IOS 4.2.1 battery drain

True, true. I'm just so used to my Macs and old iPods working almost flawlessly in the last 20 years. Any issues were very minor, and was easily fixed. But in my relatively new experience using the iPhone (got my first one about a year ago), the continued trust and reliability lasted till I updated to iOS 4 the day it came out. Been downhill since then. None of the tips helped, and even swapping out 3 phones didn't fix it either. Not until I got upgraded to the iP4.

I agree with what you say about fixing what's broken, not finding workarounds. Unfortunately though, no one really knows what's broken, except for Apple, and they are keeping quiet. It would seem like a number of factors in different combination, that is affecting the true functionality of the phone, hence why the tips works for some and not others. But Apple's priorities, as you mentioned, aren't really towards helping the minority. Even though they still paid top dollars for their phones. My personal take, is no matter how small the group that is having issues, it's still Apple's responsibility to fix it. It's just good business. Unless, Apple doesn't do good business anymore. I'd hate to think that. Just like cars, if there are some defects on a small number of vehicles, the car manufacturer will still do a recall and fix the problem with no expense to the buyer. Can't see the iPhone being any different.

Being now on the other side of the fence (working iPhones), after having been on this side, I do feel for the frustrations of people. Specifically the ones who've tried everything suggested with no fix, and especially the ones who have to dish out more cash to get a replacement whether it be another iPhone or another brand all together (that's the final "solution"). I will be keeping all these tips in mind though, should I ever decide to update and I run into the same issues as others here. 😉

Having been around this for a few days, I finally nailed it. Restore the iPhone and when iTunes asks you if you want to restore from a previous back up, say "no" and go with "new iPhone". You'll have the trouble of configuring it all from scratch, but it does work. Looks to me that the cause of the battery drain has probably something to do with a bad app or something like that.

danielgap wrote:
when iTunes asks you if you want to restore from a previous back up, say "no" and go with "new iPhone".

This seems to be the cause of many ills. It's too bad the restore option screws up so often.

yes, thank you so much for the positive feedback....

I had better things to do with my sunday rather than read this whole post.

I turned off the 50 back grounds apps and my battery life DRAMATICALLY improved, but it is still not anywhere near as good as it has been recently. I posted my feedback as confirmation to the group for thanks that killing background apps helps with the battery drain.

signing off before I say anything else perceived as untrue....

PMCBiker wrote:
I turned off the 50 back grounds apps and my battery life DRAMATICALLY improved, but it is still not anywhere near as good as it has been recently. I posted my feedback as confirmation to the group for thanks that killing background apps helps with the battery drain.

I'm glad to hear it worked for you. However, killing the one app that was using the battery would have worked just as well. I would prefer to know which app it was so I would remember not to use it. But if it works for you, go for it.

Awesome! This helped... thanks Lawrence Finch, I bought a new iPhone 4, ran the update and the battery was going down crazy fast... for me the give-away was the usage was the same as the standby stats. Identical actually.

What I did to fix:

- Hookup up iPhone 4 to Windows, iTunes starts automatically
- Click Restore
- After restore setup as "New Phone"
- Then I restored a given backup, this installed all the apps and contacts.
- Just for fun I have also changed settings on Game Center and Push for mail to off.

Now the battery percentage is acting normal!

pcunite wrote:
- Then I restored a given backup, this installed all the apps and contacts.

So your saying that restoring from a Backup didn't cause any issues? Interesting, as after the first 3 times I restored from scratch on 3 previous iPhones, it didn't help with any of the issues. So the 4th and 5th times I did a restore, I just did it from a back up. Still didn't make a difference, but at least I didn't spend 3 hours downloading and installing my apps and contacts again. When I got upgraded to the iP4, I restored from backup again, and my phone has no issues. I haven't updated to 4.2.1 yet though. I'm sticking with 4.1 as it's running pretty much perfectly for me. But good to know that restoring from backup my not be a problem. At least for some of us, and it would save time in having to reinstall everything all over again.

Eric Shawn2 wrote:
So your saying that restoring from a Backup didn't cause any issues?

Correct, I'm new at all this Apple stuff, PC tech for many years... What makes the fix confusing is the concept of "Restore" as defined by iTunes... What I did was click restore and when it prompted to choose from backup I choose "New Phone", when that completed of course all my apps and data where gone. Then I connected the phone again and choose to restore a given backup. I don't have any apps causing problems, if I did I would have had problems again. Simply performing an iOS update can cause problems and may need to be redone it seems ... This seems to be the case for me anyway.

Thanks Lawrence,

I have actually tried many of the steps described earlier in this post. I skipped a few by just going right to a complete restore from scratch.

I also tried several of these with a member of the Genius bar before they decided to replace my phone 4 days ago.

I then plugged in the replacement phone and started from scratch again, only after being frustrated I could not upgrade from 4.0.2 (which was on the replacement phone) to 4.1, since apple will no longer validates this version.

After many attempts to install 4.1, I installed 4.2.1, as I also had [different] issues with my Exchange 2010 account on 4.0.2 which were fixed with 4.1.

I am now in the process of testing alternative setups to determine if this issue is directly connected to my Exchange account/host.

Last night I restored from scratch again and tested my exchange account. Again, it would continue to drain the battery with phantom usage. Removing the account resolves the issue. This was the 4th restore from scratch, two on the original phone, two on the replacement.

I tried deleting the account and resetting network settings, per the instructions previous and am now testing IMAP without Push to see if that makes a difference, as IMAP with push caused the same drain.

gurt_l wrote:
I tried deleting the account and resetting network settings, per the instructions previous and am now testing IMAP without Push to see if that makes a difference, as IMAP with push caused the same drain.

Now we're on to something. If you configured the Exchange server as IMAP rather than as Exchange then Push has no meaning. Push only works with Activesync on Exchange (meaning you select an account type of Exchange when starting), Yahoo email, MobileMe and Gmail. So if you don't have one of these 4 account types set up then Push should be off.

Well then maybe this won't make a difference. I setup "other" and used the IMAP settings for my mail server instead of the Exchange settings. I have tried this previously and this would cause excessive drain, though I don't remember if I reset the mail settings before making this change. I'll see what happens today during testing.

You guys there is too many issues that consumers should not have to deal with I do not care if you are 1 in 1million or more then that bottom line is like with previous there should be a recall or a solution the engineers at Apple know what the problem is there is a bad coding in the active sync if you use mail .. as a few apps like facebook, yahoo messenger and others that have yet to re-write to work with this new version. I have tried everything you said lawerence nothing worked I use hotmail as my email with manual and no push and still get the drainage.. no apps running leave it sitting wi-fi on (cause i was told by apple to leave it on) blue tooth off .. You should be able to leave location settings on like many people do certainly if one person leaves on location the next person should not have to turn it off to get the same battery life.. Lawerence are you an engineer cause .. certainly you restate the same thing 100 times which does not work for everyone.. with this email thing I think you guys are close to finding what might be but try bring it to Apples attention like I did they avoid it and blame it on the phone when you pinpoint the issue.. Or do not return your emails or phone calls .. Funny how that works if it continues I will be calling consumer reports and making this blow up on them even more yes we are a small amount but our voice matters as does our dollar!

To answer your one question, yes I am an engineer, my degrees are in EE and CS and I have over 40 years experience. But the important thing is to approach a problem logically, which doesn't require that much experience.

If you Erase all content and settings, then Restore the phone as new and you still have battery drain BEFORE adding any apps or email accounts you have a bad battery.

Your previous answer doesn't really answer the question - most of us had no battery drain problem UNTIL we upgraded to v4.2.1. And doing a "restore as new" DOESN'T fix the baseband, which would appear to be the problem (having logically eliminated all other possibilities).

TJinCville wrote:
Your previous answer doesn't really answer the question - most of us had no battery drain problem UNTIL we upgraded to v4.2.1. And doing a "restore as new" DOESN'T fix the baseband, which would appear to be the problem (having logically eliminated all other possibilities).

And most people with battery problems resolve them in one of the ways I mentioned. Most of the responses describe which step resolved them. If you did Erase All Content and Settings and then Restore as New (after deleting the previously downloaded .ipsw file to force download of a clean one) and it doesn't fix the problem it must be hardware. The same baseband went into my phone as went into yours, so if it's a baseband problem it's really odd that it only affects your phone.

There are 70 million iPhones. A few of them will develop hardware problems. And a few of those hardware problems will occur at or around the same time as an update.