iOS 6 iPhone 4s battery drain

After considerable experimentation, it seems to me that the the problem is a always runaway background process, but there can be several culprits. For me it was Skype. For others it seems it was Facebook or a system process such as the one dealing with iCloud. The general solution is to get rid of the background processes, or get them 'back to normal' . For user processes double click the home button so recent apps show, scroll to find the process, hold down the home button so the - appears and click on the -. Do this for each app with background processes, but one at a time and wait a few hours so you can identify the guilty party. Solutions like logging out of iCloud and logging back in can seemingly solve problems with runaway system processes.

What Apple should do is build a detector into iOS that can detect processes that are taking too much background resources, and force them to reset.

Incidentally I have found the app AppSwitch very useful to look at background processes.

The reason why this problem persists even after reset is that it seems iOS restarts stopped background processes like Skype and Facebook (so you get your notifications etc.). But if you install iOS 'as a new iPhone' you won't have logged in to Skype, Facebook or iCloud yet; the problem may reappear when you do log in. Also, I think the reason why the problem first appears after install of a new version of iOS (for me it was 6.0.1) is that OS upgrades can cause subtle inconsistencies with the culprit apps. The latter is a bit of speculation, but it seems the only reasonable solution.

FIX FOR ME

I have iPhone 4s. I updated to iOS 6.0.1 and experienced severe battery drain with life being reduced to about 50% of what it was before the update.

My fix was disabling e-mail push which appeared to be turned ON by default since the update. I presume this is why the battery was draining without me even using the phone... because it was constantly looking for new email. Not something I wanted before or now.

To revert (to what i guess must have been the previous iOS default)

1. Go to settings
2. Select 'mail, contacts, calender'
3. Select 'fetch new data'
4. Turn Push 'off'
5. Set fetch to 'manual'
6. In 'advanced' set the iCloud sechedule to 'fetch' or manual rather than push (not sure if this actually made a difference or not, but I did it anyway!)

Now each time I want to recieve e-mail I click on mail (like i did before), drag down to refresh my accounts and the mail comes in. If you wanted push and had mail coming through automatically before, then I guess this isn't for you.

Hope that helps someone. Can I just say - if you want to MOAN or compare the rate your battery drains... can you do it offline or in the Apple store. We are all aware of the problem if we're on this thread, so try and keep comments for people who are looking for solutions to the problem, not someone else's life story. Ta.

My wife's iPhone 4s had severe battery drain since iOS 6 came out. iOS 6.0.1 didn't help at all here, either. After logging out and back in from iCloud, removing, and eventually reinstalling Facebook, it still had drain issues.

I did two things last night.. 1) Imported all the photos off my phone to my computer. I do this weekly, and have still had drain issues in the past, so don't think this did anything. 2) I went to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings. Then just reconnected to my Wi-Fi and re-entered my wifi password.

Before that, she could barely get 6 hours on standby, let alone using it. Last night at 11pm I did this, the phone was at 77 percent (minutes after a fresh charge), and without charging the phone, at 12:45pm it is at 55% (almost all standby time). So over 13 hours standby time used 22%.

So at least for me, the bottom line was Reset Network Settings. Hope this works for someone else!

After thoroughly testing, I think I am sure the "Dell Voice" app is the culprit of causing serious battery drain to my iPhone. Note I don't mean this is solely the problem from this app, what I'm saying is the ios6 + Dell Voice combined will cause this problem.

Device: iPhone 5 - (same problem in iOS 6.0 and iOS 6.01)

Setup:

- at end, I have even 'erase all contents and settings' to make sure it is at manufacturing state.

- Siri off

- 'Location Services' is off

- 'Notifications Center' only have 'phone','messages',and 'dell voice' turn-on

- wifi off

- deleted iCloud account on the phone and then re sign-in

- data is on, turning off LTE

- Bluetooth is off

- clear all apps sitting in the memory (bring up the list by double tapping the home button)

- fully charged

Test#1: with the above setting, without any kind of usage (idle), from 9am to 5pm , it only uses 8% of battery. But with the same setting + having dell voice running at the background (simply turn on the app, back to home screen, then turn off the phone, for 8 hours it used 45% of battery...shocking fact giving this is only in idle for 8 hours with 0 usage...

If you encounter the same problem like me, for testing making sure to remove any social networking app from the background to see if it would make a different.

Gammey3 from experience if your iPhone is that hot you should have lots of crash logs with the same name, you can search for the fix with that name (eg dataaccessd). Location of crash logs below:

Settings > General > About > Diagnostics and Usage > Diagnostics and Usage Data

For info there is 3 types of bugs, this should let you isolate you issue:

- iCloud (Bookmarks / Contacts) > Doesn't seem to be your issue.

- Email (Exchange Calenders) > Delete Accounts to locate issue, Re-Adding them have sometimes fixed the issue. Failing that manual fetch is another option.

- Apps > Viber / Skype / Facebook have all been named as culprits. Re-Install them and for the VOIP programmes check settings to ensure they are still not running in background after use.

<Link Edited by Host>

"dataaccessd" is related to the email, specially ones that use "Exchange Activesync" technology.

So for iOS that would be:

- Microsoft Exchange.

- Gmail.

- Hotmail.

From others in various battery threads most don't see this issue again once DFU restore used, some:

- have to delete and re-add the accounts to resolve the issue.

- have to set the email accounts to manual or fetch to resolve the issue.

I think some people maybe experiencing what being decribed in point 3 of the troubleshooting guide below, therefore turning of Wi Fi when not in use can help resolve some issues:

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1868

Hello,

Ever since I upgraded to IOS 6 and then to IOS 6.0.1, I was facing following issues on my iPhone 4S

1. Wifi greyed out

2. Battery drain

It looks like both of above issue are related i.e. if wifi option is greyed out, battery drain is much faster (more than 70% overnight with zero usage). If wifi option is available, battery depletes by hardly 30% over 8 hours of daytime use. I noticed it coz one fine day wifi on my 4S suddenly decided to work.

Upon wondering what may have caused my phone to shower favor on me was the difference in temperature. I traveled to a cooler place to spend weekend with my parents.

As soon as I came back, wifi and battery issues were there to haunt me again.

I remembered reading on Apple Communities forum suggesting to switch off the phone and leave in refrigerator for 15-20 min. Though reluctant initially, I decided to give it a shot. To my utter surprize, it works!!

Not a permanent solution, but it works! Though its a short lived happiness, I've found this solution consistently working.

Till the time Apple comes up with permanent fix, my phone is going to refrigerator everytime I have wifi grey out issue.

Having had the problem and watching this string of posts for a few weeks. It sounds like there are a variaety of possible causes. They all probably result in an out of control process or leave a io device on. The most successful fix it to Restore to Factory Default and let your battery go below 20% and then fully charge... and leave on charger for a while. 6.01 is not a fix, or usually a cause. That worked for me and after nearly two days of light use I was at 54%... hence I no longer have the problem. If that doesn't fix it, then I would restore to factory with nothing on it, and add things one at a time. JD

Like everybody else who has this problem, my experiments clearly show that the issue is with background apps. So replacing a phone or doing a factory reset does no good, since when you restore, you just get the same old bad background app back again. Try killing Facebook (if it is running). See what happens after a while. No help? Try killing Skype. Always wait some hours to see what happens. Don't just kill everything at once, since then you have not isolated your problem. You may also have problems with data in your Exchange or iCloud account causing the associated background processes to run excessively. Try, for a while, stopping each of these.

Apple could 'solve' the problem by detecting this kind of background process and starving it or killing it. But ultimately the app developers need to fix their bugs. Clearly the bugs are sporadic. My problem was with Skype; there must be some issue with my Skype setup or account. And the bug only manifested in iOS 6.0.1, suggesting a slight incompatibility with that release. So going back to iOS 5 might help some people. But don't completely count on it; in the early going, people reported the same problem in iOS 5, until problem apps were updated.

See my blog post at http://tims-ideas.blogspot.ca/2012/11/ios-battery-drain-cause-is-runaway.html

brsm1990 wrote:

FYI there is _NO_ fix for this. This is either a hardware problem with select phones or some very serious bug deeply ingrained in the iOS 6.0 & 6.0.1 operating system. I have used my phone on various 3G networks in six different countries now. I exchanged the phone once and I have done a DFU restore and tried the phone wiht no apps and iCloud disabled. The horendous battery drain is the same every time always no matter what if cellular data is turned on. Turrn cellular data off and battery life is fine. Apple has really screwed their customers on this one.

I agree with you.The problem is celluler data( 3G).When I turned it off and started to use WİFİ battery life considerabley good.

It isn't 6.0.1 as this for me performs better than iOS6 did. My problems started with 6.0 - I had monstrous battery drain and a cellular data leak. The data leak is much reduced with 6.0.1 and the battery drain has gone. The battery drain has happened with every upgrade of iOS for some users. 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.

After a full overnight charge from an iPad charger, I turned Location Services OFF first thing morning which has reduced battery usage quite a lot over the day (it's now 10pm & I'm down to 72%, whereas previously I'd be down to 50% on similar light usage). Note that I already have 3G, ad tracking & diagnostics-sending switched off.

I have an iPhone 4S with 32 GB storage. I gave in and did the update to iOS 6.0 through iTunes not OTA. OTA seems to be a bigger problem for most but not all updaters.

Battery life dropped dramatically. I did the following:

1. Restart phone, i.e. hold home and power buttons to reboot.

2. Reset network settins.

3. Reset all settings.

4. Shut off all apps in multitasking tray

5. Ran battery down to zero, to the point where the phone wouldn't wake up at all

6. Charged battery over night using wall charger. About 9 hours.

7. Used phone as normal.

8. Ran battery all the way out again

9. Shut off all apps in multitasking tray

10. Charged battery over night again.

Battery life was almost as good as what I had before I updated but wifi still s****d.

Updated to iOS 6.0.1 and did all steps listed above. Battery life is now better than ever.

Discovered that if I set Proxy on wifi network to Auto I am able to connect to wifi networks very easily now.

So whenever this happens to me, as I have mentioned in this forum, it is a background process leftover from an app. In my case it is always Skype, but others have reported different apps. Restarting is not sufficient, since restoring from backup causes the background processes to be restarted. The only solution is to double-click to bring up the 'recent applications' at the bottom, then kill all of them to get rid of residual background processes. This always works for me.

For me Skype has been a battery killer since 6.0.1 There is some kind of incompatibility with 6.0.1 (and maybe 6.0). It used to work fine in 5.x.

After weeks of trying to figure out the cause for battery drain in IOS 6 / 6.0.1, I found something that worked for my phone. The main culprit seems to be iCloud & email (particularly Exchange account) syncing.

iCloud:

Make sure to sign in to iCloud (Settings >> iCloud). The only option that needs to be on is Documents & Data (Use Cellular Data can be set to off), others can be checked if needed, but leave off Find My iPhone. After that make sure to backup your iPhone to iCloud via WiFi. This ensures whatever is on your phone matches whats on iCloud. If there is an application on iCloud thats not on your iPhone, delete it.

Prior to doing this my iPhone kept the 'ubd' process running constantly. Deleting iCloud on your iPhone doesn't solve it either, it will only cause the 'ubd' process to restart in an infinite loop (~ every 10 seconds). Doing whats outlined above will cause 'ubd' to run for a short time then terminate.

Email:

If any Exchange email accounts are added Push needs to be set to On (Settings >> Mail, Contacts, Calendars >> Fetch New Data). The Fetch option below that can be set to whatever, I have mine set to Manual.

Prior to doing this my iPhone kept the 'dataaccessd' process running constantly. Setting all Exchange email accounts to Push immediately fixed this issue. Now this process is only active when manually checking email or new email is pushed to the phone.

These 2 changes dramatically improved battery life on my iPhone. There still seems to be a bug with Location Services, specifically Traffic and how its used in Maps. It causes the 'geod' process (related to GPS) to run erratically. Still trying to figure this one out, will post if any luck.