Q: iOS 6 iPhone 4s battery drain

Well said.

I disagree on the Maps app though. If you used maps extensively (I use them daily), you'd realize quickly how bad it really is.  I'd pay $25.00 for google maps back.

I've been posting and following this thread for so long that I have had over 721 emails with replies to this thread since my first post. I've tried many of the fixes that have "worked" for some of the posters (to no avail), and I'm not willing to turn my 4S into a "dumbphone" or restore and start over. Apple did contact me and have me install the battery profile. (Of course, there's been no futher contact indicating a problem.) While my battery drain issue continues, I have to stop following this thread and all the overwhelming amount of emails I get daily. I'll just have to wait for an update from Apple, and until then I'll remain tethered to the nearest electrical outlet. ::sigh::

Good luck!!

> I'm disgusted with Apple.

I understand the sentiment but give 'em a break. The iphone is an astoundingly complex device and ios a pretty complex o/s. This problem is a pain, yes, but I certainly couldn't build something like an iphone for myself, even though I've designed and built several computers in my time and written operating systems, and I bet you couldn't either.

Bugs happen. Unexpected interactions happen. Plus I doubt such a huge company and all its employees have changed overnight just because the CEO died. What has changed is that they moved from the Mac market, which was a pretty elite platform bought by relatively few, highly loyal customers, to idevices, which are mass-market. In such a large market, every mistake becomes a massive issue overnight, but mistakes will always happen - there is no such thing as bug-free software.

What they do lack, imho, is an effective vehicle for telling their customers what's going on. For all I know, dozens of programmers are beavering away furiously trying to get to the bottom of this problem right now, and if we could know that we'd probably feel a lot more patient. Apple has a history of keeping problems secret and I think that's a serious mistake in this day and age. And the point of forums like this is not for us to moan but to share ideas and fixes and clues, so I hope Apple actually reads some of it and makes use of crowd knowledge.

My iPhone now seems to working better than ever. Fingers crossed for it to remain that way. I have done lots of things but I can't nail down what exactly worked! I'll I can suggest is that going through ALL settings and disabling anything that you suspect is anonymously using or accessing data on the phone or across the web, sending or receiving. Further than that, I'm stumped.

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.

Just wanted to add a positive story to give folks some hope...

As backstory, both my wife and my 4S started showing the dreaded "6-drain" (hot phone and 1-2% battery drain per minute) immediately after we updated to IOS 6. Independently, my daughter upgraded her 3GS to IOS 6 and started seeing the same symptoms.  After trying many of the less disruptive fixes suggested here without success, I eventually did a DFU reset on both my wife's 4S as well as my own. On hers I set up the phone as new while on mine I restored from a backup (to see if there was any difference in results). We both saw improvements immediately after the DFU reset, but that only lasted a few days. Then on the same day (about four days after the resets), we both started seeing the aggressive drain again.

At that point, mostly out of frustration, I didn't try anything else with any of our three phones. However, I'm happy to report that after a few additional days things have mysteriously returned to normal battery-wise for all three of us. We've now been "drain free" for about a week.

It makes me think that at least our issue was being caused by something Apple was able to fix on the server side (I'm looking at you iCloud) and/or some of our apps needed to be updated to fix their buggy battery-draining behavior (hello, Location Services).

If you are having significant battery drain issues, I'd recommend a DFU reset and then give it a week or so with several recharge cycles to see if things improve. Also make sure you apply any app updates that are available...

YMMV

My phone is no longer charging after it drained in less than 9 hours

Hi everyone,

Please try to turn on Do Not Disturb mode, as I switched to this mode and my phone's battery drained less significantly. Now it is still 60% after nearly 4 hours of usage and stanby for 8.5 hours, I deleted my iCloud account but still keep pushing gmail. Hope this information will address the battery problem of iOS 6. 

Thought i would add my expereances.

Had an iphone4 one ios6 beta for ages, no battery problems.

Got an iphone5 on release and straight away had the 6hour battery life issues. Noticed friends/coligues carrying round charging cables and started asking iphone5 ? ios6 ? everyone has the same problem.

Tried lots of usual things but didnt want to remove all the usefull features from the phone.

Best bet for me was location services off and icloud safari data sync off. That way I get over a days usage. about 24 hours standby / 5 hours usage. Quite happy with that until they bring out ios 6.1.

I expect problems in new software, i dont expect a premium device to be disabled from day one. I write software for a living and if we mess up something this big, we work through the night until the customers are happy - then we say sorry - but i guess if my company was worth over 600 billion i wouldent need bother so much

A few other things, i asked a genius at westfields apple store what could i do, he plugged it into a diagnostic computer out the back, said its fine, usual apple responce: "I've not heard of battery issues, all ours are fine. blarr blarr". Anyway, asked some direct questions like what could i do, he said turn off location services for weather and stock and turn off the auto brightness feature. They were quite specific answers so I tried it. battery life seems to be as i had got it to, I still get a days use but at least I can have most location services on... I also asked, what would you do if this was yours, he said book a genius appointment and get them to swap it.

So a mixed response really, one answer seems to sugest they know there are hardware issues and it should be changed. Another responce is, turn off features to extend the life of the phone. Both not great..

Anyway, samsung set up a stand out the front of the apple store (which i thought was funny) and the note II blew me away. I still like the small apple form factor and build quality but features wise the note II and SIII are in a different league. sorry drifing off there.

Im going to book an appointment and try to get it swapped.. fingers crossed.

One other thing people may want to consider, when they do a DFU reset, it probrably also resets the battery traing/expentancy information (i would imagin the phone learns over time how long it has left based on historical usage at a specific remaing battery capacity) so it may look like it is not draining as fast, whilst it still is... in some cases... So the full way to test if its fixed is full charge, run down to flat and then report your usage times.

over and out

After having the same battery problems with both my ipad and iphone 3gs after upgrading I cancelled my iphone 5 order.  After doing total restore, setup to new and turning off safari as well as all notifications I finally got it stabilized.  My ipad will not hold wifi connections now but otherwise seems to be okay.

I agree that Apple has lost their way.  This should not have happened.  I have given up and gone and purchased a Samsung Galaxy S3.  Great phone with replacable battery and add on storage via micro sd card.  Battery life in normal use for me last two days between charges.  This has opened my eyes to android devices.  I own everything Apple makes with the exception of the phone now but I will be looking at android devices much more closely in the future.

A smart phone should work.  You should not have to turn off all the smart features.  It is then a dumb phone. Apple needs to get this addressed and quit acting like there is no problem.

Iphone 4s, ios

Since upgrade battery life varies but has been as bad as draining completely within 3 hours with usage. And 10 hours idle with no usage.

I have tried restarting, soft rebooting, reseting, restoring. Changing settings. Doing these things has made slight changes in battery usage for a short amount of time.

The biggest recurring problem along with this is that my bookmarks in safari are all messed up…

I can’t delete any bookmarks or folders from my iphone.

I can add bookmarks and folders on my phone

Whatever I create on my phone is added to the cloud and other devices

What ever is added on my  other devices is added to the cloud and iphone

Essentially, everything works but I can never delete anything from my iphone. It will either let me go through the delete motions but nothing happens or it tells me that bookmarks are syncing and to try again later. This is even after I deleted all bookmarks from all devices and turned off all cloud services.

All Icloud services on my windows desktop, windows laptop, ipad 3 running ios6 are all working perfectly.

Edited so i can add one more thing.... I have tried syncing with itunes on my desktop and replacing all bookmarks on my iphone with what is on my PC. I get an error telling me that bookmarks can't be synced because  the iiphone cancelled the sync.

beesmyer,

     My phone (4S) did the exact same thing you are describing.  The only thing that worked for me was to reset the phone and set it up as a new phone.  This mostly took care of my battery draining issues.  When this problem was occurring, I would only get 4 hours usage out of the phone.  Now, I get a full day, whereas, I used to get a day and a half before the upgrade.  I can live with that.

     The one nice thing to come out of this while ordeal for me is that my bookmark syncing to iCloud is finally working correctly.  Before iOS6, my bookmarks would sync hundreds of duplicates across my devices.  Now, it works like it is supposed to work. 

I have the same issue. I have 3 iPhone 2 X 4s and one 4. The 4 is running IOS6 with no issue. My 4s running IOS6 and is losing 1% every two to three minutes.  I have turned off Bluetooth, WiFi, Siri, Location Services, Systems Services,Push Mail to Fetch, Twitter, Facebook.

The other IPhone 4S has not been upgraded to IOS 6 and it is running fine.

I have to carry a ups with me and it is driving me crazy. Looks like windows phone is next step as Apple are aware of the issue and no communication as to when it will be fixed.

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!

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4329696?start=1635&tstart=0

Check my post on Page 110.