iOS 16.1.1 Contacts app draining battery

juan carlosfrombogota may be a genius! I have been having this problem for over a month, and Apple Support has been ZERO help. However, last night I followed juan carlosfrombogota's 8 steps listed above. The only difference is that because I had so many contacts, I wasn't able to import them back into iCloud.com. Instead, I did a Contacts restore from the day prior.

So, to summarize, I had to sign out of all devices with Contacts synced, chose to delete all contacts from those devices, and then restored Contacts from a backup on iCloud.com, and signed back in to Contacts on all devices. It worked perfectly for me. Thank you juan carlosfrombogota!

Hi, in a Macrumors forum, a user wrote the following: "Apple help contact me yesterday and told me that my issue is reported as a problem of iOS 16 and they accepted that there is a problem on syncing contacts for some people .. they aked me to keep my contacts out of sync to avoid excess cellular DATA DRAIN until 16.2 come out .. the battery problem is secondary and it shows up after contacts keep draining data either from Wi-Fi or cellular ..

They said that this problem is not generally known because average iPhone user won’t search about it and won’t search what keeps draining battery or data"

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/contacts-battery-drain.2371195/page-2

i had no issues with 16.1.1, it showed up with 16.1.2.

I tested for the last two days to allow Contacts to sync with ICloud and didn’t see battery drain again, but always on wifi.

In my case only happens on cellular data mode. Which by the way drained 1.8gb of data in few hours…crazy bug for an app like Contacts.

Hi,

I just found this topic after experiencing the same issue with iCloud contact sync.

Thank you all for your feedback, I turned off the contact sync at the moment to stop the drain and reached out to Apple's support to explain this issue. Do not hesitate to contact them to increase our chances to get a fix for this issue.

I might found a solution by delete Contacts app and restart iPhone and then redownload the contacts from App Store. So far seems alright.

Finally, I end up with wiped off everything from my phone and restore from backup. The process is pain but fixed it!

Hi, bwahl86.

This doesn't necessarily mean that your Contacts app has drained 63% of your battery. From here, we'd recommend implementing the steps outlined here in order to increase your overall battery life: Batteries - Maximizing Performance - Apple

Aside from this, if you continue to have issues, reaching out to Apple may be the next best step: Apple Support

Cheers.

Juan Carlos, I couldn’t say the reason, but I noticed the change in the battery performance just when I added my newborn’s account into my iPhone. So I reversed that only different thing I’d done and seems to be working.

I’m not saying that I deleted the account, I just signed out from it in my phone.

Maybe you can try it and perhaps it could work for you as well.

Best!

I woke up today to my iPhone 13 Pro on iOS 16.1.2 only charged to 80% due to overheating on my Apple MagSafe charger I powered it off and let it cool before turning it back on. This afternoon, I noticed I had unusual battery drain 49% from the "Contacts" app. So I found this thread and disabled iCloud contact sync. Hoping that resolves it!

Sure!

Settings > Contacts > Accounts > Your Child’s New Account > Sign Out

Hope it works for you!

It's confusing.

Now I restored my contacts (via icloud.com) from 6th of December (still all the same) and the photos are back. AND the batterie and cellular draining is still gone. Crazy...

Also… it seems that the problem is not happening to ALL iOS 16+ users, since it’s not massive complaint and it should have been fixed already in the recent updates.

I think that in my experience, it started happening not with iOS 16 or iOS 16.1.1, it just started when I created and linked my baby’s new account, so I reversed the one and only change I made and seems to be working.

Look at the photo I’m attaching, my phone wasn’t charging during the night and the battery consumption was very low (in standby), whereas two days ago during nighttime the battery drained 30+%.

I deleted contacts from all of my synced devices. I exported all contact cards from iCloud after I did that, but was not allowed to import them all back in. So, instead, I initiated a backup from a day earlier. That solved the problem for about a day, but it's back in force now. I have decided to wait until iOS 16.2 comes out, because Apple Support has proven to be worse than useless in this case. I agree with you...this very much appears to be a bug in the syncing process with iCloud.

Sure!

Settings > Contacts > Accounts > Your Child’s New Account > Sign Out

Hope it works for you!

Yep. The phone is noticeably warm and the battery drained in a few hours. Had the iPhone 14 pro since September and this problem just started a few days ago. I did turn off iCloud sync but not sure it had much effect yet. I just noticed that Contacts app leads the cellular data used (6.1GB just this billing period of 2 weeks!). No way it should be transmitting that much data….