iphone battery dead after ios 5 update

I have the same problem on Iphone 4 with ios5 it is about to go back to the store as I can't even rely on it as an alarm clock anymore as it goes dead over night.

I disabled notifications, reminders, location services, icloud, have exchange on manual no push but none of this seems to help.

Also the phone is seriously sluggish, when you start an app it hangs for a few seconds, even the settings page, I never noticed this before ios5.

disasterous update and no rollback, if only it had windows restore points in itunes 😁

I'm searching these discussions to find problems before I install iOS5. This one seems to be one with a lot of views and posts and therefore is likely to be relevant.

Not sure if this might help, but back in June - July, 2010, there was a thread just like this, except it was about iOS4 being installed in iPhone 3 GS's that were being upgraded from iOS3.x. Over time, there were fewer and fewer complaints added to the thread and eventually, none.

I don't remember the details but I believe it had something to do with the iPhone communicating with Apple in the background as part of the setup, or something like that. Once that procedure was complete, the communicating stopped and battery life returned to normal. For me, it took about 3 days. For others, it took longer

I have no idea if the issue that you are experiencing could be related but, the complaints and descriptions in this thread sound identical.

I think you've got it, after 2-3 days, the phone settled down and is now back to normal. Thanks.

K, problem sorted but it's not gona help everyone, but here it goes. My problem was that Safari for some reason have created like 1000s of bookmarks (??).. it's so many that scrolling down on the bookmark list crashes Safari. Now, turning on iCloud and setting it to sync my bookmarks totaly drained my battery as it was syncing a ton of bookmarks to the cloud. CPU on the iPhone was way high for hours and Safari real slow before I could type anything in the URL field. The bookmarks also replicated to my iPad to.. thanks..

Not gona help eveyone but I've seen some post problems with Safari and millions of bookmarks. If you got this problem - Don't turn on iCloud and sync of bookmarks!!

Not syncing bookmarks now and I really dont know how to remove all the bookmarks without jailbraiking my phone to delete the bookmark file.. Ideas of how to do this I'm happy for any tips!

I had this same issue after upgrading my 4. Would drain 40% in less than 2 hours. After much trial and error, and searching all the forums, here is what I found.

Some apps are not yet properly coded for IOS 5. If they arn't, they will stay running in the background even if they say they are not there. (Even when they are gone when you do a double tap and check your running apps.) Worse if they crash.

The fix, is to delete the bad app, then hard reset your phone. (Power and home button for ten seconds.)

The problem, is finding the bad app... I wound up going to the iTunes store, and checking the notes on all my apps, if they didn't say test for IOS 5, they got the delete.

After doing this, (and this is all I did) I am back to normal. Without playing games all day, I went 30 hours without a charge doing normal texting and standbye this weekend.

I know you are only offering advice to help, but I'm pretty sure anyone could work out that not playing games all day will help on battery life. People shouldn't have to delete all their apps in order to get a half decent battery life.

@thehankster.

Apparently you missed the point. The problem is with apps that have not been compiled specifically for the IOS 5 update. The comment about games was just to show my current usage. Which for me is normal... Not a gamer.

If you are draining 40% in 2 hours like I was, well the only fix is to get rid of the apps that have not been recompiled with the new SDK... Any app.. The big one that was killing mine was an app to get hockey scores... Then I found 6 more...

Hopefully the developers will recompile and test their apps and all will be well again.

Also having battery drain problem - it'll go for several hours with 2%-5% drain (say 99% to 95%) and then will drop %30-40% the next hour (say from 95% to 55%). Haven't made it through a 'normal' (take off charger at 8am and back on at 11pm) day without hitting 0% long before the normal 'put it back on charger' time.

Been 5 days since ios 5 upgrade. Really don't like. Really Realy don't like.

But, have no choice but to wait a few more days.

Also will take advice to only keep apps verified for ios5 - seems like good idea. Like most in this discussion have tried all other suggested solutions - currently have everything turned off except 3G network and it still wants to drain the battery.

tom in abilene

Dunno if this might help anyone else. Doubt it's unique to upgrading to a 4s; should apply to all. I wasn't aware of looking for the Crash Report entires as described here:

http://www.macworld.com/article/163200/2011/10/troubleshoot_iphone4s_battery.htm l

I am using Exchange mail account (via Zimbra Server), and found the issue at last. I turned off 'Reminders' under the Exchange account. Seems like there is some kind of dead loop causing extensive CPU usage. My phone no longer shows equal 'Usage' and Standby time.. and it is no longer hot all the time.

See, that was the conclusion I reached too. Not sure if it is only Zimbra servers that cause it or what. Could be. Haven't had any problem since I turned that off.

Note that Apple has officially acknowledged an iOS 5 battery problem and says an update is coming within a couple weeks or something like that. Saw this earlier today.

Apple has admitted to the issue and is going to update iOS5

http://gizmodo.com/5855809/apple-admits-battery-problems-its-ios-5s-fault

I have the Iphone 4s and around town, I basically have the phone on, but only make or receive maybe 4 or 5 calls a day and maybe a text message or two....I have the 200mb and 200 text plans. If I charge my phone overnight, it is about dead by 6pm or so. However, when we go to our deer lease, there is no 3G, but we have a 2G (edge) tower on the hill where we stay. I have taken the phone to the lease for 2 weekends and charged overnight on Thursday night and my phone is still about 40% by Sunday when we leave and my hunting buddy and I text each other about what we have seen or not seen from our stands. So, to me, it seems since the 3G is not available, the phone battery lasts a lot longer...almost twice the time when I am home and on 3G all the time. I sure wish they would have left the ability to turn off 3G!!!

I upgraded my ipone 4 to ios5 and had the same issue. I did the same thing everybody did and turned all the cool fetures off, I even went to apple. I could litterally watch the batter drop. I started looking again and found a new feature on ios 5 called diagnostics & usage under settings, general, about. If you click on it and changed to don't send rather than automatic send your battery life will be back to normal. I looked up the reoports it was sending down where it says diagnostic & usage data, and found my phone was sending out around 200 reports a day back to apple. This is what was draining my battery and most likely yours too. Apple uses this to help diagnose problems with the ios and apps. Good Luck!

I found the same solution. Disable notifications for the exchange calendar app, and cpu utilization drops from 100% to 8%. battery life returns to normal. I'm so happy to figuire this out.

Of course, i'm not using icloud, so who knows what might happen when i add that back in, but at least i can get email now.