iOS 15.4 Battery Drain

iOS 15.4.1 is out , just NOW !!!!! holy ****: tech spec say: fix for battery drain ... for god sake, APPLE !!!

Everything was fine until the installation of 15.4 on all of the devices. Most definitely we are seeing sudden and rapid battery drain on iPhone X with Apple Watch 5, on iPhone Xs with Apple Watch 5 and on iPad Mini 5. Looking into the issue I believe that Find My is causing the problem.

Only with Airplane Mode enabled on the Apple Watches, but not on the iPhones, will the Battery last more than a few hours. Once off the charger, the iPad Mini will completely discharge the Battery in a few hours, even if left alone and not used. Today the iPhone X went from 100% to 34% in a little over 5 hours.

We have tried multiple Power Off/On scenarios. Completely turning off and elimination tracking with Find My and finally removing all non-Apple apps from the Apple Watches.

Yesterday morning I was able to grab Battery Information from the iPhone X which shows the Battery Drain happening.

Hope this information helps!

Anytime there is a numbered iOS .x update, i.e. 15.4, 14.2, etc. there is a recalibration period where the battery life is not always represented as it actually is. There is also a lot of indexing going on in the background for a bit. Apple usually will advise you wait 24-48 hours for these to finish before you worry too much.

Although in my case, this is the most gruelling and intense adjustment period yet.

cyxogryz wrote:

iPhone 13 user here. Got an update last night and the battery drain is noticeable. I used to have no less than 30% by midnight and now it’s at 22% by 8 pm already. Hope there will be a quick fix.

The quick fix is to do some troubleshooting. Start by restarting your phone. Then use it for a couple of days while the phone does the database updates that are common with a new version. Try to leave it plugged in for several hours. The check the battery drain say, 3 days from now.

little update from my side.

did the update on friday. battery went empty in about 2h, from 100% to 8%,

same on saturday and sunday.

now on monday, it seems to slow down, just lost 40% in a half day,

so I start beliving this statement here from apple IS CORRECT

iOS 15.4 Battery Drain - Apple Community

...because every version leads to some hours, or a day or two, of battery drain (or apparent battery drain) issues, until a number of background tasks are completed and the new iOS version calibrates to the battery and the user's use pattern...

Lee14 wrote:

Because only some people are having this happen, I suspect that suggestd is hanging when trying to index data from one or a small number of particular apps. Short of tediously going through Siri & Search's entire list, turning them all off, then turning one on at a time, I can't think of a way to figure out which one or ones. It's still a bug in 15.4 though, because this wasn't happening with 15.3.1 and I don't have any apps on the phone that weren't there under 15.3.1.

Except that there were a number of posts from people after they updated to 15.3.1. So it was clearly there for some people in 15.3.1, just not you. And likewise for 15.3, 15.2.1, 15.2, 15.1, etc. So it isn’t specifically a 15.4 issue.

My compliments on tracking this down.

Papoon wrote:

After updating iPhone 8 to 15.4, battery drains normally to 30%-35% then phone shuts down. Battery usage by app doesn't show anything going crazy (see screenshots). Level shows 12% after connecting to charger and restart. Battery capacity at 94% with no notice that shutdown was due to inability to support peak performance. Tried quitting all apps and forced shutdown/restart with no effect. Any ideas folks?

If the phone shuts down above around 5% (or less) the battery is failing. Make an appointment to get it replaced→iPhone Battery Replacement - Official Apple Support

Update:

• Ended up doing restore from backup using my mac
• The process above kept all my data except for the mp3 songs I've accumulated over the years (I still have backup somewhere)
• Phone has been running for 58 hours (100% charged since 8am Monday March 28th) and it still has 8% left

All in all I think the restore fixed the problem and I think for my case it was probably the mp3 songs (some with non-English characters) that may have caused the drain after the previous 15.4 update.

Give restore from backup a try and see if it helps.

I think I've caught it in the act. My battery dropped precipitously, as shown below, while no apps were running and the screen was off except for a couple of 2-second looks to check the time.

While it was still going on, I quickly plugged it into my Mac using Xcode Instruments, and it looked like the culprit process was suggestd.

Heavy suggestd activity updating Siri's suggestion database would be legit, if it were in the "few hours to a day or two" that Apple is offering in its explanations. However, my 15.4 update was 9 days ago. Burning through battery from 83% to 31% in under two hours, 9 days after the update, is not legit.

Because only some people are having this happen, I suspect that suggestd is hanging when trying to index data from one or a small number of particular apps. Short of tediously going through Siri & Search's entire list, turning them all off, then turning one on at a time, I can't think of a way to figure out which one or ones. It's still a bug in 15.4 though, because this wasn't happening with 15.3.1 and I don't have any apps on the phone that weren't there under 15.3.1.

Meanwhile, until Apple fixes it,

have you tried looking in your background refresh settings? Usually if they are all on it’ll cause battery to drain a lot quicker as ea app is trying to update/refresh all at the same time.

tomek.richert wrote:

I have the same problem, battery drain from 80% to 20% over night, without using it

You should be charging overnight with Optimized Charging enabled, the way Apple designed iPhones to be used, so the “housekeeping” processes that run all the time run off mains power and not the battery. Not charging overnight will cause your battery to degrade faster.

I tried a few things below:

1) Uninstalled YouTube

2) Disabled Find My and Motion Calibration location service, restart, reenable the LS for both

3) Disabled Siri (except for individual app settings, there are a lot of apps), restart, reenabled Siri again

4) Unpaired and re-paired the Watch again

#1 to eliminate Youtube as a possible cause as I was using it quite a bit.

#2 seems to have stopped the constant on pattern I noticed with Find My and Motion Calibration Location Service. I pretty much have all LS off except for those 2 and those 2 kept running.

#3 seems promisingly slow down the drain a bit. My iPhone 13 Pro Max was draining 1% every 15 minutes or so and that's not acceptable even for regular iPhone.

#4 just to eliminate Watch as a possible source

Please try it out and let me know if any of the above helps.

I have an iphone 12 and still on ios 15.1.1 I have delayed updating the system because of all the reported battery drain issues. I saw this post about "This update includes the following bug fixes for your iPhone:

Battery may drain more quickly than expected after updating to iOS 15.4"

Was model is your iphone ? Wondering if this applies to iphone 12, I do not see that in the 15.4.1 update notes for my iphone 12. Just wondering if it's safe to update my phone now.

My phone is an SE. My wife's 6S has the same issue. I don't know if it affects the 12. The bug(s) seem to offed only some hardware and software configurations.

15.4.1 still doesn't have it right. They seem to have squashed the runaway suggestd process bug; my battery no longer drains 60% in 30 minutes and heats up the phone while sitting idle with the screen off and no apps running. However, it is still not very usable, as it drains a steady 15%-18% an hour while idle, even in airplane mode. I can't get through a normal day without charging it 2-3 times (a sharp contrast to 15.3.1). Using Xcode Instruments, the only suspect process I see is that sysmond runs a continuous 16-20% of CPU. sysmond has to run all the time of course, but that seems an awfully high CPU utilization for it. (MacOS sysmond runs around 0.9-1.2%, for comparison.) If anyone has an iPhone that is not having a battery life problem (any recent iOS version) and is game to use Xcode Instruments on it, I'd really like to see what a "healthy" sysmond runs.

Update: the battery life would is still getting worse and the longer I use, the more sluggish experience, screen freezing and device heating up when being used experienced.

Conclusion: DO NOT UPDATE TO IOS 15.4.1 CAUSE IT DOES NOT RESOLVE THE BATTERY DRAIN ISSUE.

_Kyle46_ wrote:

Update: the battery life would is still getting worse and the longer I use, the more sluggish experience, screen freezing and device heating up when being used experienced.

Conclusion: DO NOT UPDATE TO IOS 15.4.1 CAUSE IT DOES NOT RESOLVE THE BATTERY DRAIN ISSUE.

Thanks Kyle, guess apple is not going to fix the problem. When I have to replace my phone guess I'm going back to android.