iOS 6 iPhone 4s battery drain

Just want to report that I too had the same drainage problem on my 4S when I installed IOS 6 via OTA with extremely poor performance compared to IOS 5.1.1 -- I finally broke down and re-installed as a new phone via iTunes, and had to painstakingly re-set all my settings, mail accounts, and apps. After a few days, even after re-installing via iTunes, the drainage seemed to re-appear.

After that I was pretty fed up to say the least. I tried another reset and back-up using my backup the second time and adjsuted iCloud and Safari settings, set the mail to fetch and some other helpful hints listed on this board and my phone seems to have been working satisfactorily for a few weeks now.

I still have wifi and bluetooth turned on, and check my exchange account every 30 minutes and other mail accounts manually. I also turned off the advertising as some suggested. In my opinion, if I can get through a day and night with average use of email, interenet, apps, messaging and phone functions so that I only have to charge it once a day overnight around midnight then I am OK with that.

As expected, some of the apps drain the battery much more quickly if used, such as the mapping turn by turn, and streaming Spotify or iTunes through my car's bluetooth, but aside from that I think it has been working satisfactorily for my needs (knock on wood) and hoping it will continue to do so until my next upgrade in May of next year.

I have to say I was also extremely disillusioned when the battery was performing poorly - I still think iPhone is the best, but if it does not perform as expected, then it is not the best anymore is it ? People in our office have iPhone 5 and have had no battery complaints. It seems lightning fast too - just FYI.

My two cents for what it's worth - hope mine doesn't revert at some point. Will keep you posted.

Now for what I can workout is

Some common apps we all use are using data, when they shouldn't

That's why apple are bringing ios 6.01 update out.

Lots of people have had their data usage rocket since ios6

And that's with it on standby

So it's logical to say that it could be an app.

I know for sure that Facebook app intergration into ios 6 screwed my phone.

It wasn't good enough for me to delete it

For some reason my battery still drained,

I did a test. I cleared my phone. Start as new. Ect

Checked batt drain. It was normal! Then installed Facebook. With all notif....... Off

And bam battery drain. Deleted it. Still battery drain.

So I could assume that other apps could do same

So. Wipe. Phone. Only use standard apps

And your battery drain should decrease

As I said earlier. Io6.01. Is intended to stop people having their data used up

Which when u think about it would mean the phones working its bollocks off. Without us knowing

I've done all three. First, I'd try to turn the phone off (Holding down top button until slider comes up and then turning phone off. Then turn back on. I'd suggest System Activity Monitor to see which processes are taking over your CPU. Even if I turn Safari off, my CPU will still run at 100% which obviously eats up the battery and slows up all other processes. If I then turn the phone off and back on, the CPU settles down to 10% or less.

If that doesn't help, I'd try a network reset (which seemed to turn off location services and I had to restart them where I needed them such as XMotion's GPS Drive, Then do a hard reset. Review System Activity Monitor.

Sure hope that helps. These are ideas I also found on this forum and others.

My final conclusion is that it is 90% due to cellular data, turn it off and that corrects most of it, however I think there are also some background process issues. The first run through with no cellular data I got OK battery life but not super and I think some of what was classified as "usage" should have been "standby". Today I'm great, as advertised battery life but it's been mostly standby. When I started web browsing and things like that I feel it still drops a little on the fast side but not nearly as bad.

So there most certainly is a huge gaping bug with cellular data and then possibly some loose canon processes that get stuck running in the background. Again though, the weird thing is I can't find excessive data or CPU usage when running programs to monitor it.

Now i'm @ 77% 2 hours 24 minutes usage, 17 hours, 5 minutes standby.

Yesterday I got around 20 hours standby and 9 hours usage but I didn't actually use it 9 hours.

Kelly Moller, I would probably do a restore on it. Then see. If it's still that bad after bring it to an apple store. (note the 1st 20% on these batteries always drops faster, then the drain will slow)

Just wanted to add my voice to this thread. I have an iphone4. About a week ago the battery suddenly started depleting badly and its got steadily worse. I've tried many of the tips here, up to and including restoring from DFU state ( though from a backup rather than as a new phone - I really can't bear the thought of having to go through all of my custom settings). Bottom line, nothing has cured it. Diagnostics points to webbookmarks being the problem, in fact I suspsect its isolated to the reading list. I have only two entries in the list but they are both constantly in "waiting" mode and I cannot delete either. The solution so far for me is to disable safari and install chrome instead. Not ideal as I rather liked the bookmark syncing function. If I try to use safari the battery immediately starts to discharge faster, the only answer being reset power management holding the two buttons down. Hopefully this isn't a permanent solution! Installed 6.01 last night. Not noticed any difference as yet.

hi,

just bought iphone 4s before 7-8 days and updated iOS 6 then started battery draining problem. as reading this forum... done all suggestions.... finally got my problem solved.

Download new IOS 6.0.1 then restored as new iphone and my problem is solved.

For my iphone 4, I turned off most 'push' technologies and iCloud safari and my phone stopped overheating and has battery drain more consistent with iOS 5.1.1 again. Could it be the obsolescence factor? If so, Apple, say it, give me a downgrade path, and for heavens sake, give us a way to ignore updates so the darn badge system goes away in iTunes notification!!!

OK, so i have written the settings of my phone before and the last resort was the hard reset.

And so I did.

3 major changes that really really made a difference with my battery life were:

1) Settings - Facebook - Delete your account, and turn the widget off (you can keep the app)

2) Settings - Notofocations - Calender - Turn off notification center,and view in lock screen. (this one made the big difference)

3) Resett the phone.

Now my battery life is a bit more durable then when i first got the phone couple of days ago but still not like the "normal" ones.

Now I have nothing else left to try or do to my phone... I guess I will just have to live with it...

(I have found a way to roll it back to IOS 5.1.1 without jailbraking... I dont know if i am allowed to share websites here but if anyone is interested i can share the site. the whole process is done through iTunes.)

My battery on my 4S was draining at the rate of abt 30% every 8 hrs in Stand-by after having upgraded to ios 6.0.1!!. This morning I connected the phone to my computer and synced the phone with itunes and since charging my phone 9 hrs ago, it has only lost 3%!!!! I think this may have solved the problem.... I had upgraded to ios 6.0.1. wirelessly. I think I will definitely be upgrading through iTunes next time!

You cannot downgrade to iOS 5. Did they not offer you an exchange? You have a 1 year warranty unless you have AppleCare then its 2 years. If DFU didnt fix it and you didnt add anything back other than default apps clearly the device has something wrong with it I would say/ Otherwise poor coverage area? Bad sim (assuming you are GSM user)? Also some users have had Apple genius restore/DFU their devices and solved the problems. I would at the very least request they do that.

Had battery drain issue with my 4s as well battery % kept dropping without any use on stand by after upgrading to 6.1....tried many things mentioned but nothing worked...however i then deleted facebook account fromt the iphone deleted the face book app and reinstalled it again seems to be much better now but still no way near when it was running 5.1

sunking101 wrote:

It is how you update your phone that is the problem. Do a full DFU install via your Mac or pc and then reload the apps. Set the phone up as new, do NOT do a back-up restore.

For allot of us it doesn't make a difference. I get the exact same battery drain DFU as a new phone as I did previously.

Most of you forgot the 3 most important steps.

1. Switch OFF TIME SET AUTOMATIC.

2. Diagnostic and usage, CLICK DONT SEND.

3. Location service-system service, SWITCH OFF ALL EXCEPT Cell network search.

Done. These will help.

i know there is sooooo much on this topic these days but hey, quick solution if your looking for one... make a back up and restore your device through itunes... test battery life after that - if its still crummy, take to a retail store and they will replace it for you.