iOS 16.1.1 Contacts app draining battery

Same issue for me. Unexplainable battery consumption from the Contacts app. Shows I used Contacts for 1 min and it consumed almost 30% of my battery. By contrast, I used ESPN for 1.5 hrs and it consumed 14%. Something is awry.

Really then, what does it specifically mean? One is led to believe (intuitively) that it does mean the Contacts app is responsible for (precisely) 63% of his battery drain. After all, the entire purpose of showing this information is to help us understand what functions impact battery consumption.

I am having the same issue even with Low Power mode on. Note in my screen grab that contacts has 4min of on screen use and yet consumed 30% of my battery. I did close the contacts app about mid way through the day. It was consuming 56% when I checked it earlier in the day.

I have had this same issue for over a month. However, I did NOT recently add a child to my "Family." They have been included for quite some time.

I have taken my new iPhone 14 Pro into the Apple Store 3 times. They replaced the phone. The issue persists. I have contacted Apple Support. I have been put in touch with a "Senior iOS Technical Advisor." That was over 2 weeks ago. She has forwarded my problem to "Engineering." Going on one month, and there is still ZERO progress on this problem. My battery drains incredibly fast, and the Contacts App is responsible for >80% of battery usage, with only 1 minute of actual App Usage. This very nearly has me to the point of switching phones and finally leaving Apple.

I’m having this issue as well. Contacts is burning through most of my battery. I had 100% battery health on my IPhone 13 Pro Max and it’s dropped 3% since this issue started about a month ago! I feel like the severe drain everyday is hurting the longevity of my battery. I also noticed the constant flashing when I open a contact and/or search a contact. I will try turning off contacts sync as well and see if it helps

I apologize, but after trying juan carlosfrombogota's method, the problem has returned. Contacts is still syncing continuously and draining the battery badly.

Additionally, I did not have the problem that Caskstrengther is referencing. When I restored my Contacts, all the pictures remained untouched and intact.

I need to sync Contacts between multiple devices, so I'll need to keep that on for now. Hopefully Apple addresses very soon via iOS 16.2. Apple Support continues to be of no help to me.

All this seems to be a bug in the iCloud.com-software...

I’ve had the same issue. All battery optimization tips haven’t helped me at all. My phone is only a few months old and ever since this update my phone battery dies faster than my old phone that’s 3.5 years old.

It's very strange, my youngest daughter has her phone with her own user and for many years she has been in the iCloud family group, my problem is the same with the Contacts application but I can't find a cause related to the case you tell us about. My phone was perfect until the terrible update IOS 16.1 then 16.1.1 and 16.1.2

Same issue with iPhone 13 Pro. Battery being completely drained by Contacts app. Phone feels really hot in morning after charging and clear that Contacts has been trying to drain it through the night. Phone down to 30% battery in just under 4 hours whilst in my pocket not being used. What the heck is going on here?

If you do Juans 8 points - it works. No more batterie-draining, no cellular data waste.

But: There are no more pictures within the contacts and it seems that they don‘t come back - even if you share imessages with contacts who use photos or avatars.

Hmmh, I really don't understand why the photos of the contacts are gone, while the relevant vcard-entries "X-IMAGETYPE:PHOTO" and "X-IMAGEHASH:xyz" are still there...

Can anyone confirm this?

To export the contacts from iCloud.com I needed to use a windows machine with firefox-browser - my Mac with safari (macOS Ventura 13.0.1) was not able to export even one single vcard!!!

One problem seems to be the fact, that you superior recognize this problem because of the loss of cellular data!

And this, on the other hands, really drains your batterie.

In fact this problem is also there, when you use wifi. But you might not recognize it, watching the batterie-levels…

Cheers!

I hope it is fixed because now the issue seems to be the flashlight that is running non stop in the last 24 hours…which obviously is not because is not on.

all light blue bars reaching to the top of the usage are the flashlight….another crazy bug…

Same thing happened to me too, contacts drained more than 40% of battery for 1 minutes and 400MB data in cellular network. I spent the whole morning try to find out why and fix it, so far no luck!

I am going to give that a try. Thanks @Jacky-Ren-1228