iOS 6 iPhone 4s battery drain

Mine is much better now too. I avoided deleting everything and setting up as a new phone because it's a real pain with some apps, re-downloading so many books and losing personal docs with some apps.

I know I signed off wishing everyone good look and that mine was "good enough" to move on, but actually I think it is back to normal if not really close. Standby seems better than before.

I know battery seemed a huge drain right after upgrading for me, so I am not discounting anyone's experiences really. But because of the experiences I saw, and the improvements I saw applying almost everyone's suggestions here except for setting up as a new phone, I am wondering if most people are fixed now and we're just mad because there was no official update, statement or apology from Apple... My battery is as good as any two year old phone now, though sometimes it seems to drop faster unexplained and I wish for battery usage monitoring ability now....

My 2-3 week journey:

Started with the update. Battery didn't actually seem to start dropping fast until a day or two, or I didn't notice it until a couple of days in. This was also after a slew of app updates that seemed to come around the same time...

1. I reset my network settings, first thing after reading up. Sorta helped but not much.

2. Disabled many icloud features. Again, seemed to help slightly but big problem was still there.

3. Deleted iCloud, only re-enabled it with "find my iphone" because it seemed risky without it. Went through settings, ad-block, etc. and trimmed down everything I didn't use. Disabled location but when it didn't change turned location back on.

4. Deleted all bookmarks, cleaned out bookmarks on my mac and phone, re-enabled icloud Safari. Didn't notice any difference and still seemed to have a problem with safari and itunes.

5. Performed hard reset after a friend mentioned it solved his post-update issues. (hold down power and home button for a while, tapped both again when powered down). This seemed to help quite a bit.

6. Quit messing with it. Some suggested quit resetting everything every time it didn't seem to do anything, like maybe give it time to "settle down" with the new settings. Left things for a few days and it really seemed to get better and better.

A nice rep from Apple called asking if they could install battery monitoring software and wanted more info on the issue. They really care about this I think. I think it's OK now, maybe, but I'm gun-shy to say so after the past few weeks so I will happily let them monitor the battery to see if I'm out of the woods. Perception is reality, and I can see myself wanting better battery than I am getting, but trying to be objective, I know it seemed messed up for a while and now seems much better, and it could be back to normal...

I have the iphone 4s. I am a new apple customer, and I was prompted to update to iOS 6 immediately upon activation. In the beginning, It drove me crazy that the phone would loose 1% power every three minutes during normal use. I became so frustrated that I went online, and I performed a search for "iphone 4s battery drain" the results were immediately insightful. I have seen no argument that the new iOS, in conjuction with the 4 series phones, does not cause this battery drain (drain) problem.

The new operating system causes rapid drain. I have followed all applicable steps to limit the drain, such as disabling wi-fi, location services, and any app that auto syncs/pushes/updates. Additionally, I changed the screen brightness to around 15% of max. These steps have allowed me to slow the drain down to 1% every 10 minutes +/- 2-3 minutes during normal use. This is unacceptable for a product that is supposed to be so revolutionary. I have now resorted to putting my phone in airplane mode while not in use as this appears to limit the drain greatly (less than 1% an hour).

I have spent a great deal of time online trying to resolve this issue. I love the phone, but it is time for a solution. If iOS 5 worked fine with the 4-series phones then the first step would be to check the updated (iOS 6) objective-c code for any errors/memory leaks that may be occurring in the newly added functions. If apple has begun the debugging process, then the deadline for resolution has to be pushed up, and more programmers have to be added to the debug-project.

If management makes this a true priority, even going so far as to offer monetary incentives for proof of resolution, creating teams that can perform competitively against one another for greater reward, and allowing some form of over-time incentive as well; this problem will be resolved rapidly.

Steve Jobs is not there any longer, but someone else has to know how to lead. Someone knew of this problem pre-release. Whoever gave the green-light, does not value quality. That cannot go unremarked.

All that is needed for mediocrity to triumph is for good men, and women, to standby and do nothing,

Devin

I did restore my phone after facing a rapid decrease of battery, the result are quite acceptable, nearly 5 hours of usage and 17 hours of standby, but I know for sure this just happen after restoring, then it won't change much after a few days charge.

That is well freaky. Perhaps that is what my 4S was doing. Not any more though. But all I have done is tidied up my email accounts and switched from push to fetch every 30 minutes. My battery is now deliverring what you would expect and no hot processor causing crashes.

The battery runs down and at the same time, the processor gets hot. Just goota search everything that may be causing all that processors usage. With iCloud pared down to minimum, no push email, not location services, simplyfied email accounts (I only use Exchange for Google Calendars and Contacts and for Google email I set up in Other Account.....), etc. etc. etc. the processor may not have much to do.

As I said yesterday, I resetted my phone to its original factory settings and deleted all the unrequired apps, and music also.

Nearing end of the day, my phone's battery is still strong and is currently at 45%.

One advice: check if you have any running apps on your phones. if u do, kill them! saves energy.

Great discussion with many talented individuals. I had the same problem.

1. Downloaded iOS 6 on an iPhone 4s with 2 weeks remaining on warranty.

2. Noted excessive battery drain (dead in 2 hours) and heat (phone could be substituted for a medium hot skillet).

3. Went to AT&T company store, no help and they punted to the Apple Store (don't shoot me I'm just the piano player, blame the trombonist).

4. Restored phone and backed up to iCloud.

5. Made an appointment with the Apple Genius.

6. Apple Genius was a nice guy suspectible to customer flattery, promptly gave me a new iPhone 4s.

7. Downloaded and restored settings from iCloud. Very happy at this point after having driven 38 miles one way to nearest Apple Store.

8. Reached home and noticed that battery was half drained (after 1 hour drive). Ignored, can't be and charged.

9. Phone hot enough to use as a medium hot skillet....Aaaaaaghh....

10. Promptly called Apple, so we have discounted hardware. Very little help other than setup another call back appointment.

11. Decided to fool around with selective settings.

a. Disable Facebook Sharing. Settings => Facebook => Off

b. Delete all bookmarks on Safari. Safari=> Edit => Delete

12. Problem seems to be solved. Will post more after I meet with Apple Genius this evening.

What irks me is that Apple has to be aware of the problem. Just read this forum. They are loath to admit a failure. C'mon, nobody is perfect and fessing up would add to respect for them. Instead the policy seems to be duck and run and develop software fix in the interim. I will be vindicated if an update of iOS 6 comes up in 1 month!

Mine's working now too. So well that it's actually kinda scary - it was at 81% at 7.30 last night and it was at 81% when I got up this morning! I had to watch a long video to use some battery and convince myself the indicator wasn't stuck!

I put it down to your suggestion (GrahameE) about email push. That was definitely using 3G and lots of data while on wi-fi. But for others it seems to be Safari bookmarks (which I can understand, because iCloud is really touchy about bookmarks). It almost makes me wonder whether it's got nothing to do with what we're fiddling around with and the problem is steadily being resolved from behind the scenes!

So courage, mes braves! It can be fixed. Try turning off cellular data and if that improves the battery life then try turning on and off icloud and mail push services. Use DataWiz to see what's using the bandwidth and try turning cellular data back on to see if that data is being transferred through 3G when it should be going through wi-fi. There's definitely an evil bug in there - nothing should use cellular when wi-fi is available - but it can clearly be fixed now, while we wait for the inevitable patch.

After about 2 weeks, many hours of futile effort, trying everything I could think of and find on the web... I restored and setup my phone as a new phone. Things seem to be working. No iCloud, sync, or bookmark issues. I'll be able to tell about battery life soon. There has been one other benefit... Before restoring I noticed that when I clicked on the x to delete an app there was about a 6 second delay before I got the prompt to confirm deletion of the app. Now it's immediate.

Yesterday 17 Out

Hello. I solved the batery drain problem...restoring the iphone to factory settings anda clean of data, sync my contacts and don't install any old application, only new facebook, full charge the batery and use it normally with mobile data on but 3g off and it dies before one day and a half, yssterday i full charge before died and unplugged at 5pm with 100% batery and mobile data off today at 5pm have 70% batery...i'm waiting to see when we dies, but seems he is now ok...and o makes drain is old applications...

Today 18 Out

At this time my iphone 4 don't died yet, and have 22% of batery and 2 daya(48hours) and 3 hours...i think i solve the problem it is the old applications who are not compatible

Very simple solution for battery drainage; it works for me on iphone 4.

Just reboot the device i.e.

- Held down the top button and the center round button to hard shutdown the phone

- After phone restarted from hard shutdown my battery automatically restored

All battery problems solved.........):):

I reset all my setting and let the phone run it course of restarting itself. Went back in and set things up to how I had them before and it seems to of helped. Unplugged at 8AM and its 12:15AM and I have 15% left. Average use with calls, text, Internet, Facebook & Instagram. So far so good for day one. It's weird because it just started draining more a few days ago and I've had iOS 6 since release.

Hi There, I had the same issue so I plugged y iPhone into my computer and reset to factory default. Although this still left me on IOS6.0 it seems to have removed the battery drain. I have no ides what cleared the issue but it is now 21:27 pm and I have not charged today and I still have 53%. Some things I did change in settings are:

- turned off all system location services

- changed the email download to fetch every 15 mins

I hope it helps you guys too as it drove me crazy.

Thanks for all your help Apple NOT.

I've been having battery draining problems ever since I upgraded my iPhone 4 to iOS6. I was able to fix the battery drain problem and now my iP4 will stay on for over 2+ days. This is what I did to get REALLY GREAT battery life:

1. Did a complete restore in DFU mode with iOS6 (clean install)

2. Turned off navigation (I paid $2k for a built in navi in my car, so don't need navigation on a phone)

3. Turned off iCloud (I hand write all my contacts on a piece of paper as backup so I don't need this service)

4. Turned off WiFi (I'm rarely in an area with WiFi so I don't need this)

5. Turned off bluetooth (Don't have a bluetooth headset as I use speakerphone if I'm driving)

6. Did not install any apps that didn't come in the new install (Not interested in any apps other than Apples)

7. Disabled Safari (I have a computer at work where I do my browsing)

8. Turned off find my iPhone (I've never had a phone stolen or lost, probably don't need this)

9. Turned off Facetime (I have Skype and a web cam on my computer so I can video chat with my sister)

10. Turned off Notifications (Alerts are over rated anyways, I mean look how primitive iOS handles them compared to Blackberry and Android.)

11. Turned off Vibrate (I carry my phone in a holster so I don't ever feel it vibrating anyways)

12. Turned all Sounds (I'm usually in meetings or if at home watching a movie or sleeping where I don't want interuptions, so sounds are overrated to me)

13. Turned the Auto-Brightness off and turned the brightness all the way down to the min setting (I almost always look at the phone in a bright room, so having the phone dimmed all the way down doesn't matter)

14. Used a black screen as my wallpaper (Who cares about a nice wallpaper)

15. Turned off Auto Set time (I have a pocket watch, so I use that to tell time)

16. Turned off Autolock and passcode lock (I live alone so there is no child or spouse to snope around)

17. Turned off 3G/Data (I have a house phone and a work phone if people need to call me)

So with the above modifications, believe it or not, I am able to get 2-3 days of battery life per charge with moderate use of the iPhone Calculator and Notes.

Hope this helps!

I agree. If the cellular data bug is there certainly that would be causing the drain for a lot of folks. I understand Apple will be addressing this soon with an update. Once the cellular data /wifi fi bugs are squashed that should help improve the battery issues that are being caused by those two items.

enchantedloom wrote:

Yeah, I don't mean to cause an argument, but my point is that there's a very SPECIFIC battery problem going around at the moment and this very specific problem (not poor battery life but absolutely horrendous battery life) is in many cases at least, also associated with a sudden and inexplicable jump in data consumption, taking many people over their data limits (see other threads). My point is that the data problem IS the battery problem - something is stuck sending or receiving large amounts of data, and this is going through 3G instead of wi-fi, causing people's batteries to die and their phones to overheat.

I'm sure there are many reasons why different people complain of poor battery life and your tips may work for some, but many of the complaints on this thread appear to be this very specific problem. It's worth making this clear because telling people to cycle their batteries and all the usual stuff is going over old ground and clouding the issue again. Some of us have been working through the problem on this thread and others for a couple of days now, and we've already got past the "turn it off and on again" stage!

> So if iOS 6 or 5 had inherent issues in the code causing this then those fixes would never work for anyone agreed?

Uhuh. I've been a computer scientist and programmer for thirty years, so I'm not as dumb as I look. But I don't think these fixes ARE addressing the particular issue that's currently clogging the forum.