Battery drain with iOS 5 on iPhone 4

My battery was draining like nuts: from full to 0 in few hours. System log showed tons of errors and CPU was over 20% all the time. However I couldn’t find an app that showed which process was using the CPU. I wiped the iPhone and restored it from iTunes and it was the same story. Then I restored the factory settings and let it seat for one day. The battery issue was fixed. It didn’t drain at all. So the only option was to restore the apps themselves from iTunes (as opposed to a full restore) and to reconfigure the iPhone from scratch (picture, movies, books, email etc..). I’m back in business now. The battery is no longer draining.

I think that the iPhone is just like another PC it gets polluted overtime by installing OS and updates and apps etc... Reinstalling from scratch every once in a while is probably a good practice.

I had the same exact issue. I was monitoring the system log and seeing the same error coming over and over again. The only way I could make the error stop was by turning off Push email for my work exchange account. Since that is a deal breaker for me, I decided to try just deleting that account and then recreating it. After I did that, the iPhone was suddenly back to normal and the errors stopped.

I had the similar issues on my iPhone 4. After upgrading to iOS 5.0, the battery was just fab. But it was nightmare when I upgraded to iOS 5.0.1. The battery this time lasted for 6 hrs with little use. I used to lose battery as 5 % per hour.

I tried somethign which was explained in one of the forums here and it worked like magic.

1. Deleted all the mail accounts
2. Reset All settings
3. Set-up mail accouts again
4. Turned- off the automatic time zone
5. Tured off weather/ stock widgets
6. Turned off location services not in use
7. Turned off diagnostic
8. Tured off location based iAds
9. Changed the Push/ Fetch mail to manual especially for iCloud
10. Lastly let the battery drain to 0% and then charged 100% in one go.

Currently my battery last for 34 hours in standby and 14 hrs usage. I am happy with this performance.

I am so frustrated with apple and their so called "genius bar". I've taken my phone in several times due to the rapid battery drain once updating to the 5.0.1 on my iPhone 4. I've restored it twice as a new phone and have used it for several days without adding any apps to it to see if that would help-and it did not. I've tried several suggestions from this feed and I haven't had any luck. I am now going through the hassle of using my old plam prix while the "genius" people look at for a a few days. They called today to tell me that they have charged it to full capacity and have drained it to zero twice now during standby mode. THAT IS IT. It is maintaining a charge of about 10 hours they say in standby mode. Standby. And they tell me it's ready to be picked up?!?! I'm completely out of luck and they continue to jerk me around because I'm out of warranty. They have failed to really do any kind of real diagnostics on it and fail to admit that there has been a problem with their updates causing the battery drain. All I'm hearing is that it must be an app that I put on the phone, but obvously this is not true since the problem still exists when restoring as a new phone. I hope that apple gets it together and offers some help or an update to fix the issue, or my iphone days may be coming to an end.

On another note, my husband just had to take his mac book pro (11 months old) in and they gave him the run around, when he told them exactly what the issue was the first time. We have been in the apple store every day now for the past week, them telling us that his computer is fixed when it was still having the same issue after several minutes. Do they not even check to see if they fixed the problem before calling?!?! They finally had to install a new antenna into his computer, luckily before his warranty was up. We have now purchased the extended warranty based on the unreliability of our apple products. So disappointing and frustrating.

Please provide a screenshot of a 14 hour usage.

Ok, my iPhone 4s was on charge overnight, as always, unplugged it this morning 100%. Sent 5 text messages, checked emails and the battery is showing now at 94%!!! ***???

Add me to the list.

This dramatic battery drain persists after turning off ALL notifications and location services, no mail accounts active, turning Siri off and last but not least iCloud.

Rebooted, restored, installed iOS new, etc. ppp. - the battery is dead after about 30 hrs. STANDBY.

Atm I using my 4S as a paperweight!

I also have the same problem after i upgrade IOS 5. My iPhone 4 battery's percentage drown sharply n get heat faster. I restored but the problems didn't solve.

For the past few days I have had issues with installing apps on my iPhone 4S. The app would constantly say that it's "Waiting...". I would get frustrated, and would leave my phone for several hours, and when I came back to it the app would finally be installed. Yesterday night, while making a call, my phone got uncomfortably hot after five to ten minutes and so I needed to hang up. I plugged the phone in, like I normally do at night, and went to bed. This morning my phone was fully charged and cool to the touch again. I unplugged it and started to check my e-mails, etc. and it instantly got extremely hot again. The battery decreased 25% in 30 minutes, which was incredibly abnormal. I went about my daily routine, using my phone like I normally would, and the battery lasted two whole hours. I could literally watch it decrease. It even died quick when on stand by. I restored it, but used my back-up, and this did not fix the problem. Everything is literally turned off, too: I completely removed my e-mail accounts, location services are all turned off, iCloud is turned off, Notifications are all turned off. The problem still persists. My phone is constantly hot, and the battery dies ridiculously quick. The next step I'm going to take will be to restore it completely and use it as a brand new phone, since I've read that this has helped others.

Siiigh, I'm oh so frustrated.

I am happy to report that I figured out what was causing the tremendous battery drain on my iPhone 4 since the iOS 5.1 update: a CalDAV calendar account I had configured. Once I disabled that account, everything went back to normal. Unfortunately, even after deleting and recreating it, as soon as I enable it, the power drain starts again. Using System Status (what a great utility, BTW!) shows that dataaccessd is constantly crashing, and the CPU utilization is almost always above 50%. Once the CalDAV account gets disabled, CPU usage hovers around 8%.

Now, the sad thing is that this was working fine before 5.1, and that this is my work calendar account, which I actually need to use. There must have been some way in how 5.1 processes the CalDAV protocol, which is causing things to crash.

But at least my phone's battery is back to normal...

This is a great tip. Thank you.

for me the problem turned out to be one of the mail accounts I was connecting to.

Download the

iPhone Configuration Utility

http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/

and inspect the logs.

if you get lots of these

WiFi:[ ... ]: Client dataaccessd set type to background application

then turn off your mail acounts one by one and see if it helps.

If you can localize it to a mail account, either recreate it or turn off each service one by one.

Hi All,

I don't believe in turning off functionality on a beautiful phone as iPhone 5. Here is what I did, and it did make a difference to me (I was a victim of the battery issue).

1. Go to Settings --> Notifications

2. 'Not In Notification Center' - Ensure all the new applications installed by each one of you, have not only the notification Center turned off, but also ensure you turn off unwanted apps - (Good to have Alert Style as None)

a) Badge App Icon

b) Sounds

c) View in Lock Screen

I did all this and from earlier, my power was draining out anywhere between 2%-4% every hour. Now it has reduced drastically to 1% maybe in 2-3 hours 🙂.

And I can't take my hands off the phone, which is why even the 1% every 2-3 hours, else that also should increase with time. Plus, feel free to use 'Do Not Disturb' from Settings frequently when you really won't be using the phone (sleeping, driving, meetings).

Over the air (wifi backup to iclouds also consume a lot of power, turn it off and do it once when you are charging the phone)

I believe, the new OS is taking time for people to learn about, as it contains 100's of new functions, which we have to get used to in time, and causing all these confusions. It is a great phone people, trust me 🙂.

Cheers,

Vishnu