BATTERY DRAIN DRAMATICALLY ON IOS 16.1.1

I solved this! The above ideas got me thinking- I turned off Wi-Fi, and kept an eye on cellular data usage per app for a few days.

Turns out the notes app was using 100–200MB/day even though I wasn’t using the app or adding/removing notes. Turning off cellular data for that app greatly improved battery (unless I was on Wi-Fi), but didn’t fix the root cause.

I went through my notes manually and deleted large notes that contained lots of photos or other attachments, which I suspect were having trouble syncing up to iCloud, as I wasn’t willing to turn off iCloud sync. Deleting enough notes cost cellular data usage to drop to almost 0 again - fixing the issue and battery life returned to normal.

Hope this helps others…

@arthuralaor Update and Possible solution for rapid battery drain from advanced Apple Tech Support.

As instructed from the rep at my in person Apple Store Genius Appointment, I did a factory restore in my iPhone (Setting>General>Transfer or Reset>Erase All Content and Settings). This procedure DID NOT improve the battery drain / performance. Don't waste your time with this method if your phone does not show any hardware issues base on Apple's evaluation. If you have a software issue follow the following steps.

When Apple called me today to followup, the guy went though the same song and dance as the rest, try this try that. I said listen I've spent hours on the messing with this phone (probably over 30 hours if I added them all up), I just want a new phone at this point. So he put me through to his supervisor and she asked me if I plugged my phone into my computer to do the restore. I said no, I did what the guy showed me at the Genius appointment. She said I'm sorry he didn't have you do it the correct way, you likely have a corrupted software issue and the way he instructed you does not resolve that issue. So she emailed me a link and I am currently in the LONG process (had to run a newer version of IOS on my MacBook to begin the process). I'm including the link below to do the process. It's very straight forward but is taking some time. The corrupt software is sort of like a virus from what I have researched and you simply pass it on from old iPhone to new iPhone when you set it up.

1. First do a backup to iCloud in your iCloud settings in your phone
2. Open Finder (if you have a Mac computer)
3. Next plug your iPhone into your computer using an Apple Lightening Cable (I tried three other cables and my computer would not recognize my iPhone even thought my phone was charging. If you don't see your iPhone in the left column of Finder, then it's likely a cord / cable issue, try another one.
4. Sign out from "Find My" iPhone in your phone settings (instructed to do this in the link)
5. Follow the instruction in the link (sent to me be advanced Apply Tech Support Rep) Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings - Apple Support
6. Go through the steps. I would set aside at least 2 hours (it's taken much longer than 2 hours due to needing to download and install newer IOS to my MacBook)
7. Here is the KEY the Apple Tech Support Rep told me, DO NOT RESTORE or Back up (whatever it's called) FROM iCloud once your phone is ready to set up. So you will not be using back up apps from iCloud during set up. You want to log into the App Store and and if you click on your your picture upper left you can see your "purchased app" in the menu. Start to download the apps you need from there a few at a time. Let a few complete downloading and then add a few more and so on (The Rep told me to do it a few at a time only). You'll have to log into each one manually since you did not backup from iCloud but this is how you weed out any corrupt files from making their was back into your phone.

When you do this plug in method, way more is taking place than doing it though your phone to reset / restore to factory settings. Remember DO NOT simply restore your phone with iCloud backup during setup. Chose option "Don't Transfer Apps and Data" option when you are setting up your iPhone like you just unboxed it again. Download your apps from the App store. Your photos and all that will transfer from the cloud. I do not know if my sms texts will be on my phone when I am completed as I am still in the middle of the process. I did back up my contacts and iMessages to the cloud but I'm assuming I will lose SMS texts and maybe my call log. I can update later as to what happened. I set up a time for the rep to call me back on Tuesday and by then I will know if this improved my issue or not.

Good Luck!!

Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to factory settings - Apple Support

@Erzincan

This worked for me! I turned off automatic backup for contacts to iCloud and my battery drain issue appears to be solved. How or where did you come across this info to turn off automatic contact backup? My battery is at 76% after 13-1/2 hours since charged to 100%. Normally it would have been dead by now or even after 10 hours I would need to charge it. This is amazing now! I should be able to have notifications turn on and a bunch of things being able to back up automatically and the battery not get massively drained but for now I’ll take this. I had previously turned off any possibly battery draining setting without improvement but my contacts backup I left on so I know for sure this was my issue. After typing this post I would have lost 2-3% but I’m still at 76% like when I started. I did have much less screen time today than usual but the battery improvement is 100% better. Thank you

as suggested by another post, I grieved off my contacts backing up to iCloud automatically and my battery is 3X better. I did it just over 24 hours ago and charged my phone 100%. So it’s been a little over 24 hours and my iPhone 14 Pro Max battery is at 52%!! I cannot believe how fantastic the battery life is now. I was ready to return the phone. My brand new phone would be drained from 100% after 10 to 12 hours. I had shut off most notifications and apps running in the background and automatic updates. I spent hours watching YouTube videos and changing every setting to stop the battery drain. One of the few things I left on to automatically backup was my contacts. Turning this off made my phone battery function as advertised. I should not have had to turn this off for my battery to function properly but it worked. Try it and see.

So on my iPad the battery drain is linked to the Find my? app. With a fresh installation everything is fine. Once I open the Find my? app and give it the locations permission, the draining begins.

On my iPhone 14 Pro, the battery drain is linked to the contacts app. It's stuck in a syncing loop with iCloud. I identified that when looking at the 10 day battery usage summary. The contacts app has over 50% in my case. I also reset the mobile data statistics and within 5 mins, the contacts app accumulated 15MB of traffic. Turning iCloud sync off an on for the contacts app did not solve the issue.

I don't think you are going to get ANY Apple support person to say there is a problem with a release of their iOS, or of their hardware, no matter how many people in the support community complain of similar problems. I'm sure anyone that said anything like that without there being an official statement from Apple would lose their job so fast their head would spin. They have FAR too much to lose to have any employee admit to issues with their products. Any statement or admission of such a thing would have to come from Apple corporate.

That said, my phone did this for just one day - they day I upgraded to iOS 16.1.1 As soon as I upgraded to iOS 16.1.2 (or whatever the newest release is) the problem went away. Lucky for me, I upgraded to 16.1.1 late and 16.1.2 came out the next day. It was very clearly a problem with that version of iOS.

@tzichi

No. E-SIM stayed the same. This procedure is a game changer. I’m far from getting Apples claim of “up to 25 hours of video streaming” for the iPhone 14 Pro Max. It’s been tough to gauge with all the running around I’ve been doing. I went from around 10-12 hours for battery to go from 100% to 0 to around 20 hours from 100% to 0. Maybe 6 hours of YouTube streaming in that 20 hours. I’m going to have my phone at 100% when I tomorrow morning around 8a and see where it’s at at the end of the day around midnight. I never used to leave Always on Display on but I’ve been leaving AOD on since I did the reset. I have 1 or 2 things toggled on in Background Refresh and everything else off. It’s not really necessary to leave much of anything on in Background Refresh running in the background even when not using app and it’s closed out. It’s just collecting data. I had it set up like this even before I did the reset and it didn’t help. I don’t know what how little these people use their phone that claim to go a day and a half to 2 days before needing to charge. I’d really like to know how many hours a day they stream and go on social media and other tasks….it can’t be much. If they are using their phone quite a bit and getting 1.5 to 2 days then I’m still way off that mark. I still think the phone should last longer based on my usage. I want to see if I can achieve 24 hours 100% to 0. Best I’ve gotten is around 20. Far better than prior to the reset using MaxBook plugged in. All my photos and contacts came back on from the cloud but it did take some time and consumed a lot of battery. I would keep it plugged in charging while you do this. It took several hours until all contacts had Re-populated in iMessage and in contacts. I had many of the iMessages repopulated without the contact and only the phone number but eventually the contact populates. So be on wifi and charging if you want the contacts and logs to populate. Of course be sure to back them up to iCloud first. Since I didn’t restore from iCloud, after I don loaded apps I wanted from my purchased app menu, many of the passwords were not automatically populated when logging into the apps. Some were most were not. So you just need to know your passwords or pick new ones. It takes time but it’s like an adventure to see if you’ll succeed. It’s worth doing. Previous iPhone / iPad users should do this as well. They will definitely benefit. Please report back after you’ve done this procedure in a couple days. Like I said first day you can’t tell because your phone is backing up all the photos and contact info from tube cloud. I have over 3000 contacts and about 40,000 photos. Yours may go faster.

Everyone,

I finally tried what others are mentioning here. Before you charge your phone up at the end of the day or when the battery is really low, this is what worked to make the battery last the way it used to:

Before charging, turn OFF “Optimized Battery Charging” from Settings >> Battery >> Battery Health & Charging.

Next power off your phone, then power it back on.

After phone has turned back on go to settings and turn back ON the “Optimized Battery Charging”.

Now plug in your phone and charge your phone until 100% and do not turn off your phone.

That is what worked for me. Today was the first time ever since I got my new iPhone 14 Max, was the first time I had 70% left at the end of the day after doing the above. Yesterday before I did this I only had 35% left at the end of the day, so it worked.

Let me know if this works for anyone else here that has not tried this above.

I have an iPhone 13 Pro with 91% battery health -- of which the health of the battery dropped from 98% to 91% after the ios 16.1 update. The past few weeks, my phone has been losing 8-12% an hour and running hot with it just sitting there and not much activity. Actually using it for anything that you would want to use a smartphone for drained it even faster. I have both called Apple "customer service" and visited the "Genius" bar and everything checked out and they couldn't find any issues with the battery or the ios. I explained to both that there are known threads out there describing these issues that many are experiencing, but they had no knowledge about it. Not sure what the point of these boards are if Apple doesn't actually review or assist and they leave their customers to fend for themselves. Pretty poor all around service when they won't acknowledge known issues.

Following the advice of someone else on another thread, I disabled contact sync and that seems to have solved the problem. The problems for me seemed to be around syncing the contacts to iCloud, so I turned that feature off for now. If I find the battery drain has continued, I'll update here. Hopefully, ios 16.2 fixes this issue when it is released next week and we can turn contact sync back on. There should be no reason we have to dumb down these smart phones.

Hello. I have a Iphone 14 for 2-3 weeks with 16.0 version and the battery discharged 20% from 100% in one night,with no usage. Yesterday I’ve done your above steps( battery settings & turn off the optimized battery charging, Switch off your iPhones and then turn it back on. Leave it to die then connect it to the charger let it charge from 0 - 100%) + Contact backup deactivated and 100% succes last night (zero % discharge)

I’ll try to activate the contact backup now and see after.

Thanks.

Apple didn’t call me back today as scheduled for follow up. The computer plug in restore and not transferring entire contents from iCloud (only photos will download, contacts and messages, not apps or settings) definitely improved my battery between charges. Like I said in a previous post, I was getting about 10-12 hours (total actual hours, not screen time) from 100% to 0 prior. I’m able to get around 20 to 22 hours now from 100% to 0 (this includes while sleeping and phone not in use and is not total screen time hours, it’s actual hours). I have always on display on with no additional widgets. Screen light to 50% and every friggin option you can have off to conserve battery. I don’t have any apps running in the background and only photos backing up to iCloud when it’s n Wi-Fi. Contacts I’ll just turn iCloud backup on once a week or every other week for a day to backup. Same with messages. So although it doubled the battery time between charges, I’m nowhere near people saying they can go two days in between having to charge their 14 Pro Max. I’m glad it improved but it’s not what it’s supposed to be. What do others think? How many hours can you go in-between 100% full charge down to zero? Maybe 20-22 hours is fair for using my phone an “average” amount of time daily. How many hours in-between charges are people getting?

I was down to around 4-6 hours between charges (screen brightness on minimum, always-on display set to off, no widgets, lots of features turned off to extend battery life) prior to upgrading to 16.2. Now after upgrading to 16.2 I'm losing about 35% battery across 24-hours with more normal (heavier) use, though always-on display is still set to off.

My problem was solved after i turned off icloud for contacts.

then the next day i turned it on again and constant drain is there. Turned off and now its fine.

I actually see an improvement after turning off and on the optimized charge.

It's still not quite like before, but much better. thanks.

I upgraded to iOS 16.1.2 (the newest release) and the problem went away immediately.