Battery draining faster after updating iPhone to iOS 17.4

I have finally found the reason for overheating and possibly also for unacceptable battery drain under 17.4.1 for my case (iPhone 13 Pro, 17.4.1). The culprit is "Require Attention for Face ID", "Attention-Aware Features" or perhaps both.

After one day of usage I can confirm that battery life is back to normal levels: about 10% drop in one hour screen-on browsing.

This means about 10 hours browsing time at modest screen brightness from a full charge, which is more or less what I was getting before "upgrading" to 17.4 (17.4.1) with my iPhone 13 Pro (now at at 92% battery health).

With "Require Attention for Face ID" and "Attention-Aware Features" ON, I get instead more than 20% drop per hour of browsing under otherwise the same conditions (connection, position, screen brightness, apps used, etc.)

I have finally found the reason for overheating and possibly also for unacceptable battery drain under 17.4.1 for my case (iPhone 13 Pro, 17.4.1). The culprit is "Require Attention for Face ID", "Attention-Aware Features" or perhaps both.

I have noticed that overheating always coincides with browsing time, comes from a specific spot in the back of the phone (roughly in the middle) and is not depending on the brightness level, on the connection type (wireless, LTE or 5G) or on the app (different web browsers, different news apps) in use.

One consequence of overheating was that, under 17.4.1, I reached max. 4-5 hours of browsing time (instead of about 10 hours) from a 100% charge and with 92% battery health (down from 98% since I have installed 17.4.1!)

Yesterday evening I came to the idea that the overheating might be caused by the iPhone continuously checking for attention before dimming the display ("Auto-Lock" is set to 30 seconds) because during screen-off times I had neither overheating nor significant battery drain.

As it turns out, switching off "Require Attention for Face ID" and "Attention-Aware Features" has completely solved the overheating problem.

Battery life also seems to be back to normal levels but I will have to check this through a few days of regular usage.

Hope this helps!

Turning off

• Significant Locations
• iPhone Analytics
• Routing & Traffic

in "Privacy & Security > Location Services > System services" seems to have fixed the issue on my iPhone 13 Pro. Now battery life is back to normal levels: one full charge every two days instead of two full charges every day!

There are other system services with a purple arrow (recent use of the device's location) but they do not appear to impact battery life as badly as those listed above. Hopefully Apple will correct this misbehavior soon.

i had the same issue - update to iOS 17.4.1 (21E236) seem to have fixed my issue since the update 1 hour ago. took it off charge and still holding. my phone has been charging so slowly on 17.4 and draining so rapidly it would only last a few hours of use. at least it is charging properly now…. i’m really surprised about this, never had any of these issues since my first iphone 3gs where the battery would last about 3-4 hours on mixed use.

How can we fix the battery draining since the last update. I can’t make it through a day anymore and I do t use my phone at work?

As I wrote, in my case (iPhone 13 Pro, 92% battery health) turning OFF "Require Attention for Face ID" and "Attention-Aware Features" has completely solved the issue. Now I am back to about 10 hours of screen-on time per full charge, before it was at most 4-5 hours!

I have tried many other recommendations over 2-3 weeks with no success. Turning off "Require Attention for Face ID" and "Attention-Aware Features" did the job. I am mildly annoyed by Apple's poor support and arrogant attitude (I went to an Apple store and asked for help in sorting out the battery drain issue and they argued that there was no issue) and I sincerely hope that Apple's sales will worsen. That's probably the only way to get the company to care more about their customers.

I have now also deactivated "Stolen Device Protection" (in "Face ID & Passcode") which also seemed to yield a number of location services requests (as visible by setting "Status Bar Icon" on in "Location Services > System Services") associated with high battery drain.

Of course deactivating "Stolen Device Protection" defeats one of the main purposes of iOS 17 but given that iOS 17.4.1 is anyway broken as far as battery life is concerned, it is perhaps a meaningful tempory workaround until Apple comes out with a fix or I move back to Android.

Guys,

u am using iPhone 13pro. Bought it in December 2022.

I have been very careful with my battery usage and charging cycles and would like to share what I did to get 3 days usage.

now these are the steps I followed while using ios 16.

1. never charge your battery more than 90%. Use shortcut to set an alarm.
2. charge your battery when it reaches 20%.
3. Switch off all location based permissions to ask when used for all apps except find my iPhone.
4. background apps refresh off for all apps except maps, google maps, WhatsApp and google photos.
5. Screensaver is black and white.
6. always on display is off.
7. raise to wake is off.
8. data for all unwanted apps is off. Except WhatsApp, phone, AppStore, settings, google maps, google photos. Rest all apps Only on wifi.

after the above steps since December 2002 till feb 2024 my battery health was down to 96%. Only 4% down in almost 26 months.

Then recently I (did the mistake of) upgraded to ios 17.4 and let me admit the battery drain has been bad.

in 2 months my battery health is now down to 94%. (Still better compared to others after 29 months).

so in addition to the above steps I did the following.

1. switch off background app refresh for google maps and WhatsApp (check battery usage. Found whatspp to be using almost equally to my online usage time in background usage. Don’t know why even after being off)
2. Significant locations off
3. stolen device protection (security) turned off.
4. Ensure your phone has minimum 50% network coverage or better wifi range.

now after the above additional steps with fair usage (note I have 2 phone. So I use my 13 pro only for work calls and pics) I am getting around 48-55 hours of battery time.

still charging battery at 20% till 90% only.

worst case of heavy usage I managed to pull it for 36 hours with 10% battery left.

battery health now still at 94% since the past 3 weeks.

since I use this for my main work and business phone. I have installed only bare minimum apps. (Still using my iPhone X for all other non eventful activities like surfing or social media scrolling).

yes I know some people will argue what good is the phone is I have to keep all the features off and use it to less than half its potential.

well for that we can always blame apple for their ios issues. But given the circumstances that’s the best I could do to figure out a way to conserve my battery and make it last long.

some would argue just use the phone and then replace the battery when the time comes. But I have noticed before. Once you open your original phone to replace battery then it’s gone. Issues keep cropping up. It’s not the same as new or original factory settings anymore.

so trying to ensure it lasts a while before there is something better to upgrade to in the future.

(13,14,15 all the same camera quality is same)

regards

Jaspreet Kohli

** I hope you find the steps above useful and it helps you save your battery life as well.

FIXED (for me): Hi Everyone from Italy! i had a costant battery drain in may new iphone 15 pro max from the first day of use. Always had iphones and never experinced something like that.

I tried in this order (after all the classic usual useless advice):

network reset

settings reset

soft reset of the phone

It slightly got better but nothing big.

Theeeen i canceled tiktok-instagram-facebook and installed them again after an hour:

Voillà the phone is now WORKING LIKE IT SHOULD!!! no more incomprehensible battery drain!

(in addiction i also cancelled some small apps and update all, but i don't think those were the problem)

I had an iphone 13 pro max before so i know how it should behave.

MY ADVISE from my experience: DELETE and RE-INSTALL all the app you have in the iphone, from the haviest to the small ones (expecially social) and check the result!

I hope this can help someone <3, i was about to go crazy!

Best regards

rainvvkc wrote:

It seems a common bug in 17.4. My wife's iPhone 15 Pro has the same issue after upgrading. It drops 30% overlight.

You might want to consider updating to the current version of iOS, 17.5.1.

I had the same issue on my iPhone 13 mini after upgrading to iOS 17.3.x

Did all the suggested things, like a hard restart etc. to no avail.

What fixed the problem is to do a network reset: If your iPhone or iPad won't connect to a Wi-Fi network - Apple Support

Shortly after performing any iOS update, your iPhone has extra tasks to perform. Re-indexing is an example. Battery use increases for a short while after an update.

I spent 4-5 hours to reset/restore my phone from iCloud - this solved the battery drain issue.

5 days with this was a bit too much.

It's possible that an app is misbehaving when run on 17.4.1, so do you see battery drain when quitting all apps?

I almost started crying and got really upset after updating my iPhone 15 Pro. Just like you, my battery started to run out quicker. Before the update, it wasn’t like this. I looked online for a way to fix it. I found a helpful post on another Apple forum that said: “7 Steps to Solve iPhone 15 Pro Battery draining issue.” I followed the advice and turned off a few settings, like Siri and location services, which I had on for a banking app. After changing these settings, my iPhone’s battery lasts longer than it did before the update. I’m really thankful for Apple’s discussion forum; it’s been so helpful.

Interesting re your earlier phone model. My friend has an iPhone 7 and, like you, no issues. Perhaps we’d be better off going back to earlier models? Not sure if they’re still available though, well certainly not new. That said, I’ve got an iPhone 12 mini and the phone drains and overheats after just 30 min of normal browsing, to the point where it’s boiling to touch

• I’ve spoken to Apple Support & Genius Bar and restored network settings using iTunes. No improvement
• I stopped using data and got 5g home wifi. No improvement
• I removed Safari and changed to Firefox. This *has* reduced battery drain/heat - yay
• I noticed certain news sites, full of pop up ads, videos, etc - even if I don’t open them - use a lot of battery. So now I only visit them using my iPad Air 4. This *has* reduced battery drain/heat
• I also found the following worked: turn off Siri (hold right button and say Hey Siri), remove Facebook app and access via their website, keep battery on low mode all the time, turn down brightness of course, turn off location for most apps especially system. I find it curious the iPhone 12 mini has the same chip as the iPad Air 4 but I never have any issues with its battery.