iPhone 14 Plus iOS 16.4 Battery Drain

Hi, I have good news to report back! After struggling with battery life for 12 days, my iPhone 8 seems to regain battery health, from a draining speed of 7% per hour to 2% per hour. I charged it by 40% last night and it lasted 20 hours; that's not too bad.

I followed several Youtubers' suggestions on turning off many features and the last thing I did was turning off screen time. Also, I remember someone mentioned that after an update, it takes a few days for the system to do tasks in the background, e.g. indexing of photos, and that consumes battery life. So, I'm not sure what actually did the trick.

According to Apple's change log, iOS 16.5 "fixes an issue where Screen Time settings may reset or not sync across all devices". Maybe it's a clue? I haven't updated to 16.5 yet. If you have it already, please kindly share your experience.

You might be very disappointed if you move into the Android world.

Granted, they probably don’t have the battery problem that we’re experiencing, but you’ll soon miss Apple’s elegance.

Welcome to the world of tech. We’ve been through this kind of frustration before. Nothing happens quickly. Just keep charging, do all the due diligence stuff; shut down the extras and unnecessary background activities. If you use a VPN, shut it off. Some of them use tons of background battery. Buy a couple of power banks and keep them with you. It’s a good practice in any case.

Hang in there!

ok so i upgraded to the latest ios and it kinda helped with the battery drain. my 14pro now lasts as long as my 11 (with ios 15.7). Both devices get roughly the same use and both are always connected to the wifi and data.

im glad the ios update helped me (might not fix others’ battery issues) because i was literally looking at the s23 ultra the other day and it was looking mighty attractive at the store.

Has everyone who continues to report battery drain and abnormal heating already updated to 16.4.1?

In addition, I suggest you complain on Twitter as well. The support profile is very active there. Attach the link to this discussion here to avoid their standard questions.

It might be worthwhile restoring your iPhone using a computer. That's the method that worked for me.

My screenshots and battery info/ diagnostics were sent to the Engineering team 2 days ago and seems the results came in same day(?). My scheduled call with the Apple Support specialist was to be today (2 days later) at 9am or a little later. By 9:40am no call, so I opened another chat with Apple Support. Case went to a different support specialist who Said the engineers found nothing unusual (?) and that my average battery usage was lasting 12 hours. I wish!! This specialist said let’s try something else…walked me through transferring / restoring my data from iPhone via iTunes on laptop. I never use iTunes so it was a 1/2 hour process.

Upshot…

…my phone was restored as new(?). Only difference from previous resets and restores… my texts are now gone forever. Had to reset mail. Contacts, photos, calendar, and Apple apps returned. I had to redo all settings, reinstall some apps… and battery still draining!

I Opened another chat and this specialist did a remote share of my iPhone screen and agreed the battery is draining too quickly. She said she would send me a link to document this ongoing issue. I haven’t received it yet. She also said there’s nothing more Apple can do.

Hopefully there will be a new iOS update to address this. 😩

So … I’m emailing myself my photos and contacts. I will never do a restore from this phone again. I’ll hang onto it to keep my calendars.

If there’s anyone here who knows where a low-tech senior citizen like me can learn how to do this more efficiently, I’d love to hear from you. Very frustrating.

I have mail to fetch manually and all background app refresh turned off. 16.4 throttled the battery’s ability to hold a charge. 16.4.1 was no improvement. Apple support specialist on remote screen share was surprised to see how rapidly the battery % ticked down during our 10 minute call.

I encourage everyone to hit Apple with complaints about this issue. Besides contacting them by phone, where you’ll speak to a representative or a “specialist” (very polite, but don’t do much), here’s a feedback link to report “bugs”. This particular battery drain issue has gotten too big. 😡

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

Battery life on iOS 16.4.1 is terrible.

I was traveling abroad for ten days. My iphone14pro was on airplane mode the entire time, and battery was dropping steadily while just being on standby. I had to charge it nightly as if i used it heavily during the day.

Meanwhile i was using iphone11 (running on ios15.x) for taking photos, maps, and had mobile data turned on. Battery life was much better considering i was using it all day.

I made the right choice to not update my i11 to the latest ios version.

What are the model numbers of the problem phones here? What are the serial numbers? The factory that made the phones in question could have had a problem in the production line causing short-circuiting to occur in power circuitry, which would lead to abnormal draining of the battery and excess heat— hint: that would be a good reason the iPhone 11s, 12s, and 13s don’t have this problem that we know of, and if any, we don’t hear about it as often as we hear of 14 problems. 

A factory production line issue would also be a very good reason the Genius Bar etc. doesn’t know and can’t fix the problem. 

In that case the blame might be on the factory head honchos, not necessarily on Apple. If enough people tell Apple that a factory is producing bad phones, then Apple might investigate. We already know they don’t intend to produce bad phones, however, some factory higher-ups are careless.

That’s why looking at our serial or model numbers isa good idea because that would tell us factory and date.

My iPhone 14 pro model and serial numbers (I hope this doesn’t violate rules) model:MQ0N3LL/A serial:C2****R9V

Mine does not have a battery drain problem.

This is an opportunity to make Apple better not to abandon them.

[Edited by Moderator]

It’s super annoying but don’t be too concerned. This is not uncommon with Apple iOS updates and the only real issue is how long it takes Apple to remedy through 16.4.1 👍🏻

Here he only solved by downgrading to iOS 16.3 that Apple keeps signed.

Just downgrade to the latest signed iOS 16.3. I did it on mine and I'm on iOS 16.3.1