iOS 6 iPhone 4s battery drain

I was able to fix my problem by replacing the dock connector. This only applies to the people that have standby time and usage time that are identical (or almost identical) after hours of not using the phone.

Hours of googling led me to a hardware repair enthusiast site where a member was able to help me. The reason this occurs is because the phone thinks it is connected to a dock / charger even when its not. When the phone is in the state it will never go to "sleep". If you try to power down your phone and it resets instead there is a 99% chance you have a faulty connector. Keep in mind that there doesn't have to be any physical damage to your hardware. It is likely cause by subpar electronics (defective) that appple used in the manufacturing process. It is impossible to tell if the update increased the likelyhood of failure by changing the way the OS communicates with the connector or it is just a conincidence. It is certainly possible though since IOS 6 added support for the lighting connector.

I know this won't help allot of you but it may help a few. I did the repair myself and it is moderately difficult. I went from having 8 Hours usage , 8H standby overnight to only 8 minutes usage with 98% battery! And I would like to say to the Apple "genious" who told me it was normal that my battery drained 50% overnight to F-off!

If anyone wants more info on how to test for this feel free to shoot me a reply.

After upgrading my iPhone 4S to iOS 6.0, I too was victim to the mysterious battery drain issue. So after troubleshooting my device (turning off location services, disabling bluetooth, etc), I was able to narrow down the trouble to the 'Messages' app. I found that if I didn't manually force quit out of 'Messages' after sending or receiving a text, my phone battery would begin to rapidly drain over the course of 4-5 hours (while on but idle).

What I had luck with was doing a restore on my iPhone 4S through iTunes. Once my phone was restored, battery life was back to iOS 5 levels with normal messaging use. Funny thing was, after the iOS 6.0.1 update, 'Messages' was back to draining the battery again. One more restore and my phone was working normally again with no excessive battery drain. Try this restoring solution and good luck!

Can't wait for iOS 6.1, hope this situation is fixed. (Thanks a lot Forstall.)

Sorry I was feeling lazy. I went into setting and deleted my gmail account and then my hotmail and everything was fine. I then set them up again and everything was ok again. Using my phone now after a full charge and I'm still on 100% after about 10 minutes;-)

Please Note: There are probably a lot of spelling/punctuation errors below. I wanted to share my experience to help others, but am trying to do so in a timely manner 🙂!

Okay... my "phone drama" went down on Saturday. It is now Monday, and it is still working.

My timeline for Saturday:

11am - Downloaded IOS 6 while plugged into computer. Battery life was 68% charged.

Noon - Noticed that my phone was at 40%. Closed out all apps etc...

12:15, doing nothing - Phone was at 31% Ran upstairs concerned to talk to my roommate

By the time I got up the stairs and complained it was at 29%

I was genuinely freaking out because it made no sense.

Plugged it in the charge, and it was still losing battery.

1:00 pm - Battery at 9% while on charge. Researching on the forums etc...

1:30 pm - Phone completely dead

2:30 I called Apple, and they reminded me I was out of my 90 day "free conversation" period. Annoyed lol.

They said they'd at least listen to what I had to say.

Explained the problem. Girl had me put phone in what I think is DFU mode. (that's if I understand the terminology being thrown around.) To explain, I hooked up to computer, held down the sleep wake button and home button for 8 seconds, then let off the sleep wake button, but continued to hold the home button. On my computer, it prompted me to do a reset. I did. She told me to call back if this didn't fix anything.

3:00 It didn't fix anything... My phone still would not charge. I called Apple back. The new lady reminded me again I was outside of my 90 day free conversation period (I keep listing that because in the midst of all my stress it was like rubbing salt in the wound) She then told me to put the phone on the wall charger for 30 mins and the call back after that time. I scoffed a little, but agreed to do it.

3:35 phone magically comes back to life. I could use it. All of my stuff was wiped out of course. But it was stuck on 1% battery. It wouldn't charge. I tried moving it to the computer charge to see if I could use itunes to reset it again, and it died.

3:45 - Called apple a 3rd time. This time got a guy. He agreed to replace the phone, because he said he knew of nothing he could do. Said if I was out of warranty I would have to purchase a new phone. I said to him, Sir, I know this doesn't affect me, but it may some time in the future... but how do you justify making people buy a new phone, when your (apple's) software update is what caused this problem. He said he agreed with me, and he has had those very calls, but that he isn't authorized to do anything. He said he directs those people to the Genius Bar at the stores. Anyway...sidetracked.... He said it would take 3-5 days to get the phone out to me, and that I would need to send them back my old one as well as a 1-2 day option for 29.99 authorization on the credit card that would fall off once they got my old one back. Told him I needed to think about it and that I would call back.

4:00 Decided to leave my phone on the wall charger and go to the store and to get something to eat. Did another DFU mode reset first. When I came back the phone was on at 100% charge. Took the phone off the charge and did pandora/youtube to try to see if I could drain some battery. Stayed stuck at 100%. Put the phone on itunes and restored it using my backup instead of a new device.

The phone now works totally fine, and the battery life is better than it ever was before.

Summary:

IOS 6 update

Intense battery drain to completely shut off

DFU Mode - Reset as new device

Still Not Working

30 min wall charge, came on could use

Moved to computer, died and wouldn't charge.

Did another DFU Mode - Reset as new device

Wall Charge again for an hour - Came back on battery 100% stuck

Put on Itunes and did a reset as backed up iphone

Phone working great and all content restored like it did before IOS 6.

**Both my roommates have iphones. 1 has a 4 and the other a 4s. Neither experienced this problem. They both ran their update on the wall charger. I did mine on the computer. Not sure it matters, but thought it was a variable worth mentioning.**

Now, I'm left with the concern that I should still take the new phone. Just worried it could happen again...

This is what worked for me.

I watched these boards for a few days to see what problems people were having with iOS 6.X. Battery life/drain ppeared right away. I read the threads and noticed that a large percentage of the people with the battery drain problem had upgraded their OS Over The Air (OTA) There were people who had upgraded using iTunes but it appeared to me that this was a significantly smaller percentage of the people with this problem.

I then watched to see what people were doing to fix the problem. Many people restored their phones as new and then manually reinstalled all their apps, music, reinitiated their email, etc. Basically avoiding restoring your phone from a previous backup seemed to be the initial fix. But I am way to lazy to go through this hassle. So I watched the boards for a few more days and there seemed to be a lot of people that were letting their battery drain down to dead and then doing a 10-12 hour recharge and this really seemed to help. So I finally took the plunge.

I charged my phone to 100% and then I downloaded the update and installed it using iTunes and then restored my contents from the back up I made just before I installed the update.

I then made sure all apps were closed, double tap home button to open multitasking tray, touch and hold an app icon until all the icons in the drawer start to wiggle, tap the x on the icon to close it. I then restarted my phone, hold both the Home button and the Power button down until the apple logo appears and wait for the phone to restart. I then did a reset all settings reset on my phone Settings => General => Reset => Reset All Settings. I made sure all my notifications were turned off. Nothing but phone and email. I turned off everything in Locations that wanted to give somone access to my phone's location. I dug through the privacy settings and turned off everything in System Services in Location Services but Cell Network Search. I set all my email accounts to manual rather than push.

And my battery started to drain at about 3% every 15 minutes with nothing running but my phone. You know just my 4G connection. No maps, nothing that would access GPS, no games, no music. Just my phone sitting on my desk. I resisted the urge to plug it in and charge it up. I just let it drain and started using it as I normally would. I made and received a few phone calls, I sent and received email. I looked things up on the web. I looked things up on IMDB and watched my battery really drain. I kept thins going until I got home and then set my phone aside until I was ready to go to bed. When I picked it up it had drained to about 10%. So I watched some videos on youtube, turned on the LED light and generally messed around with my phone until the battery finally died and did not even have enough power to turn on the screen to tell me my battery was low and I should charge it as soon as possible.

I plugged it in, waited a few seconds and go the drained battery with the red charge amount. Turned off the screen and went to sleep. Slept 8 hours and In the morning my phone was at 100%. Unpluged it and went about my day. Drain was not as bad as the day before. But it was still noticable. Went through my day and avoided the urge to plug my phone in. When I got home I was at about 35% which is lower than I was used to under iOS 5.X at that point in the day. Again I let it sit until bed time, and when I got ready to go to sleep my phone was at at about 22%. So I drained it down to dead again, playing videos, running the LED, turning the screen brightness all the way up, etc. until it died again. Plugged it in and slept another 8 hours and in the morning the phone was at 100% and I went about my day. That night when I got home I was at 45% and it had been a pretty full day of using my phone.

I now get a full day of use on my phone, which I use a lot, phone calls, email, text messages, web surfing, game playing, book reading, etc. and when I get ready for bed I am at between 50 - 60 % charge left on my phone.

So if you can live without push email and letting every app in your phone share your location with the world, I would suggest letting your phone run all the way down and do a full recharge for a few days and see if this works for you. I am now getting better battery life using iOS 6.01 than I did using 5.X which was very good in my opinion for a smart phone that gets a lot of use.

I had the same battery drain issue on my iPhone 4. It was driving me crazy.. charging the phone three times a day. However, I fixed it by erasing all content and settings and then setting up the iPhone as a new device (not restoring it from a backup). If you are using iCloud for syncing, it won't be much work. Make screenshots with your app icons and erase + setup as new 😉

The problem comes from Safari, trying to sync bookmarks/reading list data. Restoring from backup also restores the problem.

Ion.flux posted a detailed description on a previous post. I followed it to the letter and it worked for me. You are saving it in itunes first by performing a backup and then reloading.I didn't lose anything.Good luck!

Here it is

1. I connected my phone to iTunes, went through each tab (Apps, Photos, etc.), ensured that I had everything checked which I wanted to protect, and then initiated a backup.
2. Once the backup was completed I went back to the "Summary" tab and selected the "Restore" option, which then pulled the full IOS6 install down and was applied to the phone during the factory reset process.
3. Once the restore was completed I was asked to set up the phone as a New Phone or restore from backup. I picked the latter option.
4. The backup was then applied to my newly installed OS on the phone, and I ejected the phone upon completion.

Hi guys, I want to tell you what I did and it seems to work.

I have an iphone 4s for my wife (personally I've been using motorola for a while) and had the very same problem you've descibed. We lost warranty because the phone had a gap in the touchscreen. We thought it was caused by a fall. We also had the power button not working, so I took it to a external technician; they didn't have the switch, so we had to wait for many weeks, but after that he he opened the phone and realized that the gap was produced by the battery, it was physically damaged; it looked like an old battery when it starts leaking, it was expanded. We decided to replace it. After that I made the DFU restore, and seems the phone is working again as before of the iOS update.

I think that probably there was a whole bad batch of batteries that is failling right now, I don't really know if the iOS 6 was the trigger, but I can say that the battery was not as one can expect from a phone bought on februray 2012.

You colud go to apple and ask them to open the phone and check the battery, you may still have te warranty active and get a new one.

I hope you can see what I'm telling in the picture.

I tried restoring and resetting resetting more than 30 times but nothing did help. then in some article i read windows firewall blocks some of iTunes downloads and one of my friend has witnessed that in his iPod touch. After he restore through iTunes some of icons were missing in his iPod. So what i suggest you to do is setup a complete restore via iTunes and set as a new iPhone. Do not back up earlier data. Windows didnt work for me then i restored via my macbook pro that looks in the same way then i exchanged some emails with apple care and then they called me and advised me. So here is what i did. I didnt back up anything i set up new iCloud and only turned it on. after im getting my contacts back i turn off everything in the icloud except findmyiphone anyway its not working right now and you can turn on other things in the icloud if you want except safari. then i turned every other features on like 3g, celluar, wifi when necessary, location services,important notifications and widgets,push email,facebook and twitter. i didnt turn on iMessage and facetime since i dont use them but they are not affecting very much for the battery either. i set brightness to 50% and set automatic time setting off and turn off everything except compass calibration in the location services>system services. i turned on push email but that can affect to the battery as i knw. and i turned off siri raise to speak by the way proximity sensor is still working and not turning off. i dont know whether thats a bug or not. so first day my battery last for about 2 hrs. im a heavy user i play battery eating games like metal storm and use the handset everytime i can. so the second day it was 4 hours and then it lasted around 6 hours and now i can do same stuff like 3d games playing and the battery lasts for 7-8 hours. its getting improved. i think iPhone needs sometime to setup everything for new os. and keep ur battery more than 80% when u restore and then charged it to 100% and after it fully charged keep it for another hour. and i use battery doctor which a very good free app and it will help to lengthen the battery spam. then use iphone until the battery drains about 2,3 times and fully charge it. after 2 times you charge the battery keep the device turned off for overnight and them fully charge. battery doctor will help you for that. and i noticed that battery percentage meter is not working it remains in 100% about 40 mins and the rapidly falls. so just turn off the battery percentage and use your phone as you like thats a very good trick. try this i think this would help. good luck. give it some time to readjust and dont restore until then. good luck and cheers

I've tried a lot of the fixes people have listed with very little improvement. It's my wife's phone (4S) so I don't look at it every day as she does but I did notice that there was a "VPN" at the top I hadn't noted before. I figured it must be a new feature of the IOS 6 and pretty much ignored it until I noticed that it was constantly disconnecting and then disconnecting. Aha! The VPN on the first page of SETTINGS wouldn't let me turn it off.

As I dug deeper in the VPN settings I discovered that ONAVO had set it up. I wanted to track what was eating up the DATA plan and had read this was the best. After deleting ONAVO the battery drain improved greatly bit still not back to normal.

After rooting around in the settings for the 1000th time I noticed that there was a PROFILE set up for ONAVO. DELETE DELETE DELETE

Last night with a fresh charge at 8 PM we waited. At midnight it still read 100% so my wife played a couple of games of Solitaire and we went to bed. I checked it at 9 AM and it had 96%. (20% was normal for a while there)

NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!

I have noted that there has been a lot of activity with apps updating so I have a feeling that many of them are making changes to their software to be more friendly with the latest patch to IOS 6. I discussed the ONAVO VPN connection with the IT manager at work (who also has an Iphone) and he couldn't see why it would need to establish that VPN connection (especially all on it's own).

I think Onavo needs some fixing? I'll put it back on at a later date but for now it's just not happening.

It seems that I finally got things fixed 🙂

Back in November my 4S was updated to iOS 6 and subsequently 6.0.1. Suddenly it didn't connect to wifi and the battery was quickly drained.

• Wifi only worked sometimes, after having rebooted the device a few times. Suddenly it would connect, but after a few hours connection was lost and I could start the reboot-process a number of times.
• I tried the various changes related to syncing etc. in order to save battery, but nothing worked. The only thing that worked was to turn cellular data completely of.
• You can read about it here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4310494?start=1605

I finally gave up and decided to wipe the phone entirely and reload a backup from iCloud. I was told this would install to factory settings, including the old iOS 5.x. Actually it didn't.

Here's what I did:

1. I managed to get access to wifi and forced a complete, fresh iCloud backup.
2. Next the iPhone was wiped totally, deleting all programs and data. When the phone started I had to configure all over, including setting language etc.
3. First time I did this I had the option to install from a iTunes backup. It didn't do that.
4. I then wiped it again, totally, and started all over. This second time I could choose to log on to my iCloud acount using wifi, and restore my back-up from step 1.

And now the phone seems to be working perfectly, connected to wifi and with no battery drain. 🙂

The catch:

This points to this being a software issue in iOS 6. Hence, I fear that I could introduce these problems again if I do any changes to some obscure configuration parameter.

I sincerely hope Apple fixes these problems in a future version of iOS.

And I still believe that Apple behaves arrogantly. They should be more open and acknowledge these problems.

I had the same with my 4s, i restored as new iphone and set up again and deleted my previous back ups in itunes. since then battery life fantastic. Maybe the backup data, some of which dates back to 2008 since I first had a iphone was corrupted or maybe contained redundant strings etc, but whatever the case now battery life 100% better than when even I first got it

So i tried a bunch of things: complete restore, flight mode, no wifi, no cellular, no localization, etc. and mix thereof.

The bottom line is that the only thing that worked for me (4s) is to disable 3G! I get good behavior like that but with 3G enable, I lose about 10% per 2h in full standby. Was working great with iOS 5.x. Not sure this is a clue as well but hotspot through wifi doesn't work anymore, used to, I get no address from dhcp on connecting device, but hotspot though Bluetooth works fine.

This is really painful.

And the weird part is it only applies to certain exchange servers. I have my gmail and work mail setup as exchange servers on my phone and there is no issue with battery life. My wife's phone has the same setup except she also had a hotmail account that is setup as an exchange sync through the to mail exchange server and her battery was getting killed. I turned off push sync on the hotmail server and boom it is fixed. Of note you don't have to completely delete you mail accounts just tell them to not push sync but rather use the fetch option. Should be fine or at least it was in her case. Definitely a iOS 6.0.2 problem though because we have been running the same config for 3 years without issue. Plus her iPad with iOS 6.0.1 does not have an issue. Hopefully iOS 6.1 which is rumored for late January will fix it all!

My iphone 4S suddenly developed the battery drain problem last week - like it went from 65% to dead within 3 hours, on standby the entire time. A few days earlier, my mom's iPhone also developed the battery drain symptom... Like it literally started happening on both our phones overnight.

I didn't download the latest update until this happened - thinking maybe that was my sign from Apple to finally update my software. Unfortunately, that didn't help the battery problem - though it actually created a couple new ones. (My mom's phone already had the latest update though...)

Out of all the posts I'd read with suggestions and steps to possibly fix the battery drain problem, there was only one that I hadn't already tried... One guy with the same problem made a comment about his work email account, which is set up as a Microsoft Exchange account on his iPhone. It turns out that I also have a Microsoft Exchange account on my iPhone, and so does my mom...

Since I was out of options - as well as battery juice, I threw caution to the wind and deleted that email account... And guess what?! My phone went back to it's normal, lengthy battery life within a minute of deleting it. (Hallelujah!) I can live without those emails, but I can not live without my phone!

My mom thought this problem was a sign that she just needed to get the new iPhone, and that's excatly what she did the following day! :)