rapid battery drain after upgrading to iOS 5

I've got the same issue on iPod touch 3. Which has no constant internet connection, so I don't think it has something to do with cellular operator or data transfering. I've also noticed that sometimes after the charge drops very low, it comes back at high again in about a minute. Still, the overal work time has greatly reduced after update, even with some new features off 😟

I got my iPhone 3GS in April 2010

In the last two weeks it has started getting hot and losing power quickly.

This started happening before I upgraded to IOS5 BUT it started happening at the time I took a trip to Hawaii - (I live in Europe) - so I would have changed the time settings

I can power it off and on again and charge it up and then it will be okay for a while

Eventually it starts getting hot again and the battery drains very quickly.

I cannot depend on it anymore but I am not convinced that it is a hardware problem.

My initial thoughts are that some app is going a bit crazy and buring a lot of power while in the background.

However, It got hot and lost power when I was out with friends last night. When I got home I simply plugged it into a power source (without changing any settings or stopping any background tasks).

This morning the phone is fully charged and cool.

I have had my "Date & Time" set to automatic (I may have turned on auto mode when travelling to Hawaii). I am turning that off now and I'll report back and let you know if that makes a difference.

okay here is what I have done to get the iphone from cooking in my hands and to be a little more resonable in battery life.

I have two Exchange accounts that do not cause the issue, and one that does. The only thing not common among them is contact synchronization. I will play around with that later today, after I baseline the handset with that account removed completely.

Joel

Hi everybody,

I have followed aevery tip about this issue, (battery draining), so, I found that nothing works for me; what I have tryed:

Remove iCloud account, then reboot and reconfigure iCloud.

Disabled my Exchange accounts, then re-enabled these with a reduced set of features enabled.

Restored my iPhone from DFU mode with a re-downloaded copy of iOS 5.

Configured it as new phone, I didn't restored my backuped data on iTunes.

Removed a lot of location aware features from a lot of apps.

Disabled a lot of stuff, NOTHING works for me.

So I ask to any Apple engenieer, I must change my iPhone using the warranty at Movistar in Venezuela? because right now it is useles, the battery just works and I can't use any feature or app that I usually used with iOS 4.3.5

I can't wait a lot of time for you Apple, I must work to get money to spend in your recently mediocre hardware.

Oscar A. Mata T.

I've tried a second factory restore on my iPhone 4S and it seemed to really improve battery life.

What I really found out worked this time around though was turning off my cellular data and wifi when not using it. It is a hastle to turn them on and off every time you want to use safari or an app, but it has improved battery life tremendously. Plus the time it takes your iPhone to connect to the wifi/3G is pretty quick anyway. To manually turn these off: (Settings > General > Network > Cellular Data, off [and/or] WiFi > off ). I was noticing 2-3% drop every couple minuets when using 3G connectivity during my daily routine.

Also if you are someone who doesn't receive a lot of emails and iCloud, I would actually reccomend keeping push notifications on. Reason: if you are fetching every :15/:30 minutes for emails or icloud information that doesnt exist, you're wasting battery. When an email is sent to you, or a change on icloud is made, the server will notify you (a 'push') thus saving your anntenna fetching every :15. Now if you receive a lot of email, it's better to fetch in 'blocks' – thats what fetching is designed for.

Even with these changes, I'm still disappointed in iPhone battery. You can't utilize the features it is designed for (unless you don't mind looking like a dork trying to find an outlet to charge up during your lunch blank) ... There is like a phantom on my phone eating up all the battery and I can't find it. :(

please fix Apple

Same here. Rapid drain it can't be normal On iPhone 4s

As I noted earlier, after removing ONE of my Exchange accounts, the phone behaved as I would expect. In a twelve hour period of time, it lost about 45% of battery life. (One phone call about 15 minutes in length, all other email accounts enabled and synchronizing/pushing, some text messages.)

I noted that the only difference between the removed Exchange account and the others was that the removed account was the only one I'd actually used to synchronize contacts. This morning, I re-added the Exchange account, and left everything but contacts enabled. The battery drain problem returned. Later, I disabled the calendar. This left only email and reminders as active for the "bad" Exchange account (contacts and calendar are disabled). As of this moment, the battery drain issue is gone.

When I baseline this configuration for a bit, I will re-enable contacts to see if it is only the calendar that is causing the issue. My calendar synchronization is set up for "3 months back." I remember I'd changed this to a minimal value early on, so I do not believe that is the issue.

Joel

Personally I removed *all* the email accounts, disabled iCloud, set brighteness to 1/3, disabled half of location services, killed all running apps, but I am still having that battery drain issue. (I even tried restoring the phone as new one, but with no success)

It's not cool to charge my iPhone twice a day, before updating I could charge it once in two days :/ Hope Apple will fix this issue in iOS 5.0.1.

Yes, turn off iCloud. That's what I did when I updated to iOS 5 and the battery started to drain even on standby. I turned-off iCloud and my 3GS battery consumption went back to normal.

OK, I have an update that seems to be working for me thus far. I have lost only 11% battery life in the past 3 hours and my 4S has wi-fi enabled. I went into Settings>Store> and turned off "Automatic Downloads" of Music, Apps, and Books. Turn them all off!! I have the following services ENABLED which at this moment, don't seem to have any effect on the battery drain. However, that is always subject to change since no one really knows what is going on at the present time.

Enabled services

iCloud mail

Location services

Exchange

Notifications

I am not backing up anything to iCloud at the moment.

Scott

I saw the same behavior and have tried deleting and adding numerous times. I have found that the problem is indeed with the EXCHANGE CALENDAR and not with contacts or email. Now I am hoping that Apple (or someone) can address this and fix the problem, since I really do need my work calendar on my iPhone 4S. If anyone knows the solution, please let me know!!!!!

So i got my issues solved - but the not with out loosing benefits..

seems the issue is exchange and email not calendar.

all weekend the phone only used up 20% or less per day once i did the follwoing..

iCould on - except I have back up off, emails off ( i have the emails forwared to my exchange account )and wifi sync off and photostream off and documents off

location services i have only the essentials on : find my phone, siri, camera, also under advanced : cell search on and compass on the rest I have off. ( if and when I leave my time zone I turn it on for a min - then once it grabs the time I will turn it off. )

exchange i have off except I have on ical..( contacts put into icloud )

then to receieve synced emails - i did it by IMAP set up plus fetch every 15 mins ( since no push for imap )

iMessages are turned back on

so far so good..

but disappointment has set in that there is for sure a problem with iOS5. which needs to be repaired.

only other issue but couping with it - in our country.. 3G is not much faster than edge - which causes battery drain because the iphone 4S is always trying to get a better signal.. gone is the feature to enable or not 3G in the system prefs.. - I did put in a new sim card and reset my network settings after having our cell providor push new prefs to my phone.. slight differance but at least I am no longer loosing 3G... but that problem is our country.. which is more fixated on LTE-4G deployment rather solving the horrible 3G speeds we have for the past 5 years.. ( probably due to the massive construction boom we have had )

oh well cant help everyone as they say.

I am now a firm believer that something is wrong with the exchange connector in IOS 5. Over the weekend, I didn't receive any corporate emails and my phone's battery drained properly. It lasted about 10 hours with no issues. This morning, I was at 100% after letting the 4S sit on the carger all night long and an hour later I am now down to 75%. Yup, a 25% battery loss in just 1 hour!

Why, my guess is that exhange email has been flowing due to the start of the work week. This is the only thing different that has occurred since receiving no exchange emails throughout the weekend!

Scott

I had two email accounts that I removed and re-added. Took 2 minutes tops. Exchange may be the problem here, but I went ahead and deleted all (iCloud, Exchange, and gmail) just in case.

Phone (3gs) works like a champ now post-ios5. Agreed that Apple should make this "fix" more easily assessible as a TON of people are promulgating some pain-in-the-butt work arounds like completely disabling the phone to save battery life.

Thanks to the folks in these forums for helping out to find the fix! I never would have thought it deleting and re-adding email accounts would be the fix...and it would have probably been the last thing I would have ever tried!