% background, Phone 2%

I have not touched the iPad Mini 6 in the 5 hours since I unplugged it, and it's still showing 100% battery! It was draining about 5-7% per hour in standby before the changes above.

Can't edit to add this - from yesterday I mentioned things that I did that didn't help, and I have not reversed those settings back to normal yet. I plan to add one of the following iOS features back per day, to see what impact they have on battery life. Those things I changedare in my big post, and I note them again here:

Turned off background app refresh didn't help.

Turned off location services for most apps didn't help.

Turned off push for mail, and changing it to fetch only on power with wifi didn't help.

Reset network settings didn't help.

LOW POWER MODE DIDN'T HELP.

Turned off Apple News Widget on the far left home screen - fixed it so far.

At this point I think Apple are doing this on purpose because almost every update has battery drain so far and Apple are getting sloppier and sloppier with their updates, every update I’ve had has introduced more bugs than what it has fixed

I’m dealing with excessive battery drain on my 12 pro max and the phone isn’t even a year old with 100% battery capacity!!!! Apple needs to fix their buggy iOS because this has been going on for months.

Since I turned off the Apple News Widget at 9:14 AM, when I unplugged my devices (it's 8:45 PM now and almost 12 hours), my battery drain is dramatically better.

(1) I haven't used my iPad Mini 6 and battery drain is negligible so that I'm at 95% charge. Yesterday it would be below 20% by this time of day, even a week after the update to 15.1 when spotlight was done indexing.

(2) On my 11 Pro Max I'm still at 70% charge, after unplugging almost 12 hours ago, and using it for the past 9 hours. Yesterday, before I turned off Apple news widget, I'd be completely out of juice by this time of day.

Again, I didn't use my phone the first 3 hours unplugged today, as a test, and it stayed at 100% during that time. But yesterday it was down to 80% in just 3 hours of standby. I've used my 11 Pro Max normally for about 9 hours today (without touching my iPad) and I'm only using up about 3% battery per hour of use. The previous few days it used to be draining about 7% per hour, even in standby and low power mode, i.e. without touching the device.

I'll be awake for another 5-6 hours, and if this trend continues I should be able to start testing by turning other iOS features back on, like push mail for iCloud and Hotmail, then maybe the next day turn background app refresh back on for a few apps that could benefit.

Okay, final update. I am going to bed at 1:26 AM and my 11 Pro Max has been unplugged since 9:14 AM yesterday. That's 16 hours on battery since I disabled the Apple News Home Screen Widget.

(1) I am still at 60% battery. So my drain is fixed with light usage (3.5 hours screen on, 40 minutes screen off). Before this the 11 Pro Max battery would be dead within 12 hours on iOS 15.1, but now I can go two days on one charge again without low power mode again. It even stayed at 100% for the first 3 hours off the charger, until I started to use the phone.

(2) My iPad Mini 6 also had the issue with iOS 15.1, and with 19 minutes screen on and 1.5 hours screen off, while on battery for the past 16 hours, it is still at 92% in standby all day.

Now, tomorrow (today I guess) I will try heavier use with both - like surf the web for an hour, watching a video for an hour in the TV app, watching YouTube app for an hour, and reading a kindle book for an hour, and see how fast it drains. I think they should only drop about 8-10% per hour doing that, and hopefully only 6-7% an hour if I am lucky. With the bug, I was draining 10-15% per hour with heavy use on my 11 Pro Max, and 7% per hour in standby in low power mode.

If so, then I will turn push mail and background app refresh back on, and pretend like this didn't happen.