iphone battery dead after ios 5 update

Very interesting. I am now having normal battery (on an 18 month old iphone 4) from full charge to 92% after 9 hours 20 mins standby and 1 hour 25 mins usage. Can't complain.

Here's my information for all your reference:

What I did after installing IOS5 and finding heavy battery drain (not necessarily in this order)

Reset Network Settings

Switch off all unnecessary location services

I did find some corrupted music files in the ipod that wouldn't play but only on some playl;ists, so changed import setting remove "import higher quality tracks with 128 AAC. Deleted the existing playlists and then re-imported them manuually in backup via itunes.

No wifi or bluetooth (never us them anyway)

No icloud yet (still using OS6 on imac so still only syncing with that) I expect problems when I start using it though.

Only use macmail so no Microsoft exchange issues anyway

Run phone down till it turns off and then full recharge (to reset battery calibration)

Then a couple more charges to full from under 20% battery

I DO use Facebook but not experiencing any battery drain with it.

Looks like those experiencing problems have a varied range of symptoms. Must be something more basic with the IOS or install of it that causes different problems depending on what you use the phone for and what apps you use.

Well I have left WiFi on and added a few calendar events to my Exchange-synced calendar, and that hasn't brought back the battery drain. So far, I don't know what my cause might have been, and I haven't done any of the drastic full reset stuff. The only thing I did was turn off certain things. I'm trying to turn some of them back on to see if I can bring the battery drain back.

Oh, and FWIW, I played with syncing Reminders since that's one of the things I turned off. Interesting: if you sync Reminders to Exchange, they become Tasks and you can't get a location-based reminder, only a time-based one. When I turned the sync back off, the location-based reminder feature returned. Weirdo.

I set myself a location-based reminder, but even that so far doesn't seem to drain. I'm thinking iCloud, will play with that more in a bit.

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the caldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,

Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,

Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,

Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a ****-broth boil and iPhone ring.

Using a systematic approach, turning on and off the major features of iPhone, finally I discovered the main culprit.

Turn off WiFi and iOS 5 drains about 2% per hour on the 3 gs. Otherwise is was sucking about 9% to 10% per hour. OK if you have unlimited data but be cautious if you pay for data on 3G.

That's interesting. Putting Wi-Fi back on did not make my iPhone 4 drain faster again. Also putting Documents and Data back on for iCloud did not increase the drain either. Still trying to find something that brings the battery drain back for me. If there is nothing in the settings that brings it back then I would think in my case that a) it was something not cleaned up about the uprade install, fixed by rebooting phone or just switching settings off and back on or b) an app acting nasty that was fixed by the rash of app updates, but perhaps not until after I restarted as I remember grabbing some 18 app updates at once that day and then restarting sometime after that when the battery had drained to single digit percentages.

Seems odd that many of us have noted this issue but there doesn't seem to be a unifying cause or cure, and it even happens on all the different hardware....

My battery woes are now gone thanks to the full reset of my phone. I'm now able to use Facebook just fine. I'm not sure what was causing the rapid Facebook drain, but after toying with my phone I was able to get satisfactory results. Wish you all the best of luck.

Best way to get rid of your battery issue with iOS: wipe your phone clean.

A complied list of all of the battery optimizations:

1. Reset your network settings

2. Turn off your Bluetooth radio

3. Avoid enabling Push and Fetch mail on Exchange accounts, although this might be counter-intuitive (what's the point of having a smartphone if you have to turn it off?)

4. Selectively turn off Location Services and turn off all system services Location Services features.

5a. Selectively turn off applications you don't need to be notified of that use Notifications.

5b. Turn off Weather and Stock notifications. I've never seen anyone I know ever need this.

6. Avoid downloading apps that you're not using or will constantly poll and activate GPS

7. Turn off Diagnostics and Usage in General > About

8. Add a Restriction to iTunes and Ping (if you're not using these services)

9. Avoid turning on GPS-enabled Reminders when you have Exchange accounts.

10. Turn off iPod Equalizer (Music EQ)

11. Turn off Spotlight features you're not using

12. Turn off Push features that your applications may be using that you don't need.

For granular battery optimization,

12. Turn off vibration.

13. Turn on Automatic Brightness

14. Use Airplane Mode where there's no reception.

15. Adjust the Auto-Lock so your screen is not constantly on.

16. When you're not using your phone, turn off your screen.

17. Avoid spamming Facebook... It's not because I hate Facebook, but the app is poorly designed. If you constantly refresh your Facebook or leave it in an infinite loop of loading pictures or notifications Facebook will continue polling the server for data. Out of most of my normal apps that are not supposed to be battery intensive, Facebook and Messenger seem to drain my battery the most.

For battery maintenance, run your phone down to 0% and charge it to 100% while its off, run it down to 0% again, and charge it while its on. Keep your phone in normal room temperatures (no extreme heat or cold) and avoid dropping your phone.

Although my battery life is far from optimal, I'm at 20% right now from a full charge and I'm getting 13h standby and 6h of usage. Not so shabby for iOS 5. I used to get insane numbers on 4.3.5 though, going almost 1d on Standby and 7h of usage, but I'm not asking for more.

Wish you all the best of luck!

-dimgl

Thanks, but I'll just charge the phone while sitting in my office, rather than turn everything off that should work on the phone........... You make it sound like you discovered some profound solution, by shutting most everything off.

dimgl wrote:

My battery woes are now gone thanks to the full reset of my phone. I'm now able to use Facebook just fine. I'm not sure what was causing the rapid Facebook drain, but after toying with my phone I was able to get satisfactory results. Wish you all the best of luck.

Best way to get rid of your battery issue with iOS: wipe your phone clean.

A complied list of all of the battery optimizations:

1. Reset your network settings

2. Turn off your Bluetooth radio

3. Avoid enabling Push and Fetch mail on Exchange accounts, although this might be counter-intuitive (what's the point of having a smartphone if you have to turn it off?)

4. Selectively turn off Location Services and turn off all system services Location Services features.

5a. Selectively turn off applications you don't need to be notified of that use Notifications.

5b. Turn off Weather and Stock notifications. I've never seen anyone I know ever need this.

6. Avoid downloading apps that you're not using or will constantly poll and activate GPS

7. Turn off Diagnostics and Usage in General > About

8. Add a Restriction to iTunes and Ping (if you're not using these services)

9. Avoid turning on GPS-enabled Reminders when you have Exchange accounts.

10. Turn off iPod Equalizer (Music EQ)

11. Turn off Spotlight features you're not using

12. Turn off Push features that your applications may be using that you don't need.

For granular battery optimization,

12. Turn off vibration.

13. Turn on Automatic Brightness

14. Use Airplane Mode where there's no reception.

15. Adjust the Auto-Lock so your screen is not constantly on.

16. When you're not using your phone, turn off your screen.

17. Avoid spamming Facebook... It's not because I hate Facebook, but the app is poorly designed. If you constantly refresh your Facebook or leave it in an infinite loop of loading pictures or notifications Facebook will continue polling the server for data. Out of most of my normal apps that are not supposed to be battery intensive, Facebook and Messenger seem to drain my battery the most.

For battery maintenance, run your phone down to 0% and charge it to 100% while its off, run it down to 0% again, and charge it while its on. Keep your phone in normal room temperatures (no extreme heat or cold) and avoid dropping your phone.

Although my battery life is far from optimal, I'm at 20% right now from a full charge and I'm getting 13h standby and 6h of usage. Not so shabby for iOS 5. I used to get insane numbers on 4.3.5 though, going almost 1d on Standby and 7h of usage, but I'm not asking for more.

Wish you all the best of luck!

-dimgl

If you read my post, I didn't tell you to turn everything off. If you don't use the Weather and Stock apps, why are you going to have them on? By leaving features that you don't use on you lose battery life.

Also, I said what fixed my problem was a full reset of my phone. This means no restoring from back ups and setting up the phone as a new phone. Of course, you're going to lose everything, but I rather lose some text messages and some progress on games than have a phone that shuts down after five hours.

I did not say that the optimizations were the solution to the problem. If you wouldn't be dense, and you'd read my post, you'd realize that this will help a lot of people with their issues on their phone.

"what fixed my problem" - huh? Where do you see problem fixed? According to your post, you're getting like 13 hours standby with most of the phone's features turned off. Doesn't look like fix to me.

After the battery problem micaculously fixed itself on my 3GS (well, I've reset network settings, but I read it doesn't help many others) I'm getting more like 30 hours standby with everything turned *on* -- location, bluetooth, wi-fi, everything.

So sensitive!!!!!! I stand by my statement. I want the phone to work with the features offered..........

All of my features are on except for the stuff I don't use... I don't understand why you're both bashing on a post that is clearly to help others. I never said to turn off something you're going to use... I'm basically putting all of the information together that I've gathered from the forums and websites. My battery was getting six hours of standby and it's now up to fourteen and still going... so I definitely did see an improvement. I also had eight hours of usage. It's pointless to argue with my post when its meant to help you, if you don't like it ignore it and move on

Hi everybody,

for me it also looks like as greg42 discribed it. Suddenly the batterydrain of my phone is gone. And it is like on iOS4.

I have not done any reinstalling or backup. Simply playing around with turning on and of all the switches (finally I really turned EVERYTHING off. And the problem disappeard. Now I'am slowy turning back on all functions incluing weather widget and the bad, bad automatic time zone but battery power is still constant.

I think the problem must be something in icloud contacts, calendar. These were the last I turned of before battery life get better.

Quite bizarre but pleasing. Battery life on 18 month old iphone 4 is now better than before IOS5.

Currently still have 42% after 1 day 10 hours standby with 4 hours 26 mins usage. Stange but I'm happy. Started the day on 55% at 8am. Now it's nearly 7pm and have only lost 13% during the whole day with a number of phone calls and a little usage. Hope it stays this way. Charging to full from under 20% as often as possible certainly seemed to help.

Oddly enough I have in fact noticed a difference with the Exchange setting of syncing Reminders. With Reminder syncing on, the battery level went from 100% to 88% in 3 hours. After I turned it off, it's only gone to 85% in 2 hours, which is more like it and suggests it would only be down to at worst 83% in 3 hours. So 12% vs 5%. Conclusive? Maybe not entirely (for better conclusion I need to charge it up to 100% and let it count down with Exchange Reminder syncing off), but it seems to be something. My only use through the whole time was turning the screen on occasionally, and receiving the pushed email alerts I always get, and the minute to check and change the settings.

Alright, just to expand on that whole thing, in standby the phone over 15 hours drained from 100% to just 92% this morning (starting 5pm last night to about 8am this morning). Then I turned on that Reminder syncing for the Exchange account, charged it up to 100%, and took it off the charger at 10am. Now it's 1:30pm, so 3.5 hours later, and it's already down to 83%. No use at all, no missed calls or even any email alerts.

So, for me at least, the difference in battery life comes entirely down to this setting. Again this is an upgraded iPhone 4.

Go to Settings->Mail, Contacts, Calendars then select any account that's set up as an Exchange account. Turn Reminders off for that account. This will delete Reminders from your phone, sadly, if you have this syncing on, and it was on by default after the upgrade as I recall (hence the battery drain after the upgrade). But really, Reminders are more useful without Exchange syncing because then you can do location-based reminders. (You can't do location-based if the Exchange sync is on.)

Maybe this is not everyone's problem but I highly recommend you check for this setting if you are still having battery issues. I hope Apple is listening in and finds a fix for this; clearly something is wrong in that part of the system.

I had already turned off Reminders in my Exchange account and had a huge battery drop today while doing some shopping and doing virtually nothing on my phone during this time. In 3 hours or so I lost 20% and I had a full signal where I was at. All I did was read an email or two and respond to a few texts.

I think it's Exchange accounts period that are the issue, and I also know that my phone is claiming my usage numbers are significantly higher than they really are. Yesterday, my phone was claiming 3 hours 57 minutes of usage when I know for a fact that I never had the phone out of standby for more than 60 minutes total. Something is causing the phone to come out of standby on it's own and rack up usage. I'm thinking it's my Exchange accounts, but not sure yet. I've just turned off push and set them all to manual fetch. We'll see if that yields any improvement. I have already tried EVERY other tip that's been posted here and elsewhere (turning off location services, DFU restore as a new phone, disabling iCloud, etc, etc).