Excessive battery drain on iPhone 7

I have a really old Iphone, a 7. So old it can no longer support cellular. I got a new Iphone, switched the account to it and even took out the sim card in the 7. I still want to use the old one as an Ipod as it has all my music, but now the battery drain is crazy. It will lose just about a full charge if left on at night. I understand that phones will still search for service, but it even does this in airplane mode with wifi and bluetooth also off which makes no sense to me. Just wondering if there's anything I could do to stop this drain. Thanks.


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iPhone 13 mini, iOS 17

Posted on Jan 22, 2025 9:56 AM

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Posted on Jan 22, 2025 10:27 AM

What do you mean it can no longer support cellular? It can support cellular just fine.

In most of the world, the carriers require a device that supports VoLTE, which the iPhone 6S and newer all do.


Given the age of the phone, if it's not holding a charge well, I would suspect the problem is that the battery has reached the end of its useful life.


If the Battery health in Settings>Battery>Battery Health is below 80%, the battery needs to be replaced.


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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 22, 2025 10:27 AM in response to moi3532

What do you mean it can no longer support cellular? It can support cellular just fine.

In most of the world, the carriers require a device that supports VoLTE, which the iPhone 6S and newer all do.


Given the age of the phone, if it's not holding a charge well, I would suspect the problem is that the battery has reached the end of its useful life.


If the Battery health in Settings>Battery>Battery Health is below 80%, the battery needs to be replaced.


Jan 22, 2025 11:10 AM in response to KiltedTim

I wouldn't doubt it about the carrier itself, although the guys at the store didn't even try to sell me anything and only made outside suggestions.


The battery health is at 85%. I had no problem with it until after the service stopped. I turned it on this morning and maybe after only an hour of music use it's already down from 100% to 43%. This would have hardly moved the needle 2 weeks ago.

Jan 22, 2025 11:17 AM in response to Bob Timmons

Thanks for the reply Bob. Battery is at 85% capacity. Currently music is 84% bc it's really the only app I use. I did have wifi on today in airplane mode to see if there was a difference and Siri somehow came up in my pocket and used 8%. The rest is just setting and home and lock screen. I did see that people have said if the cellular searching was being a drain it would show up there, but it does not.

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Excessive battery drain on iPhone 7

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