iOS 6 iPhone 4s battery drain

Everybody!?

I have the same problem as you, but mig bigget frustation is, that my standby time and my usage time is equal. If my phone can last lets say 11 hours, my phone says that usage time is maybe 10 hours and 45 minutes, while my standby says 11 hours. And i maybe used my phone for a total of 30 minutes. That the most frustating thing. So i restored iPhone from new but didn't help, I know we all have this problem, but can anyone solve this?

after days of a hot battery that drained in less than 4 hours thanks to ios 6 and the subsequent 6.1 patch, my phone is finally working normally again.

this makes no sense to me but something in here fixed it for me:

1. went to app store

2. downloaded a contact manager, backed up my contact list

3. plugged phone in to pc, did a complete backup using iTunes

was just about to do a full reset but when i picked it up it wasn't hot any more. now it's running perfect.

Need someone smarter than I...

My phone shows a drain of 120mA. Nothing is on and I am not using it. The battery is discharging at about 10% and hour with the phone idle.

Tonight I try another DFU reset and set the phone up as a new phone. I will skip loading anything and see how the battery goes.

It appears I will be forced to upgrade if I want to have a phone. Thanks for the help Apple

mattzulu

Re: iOS 6 iPhone 4s battery drain

Feb 22, 2013 9:11 AM ( in response to Pizza98704)

Pizza while I appreciate your suggestion, and the intent, I must advise you with this battery once you've reached 100% -any time longer on the charger than let's say one hour is actually bad for long term battery life. Full cycle charges however, are beneficial. A full cycle charge is when you allow your phone to drop below 20% and then charge your phone to 100% without interruption. Allowing a maximum of 1 hour past 100% on the charger.

And yes my battery life is still terrible post the most recent update. Apple needs to handle this.

Lot of misinformation above.

First, the lithium ion charge management ic in the iPhone does not allow the battery to continually charge if left connected "beyond one hour". It charges the battery with a modified constant-current/constant-voltage charge curve. It will charge at a constant-current rate of up to 900mAHr (depending on power-source) up until the charge voltage is 4.19v, at which point it maintains constant-voltage 4.19v charge rate. Normal Lithium-ion terminates when the charge current drops to 1/5 of the constant-current rate (900/5 mAHr in this case) but the iPhone has specific disconnects the battery from the charge circuit and allows the phone to be powered by the USB directly. In this state, it will show the battery status as an appliance plug, rather than a lightning bolt (example: http://halo.bungie.org/misc/mid7night_iphone_goodies/BungieHaloTheme3.jpeg). There is no harm in leaving the iPhone connected to external power indefinitely in this state, and in fact, doing so increases battery longevity, since otherwise, the battery would be draining to power the phone, exhausting the finite charge cycles.

Second, full cycle charges are not beneficial for the battery in any way. They are however needed for ensuring that the battery guage reading accurately represents the energy content of the battery by keeping them calibrated to one another, as well as letting the charge IC better know the charge capacity so it can better manage the charge process. Draining the Lithium-ion battery any amount, and charging it up, diminishes a portion of the finite number of useful charge cycles from it (>80% of original battery capacity after 400 cycles, in the case of the 4S). Full charge cycles are not needed, nor beneficial at all for the battery itself. Apple's documentation is purposefully misleading on this, erring on over-simplification in order to get users to perform a single full charge cycle once per month.

Lastly, a full cycle discharge should not be terminated when the battery guage reads 20% or less. It terminates when the iPhone shuts down on it's own. Only by allowing the iPhone to fully depleat on it's own during normal use, will the battery level guage be given the information necessary to recalibrate it's parameters to the battery. Artificially increasing the discharge rate (such as by running a GPS app, game, or some other application that uses many of the on-board radios and devices, in addition to the screen and CPU) undermines the calibration proceedure and will result in inaccurate calibration where the capacity reported will be lower than actual capacity. If during the calibration process, you terminated discharge manually when the phone charge guage indicated <20%, then you have not performed the calibration proceedure, and thus, cannot state whether you have a problem with your battery or not, based on percieved abnormally-fast depletion.

You are pathetic Apple

<Edited By Host>

Dude nobody from apple reads these forums, this a user to user forum, like you and I.

Well somebody is editing my messages (always says edited by host) when they don't like what I say about Apple lol

I'm just assuming it's someone at Apple lol

TimK1964, your battery has over 400 cycles on it. To put it bluntly, it's nearing the end of it's useful life. Apple states that your battery should have 80% of its original capacity at 400 cycles. Based on this, I would expect your battery to be considerably lower capacity than new. Additionally, calibration will be imperitive in order to have the battery guage match the actual battery contents.

Like I said before, I too had the same issues as everyone here, and it was only after actually performing at least one full charge cycle did it not show completely rediculous discharge rate (10% in just 10 minutes, right of the charger), and even then it wasn't ideal. But running it through approx 2 more full charge cycles (I didn't let it sit and run them statically, but it did run down fully once again overnight, after i had used it all day again), did it finally begin to show reasonable numbers during use.

This is all under 6.1.2 of course. Anyone complaining about previous versions, I think we need to simply point to the upgrade first, since they just muddy the waters of what we're trying to do, and that is determine if there is a software problem with 6.1.2 and excessive battery useage for some devices.

Back to your task at hand, 120ma is about normal discharge rate for an iPhone with the screen and radios on and not connecteed to a power source. Why do you think that's excessive ? Or maybe I don't understand your question?

tungsten2k - thanks. 120mA means nothing to me, I figured you would know if that was normal and I was correct.

This was my first iPhone so I am not sure what a 'normal' lifespan for the phone should be.

It sounds like it may be worth the $40 to get a new battery put in. We have a store here that does it. New battery than go through setting it up as a new phone might be my best option.

Once the battery hits that 80%, does it really start to die quicker after each charge?

I appreciate the feedback you have given. I don't want to keep trying to fix an issue if part of the problem is the battery hitting end of life.

Now it's time to decide - spend $40 on a battery and hope it helps or spend $150 on an iPhone 5.

OK well the easiest option to start is as follows:

1: to go to settings>reset>reset all settings. The iPhone will reboot.

2: You will be prompted with a few options. select "set up as new". This does not delete your apps or data so dont worry about that.

3: You will then be prompted to run through a wizard to select certain options. Run through and select what u want

4: It will load back up and the only thing you will see is the wallpaper will be back as default so you will have to change it back to what you want. Otherwise all your icons and groups and apps should remain just as they were.

Thats all.

Now the other piece is to allow the device to run down until it shuts itself off. You can time this around when you go to bed as not to interfere with your day. Then plug it in and allow it to charge fully ( Full charge on iPhone is around 1.5 hrs AFTER it shows 100%.) So if you are sleeping great just let it charge all night The key here is to allow it to charge undisturbed all the way. BTW the device only takes like 3 hrs to charge if totally dead so I suspect most folks can find 3 hrs somewhere to allow their device to charge without messing with it. Of course it will be on while charging so if you receive an emergency call it will still function.

This is what I have been posting in this thread alot. Apparently, I am spamming, when it works for me.

Here are the instructions I have:

1. Do the IOS update (the one that is the latest, or if you already did or have it downloaded, then proceed to step 2)
2. Reset All Settings: SETTINGS>GENERAL>RESET>RESET ALL SETTINGS
3. Use it until it dies (automatically shuts off)
4. Plug into Charge
5. Leave it 1.5 hours or longer after it reaches 100% --> Undisturbed (preferably overnight)
6. Give it a few days to Calibrate

This has helped me on my Ipod Touch 4^th generation, running IOS 6.0.1

Also, there is an update (IOS update 6.12), should I update to it on my Ipod Touch 4th generation?

I understand that. My question was have you run it after the restore without loading all your apps back or restoring the backup. I think you mentioned you didnt restore a backup but DID load all your apps. So potentially there is an app that's causing your issue. The only way to know if run the phone in its default state and see how it functions. If all is well then it would indicate that your device is ok and you have an app that is not playing nice on your device or with the version of iOS that you have. Maybe add a few back at a time and monitor it. While I know that can be a pain if there is nothing wrong with your device it would be worth it to know if App X is causing you to not like your iPhone very much and don't use it.

Rory wrote:

That's what the DFU reset does - loads new firmware, then the IOS... When you set it up as a 'new phone' - then instead of 'restoring' from a backup - you basically install apps again, songs, photos, etc....

I've done the DFU thing twice to no avail.

Charged my phone overnight - unplugged this morning at 7:30 am - it is now 2:50 pm here - I have 32% left - battery watch app says 3 hours left on battery......

Before 6.1.1 and 6.1.2 I'd get 2-3 days....

This also with the phone barely used at all....

oy..

As I mentioned in an earlier reply in this thread, my 4s was leaking badly on 6.0.1

I did reset all settings and upgraded to 6.1 then restored from the backup it had made.

While 4s battery has never been strong from the beginning, I am no longer experiencing the extreme discharge.

Current reading:

Usage:1 hr. 13 min.

Standby: 10 hours, 18 min.

Current charge remaining is 87%.

My wife's 4s is at 6.1 and holding about the same way.

I have never updated OTA.

I have never used iCloud.

I always connect to iTunes through an iMac.

Not experienced enough to suggest a fix.

I will not be upgrading beyond 6.1 until these issues sort themselves out.

There seem to be a few people on here who think a new battery might fix this. If your battery life is noticeably worse since you installed a new iOS then it goes without saying that your battery is not the problem. Sure batteries age and their storage capacity diminishes over time but it's such a subtle process that you barely notice it. When you install a new iOS update and your battery life disappears like never before, there can be only one explanation.

I have had problems ever since I upgraded from iOS5.1 to iOS 6.0. Immediately I started having battery drain problems, phantom data useage and assistive touch problems. The iOS 6.1 update fixed my battery drain &amp; phantom data useage problem and although I still have one or two niggles which didn't exist in iOS5.1, I am relatively happy with my iPhone. I dare not upgrade iOS again until a decent version is released. I cannot believe that they still haven't launched an o/s as stable as 5.1 despite three attempts now.

Well actually it does work on iPhone. Maybe not yours though but its a known proven solution. It would seem that for folks who have restored and reset and all the other stuff and still cant get their device to work most likely have an app or two causing the issue or in a poos cellular signal area causing the issue. Only way to know is a restore via iTunes then not restoring any backup. Perhaps just setting up the basics contacts, email, etc and see how it goes. If the device works then you know there is an app that creating problems. Install one or two and see. Basically any that use locations or network you need to look for. WhatsAPP or Facebook stuff like that are more likely the ones.

Anyway the point is either you have a defective device OR an app thats not playing nice and you need to determine which it is. Sometimes restoring iOS and restoring a backup works just fine. Other times it just puts you right back where you were because of some app you put back that is misbehaving.

The general statements here that "iOS ver x is causing battery drain" is just not the case as there are millions that are not having any issues with the same iOS. Plus you can find those statements in every single iOS version that has ever come out.

Janet108 wrote:

didya READ all the pages Pizza? all 144 of them?? Your suggestions have been suggested already, I've DONE all that, on BOTH phones, and BOTH phones are still a POS. I've been having this problem for months now, trust me, your 'solution' does not work. May work on a touch, certainly doesn't work on an actual iphone.