Q: iOS 6 iPhone 4s battery drain

No joke. Restore as new phone and don't use iCloud at all. Fixed it all for me.

Decent band aid until a fix is out.

Cannot download file. Error message that Safari cannot download file.

Soooooo fed up of iOS6. I want my 'old 4S' pre-upgrade back!!

Im almost 100% convinced it's iCloud.

I have 2 phones (as mentioned earlier)

Both set up the same - both new iphone 4S's.

1- no sim - fully charged - over night 14 hours and this morning on 96%

no email accounts added

facetime & twitter integration added

everything on apart from icloud - over 100apps

wifi on the whole time

location services etc ALL on

ALL notifications on (FB, twitter etc)

2- normal phone with SIM card - everything switched on (as it's meant to be be) fully charged overnight.

Switched icloud on phone 1 just now- dropped 5% in about 2 mins. No other email accounts active.

Draw your own conclusions but I'll be sending this to my contact in Cupertino..

I agree.

More specifically it is the Safari bookmark in iCloud. Turned it off and the difference is day and night.

Tried in 2 draining iPhones with success.

Yes, turning off iCloud and other systems will lessen battery drain but this would have been the case in iOS5.1 as well. The fact remains, for me anyway, that with all settings exactly the same and any new iOS6 features switched off, my iPhone battery drains at least 25% faster with iOS6. Switching things off lessens the drain but it doesn't bring it back to iOS5.1 levels.

Hi

I think it is a specific iCloud bug to bookmarks. I always had all iCloud options on. This drain is abnormal. I had a major improvement in battery life after turning off bookmark.

This was done based on a knows ios 4 bug relating to bookmarks and battery drain

Try it. It is easy and does not involve reinstalling. 

So far working for me.

Yep - may battery drain and crashes have stopped. Overall, I turned off location services and simplied email by following the guidlines here: http://www.care4pcs.co.uk/2012/10/how-to-be-happy-gmail-user-on-iphone-or.html  turning off push and switching to fetch every 30 minutes.

Hey guys I've been on this discussion page since the beginning and I have tired all the 'fixes' turning on and off this feature and that. I've also tried a hard reset (from DFU) and also been contacted by apple and sent them battery logs a week ago after installing a battery profile (to which I am still awaiting a response). And I can tell you now turning on and off the features such as iCloud etc does fix the problem and neither does resetting your phone and setting it up as new. It may however improve the batter life slightly but still drains at a quick rate. But I don't think the problem is any of the individual features but more to do with the mobile data and the connectivity between an iOS 6 phone with the network.

On my iPhone 4S (on iOS 6) I am currently using the phone with mobile data turned off (I'm still connected to the network on 3G so I can still send/recieve calls and texts) and using wifi for data and the difference in battery life is remarkably different when mobile data is turned on. Currently I am getting up to 10-11 hours of usage time which is huge compared to 3-4 hours which I got previously. This is with all features such as iCloud and iCloud backup, Siri, all location services etc all enabled and I stream alot of video through youtube. As soon as I turn mobile data back on battery begins to deplete fast especially with mobile data and wifi running at the same time.

My advice is to only turn on mobile data when it's absolutely necessary and turn it off when you no longer need it for example when you are at home use your Wifi connection and turn off mobile data. This should help with increasing battery life significantly and may be used as a temporary solution until Apple fixes it! I hope this helps you guys and I hope I haven't rambled on for too long in this post! Good Luck! ;D

Before turning Safari bookmarks iCloud feature off I got about 3-4 hrs usage

Now as of turning that feature off

3h 50 min usage

11h 15 min standby

And battery indicator at 50%

I solved my problems turning off MSN Hotmail.  After that, and not useing Cloud,the phone 4 is back to normal battery life.

@cds41

For clarity.....What's your definition of normal battery life?  Do you have a screenshot?

I had three hotmail accounts pushing to my device in iOS5.1 and the battery was fine, so that isn't the solution. Sure it will extend battery life but it would have done so in iOS5.1 too. My beef here is that iOS6 drains my battery way faster than iOS5.1 with the same settings.

@ sunking

No arguement there.

This thread began September 19.  I wonder how long it will take for Apple to get it's act togethe and release an update?

Right.. so just to get this right..

Switching off services that use the phone saves battery.. well err .. yeah..

The main culprit *seems* to be iCloud.. which is Apples OWN service which (according to the AppleCare technician I've been speaking to) is 'optimised' to work with iOS devices.

It's also heavily promoted, and the logo is stamped on every new Apple iOS device.

But.. we shouldn't use it?

This is utter nonsense.

My battery life was 3 days, when it was drained, 4 hrs.