Q: iOS 6 iPhone 4s battery drain

It seems that I finally got things fixed

Back in November my 4S was updated to iOS 6 and subsequently 6.0.1. Suddenly it didn't connect to wifi and the battery was quickly drained.

• Wifi only worked sometimes, after having rebooted the device a few times. Suddenly it would connect, but after a few hours connection was lost and I could start the reboot-process a number of times.
• I tried the various changes related to syncing etc. in order to save battery, but nothing worked. The only thing that worked was to turn cellular data completely of.
• You can read about it here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4310494?start=1605

I finally gave up and decided to wipe the phone entirely and reload a backup from iCloud. I was told this would install to factory settings, including the old iOS 5.x. Actually it didn't.

Here's what I did:

1. I managed to get access to wifi and forced a complete, fresh iCloud backup.
2. Next the iPhone was wiped totally, deleting all programs and data. When the phone started I had to configure all over, including setting language etc.
3. First time I did this I had the option to install from a iTunes backup. It didn't do that.
4. I then wiped it again, totally, and started all over. This second time I could choose to log on to my iCloud acount using wifi, and restore my back-up from step 1.

And now the phone seems to be working perfectly, connected to wifi and with no battery drain.

The catch:

This points to this being a software issue in iOS 6. Hence, I fear that I could introduce these problems again if I do any changes to some obscure configuration parameter.

I sincerely hope Apple fixes these problems in a future version of iOS.

And I still believe that Apple behaves arrogantly. They should be more open and acknowledge these problems.

I had the same with my 4s,  i restored as new iphone and set up again and deleted my previous back ups in itunes. since then battery life fantastic. Maybe the backup data, some of which dates back to 2008 since I first had a iphone was corrupted or maybe contained redundant strings etc, but whatever the case now battery life 100% better than when even I first got it

Apparently the fix, that I wrote about in the above, didn't solve the problem permanently.

Wifi seems to work, but the battery is being drained way too fast.

Extremely annoying.

hat I still do to stop a drain is turn the iphone then switch it back on again

this is what i did and settings I use:

1/ Restore and set up as new iphone then add all my apps manually ( a real pain I know ) and I do this on my PC and dont use icloud.

These are my settings that I use and it works for me I take iphone off charge at 0700 and back on at 2100hrs, normally about 75 to 70% left of battery.

1/ Wifi off ( except when im at home then i use it all the time)

2/ i dont use bluetooth

3/ personal hotspot off

4/notifaction centre i only have mail messages phone omnifocus calvectica apps in there all other items are not there and do notify at all

5/siri raise to speak off and time supporrt set to off

6/celluar 3g off except if i use it

7/auto lock 1 minute

8/brightness auto brightness off backlight at 3/4 full

9/location services off except when i use them

10/icloud logged out

11/ mail fetch hourly push off advanced set to fetch

12/ face time mobile data off

13/ itunes store mobile data off

14/ podcasts auto download  mobile data off

15/ipod equaliser off

These are what I use and they worl for me hope this helps

Also Check right down on celluar and switch off the four settings there

itunes

facetime

passbook

reading list

I have this problem too. My phone worked perfect untill 2 weeks ago. Battery drops with 1% every 5 minutes (sometimes less) even when not using the phone. Switching off data works but that is not why I have a smartphone. Loved Apple untill this. Spend days setting up the phone as new (manually), backing up through iTunes, etc. Nothing works. Next time I will buy a Samsung. Too many problems lately with Apple. The iOS doesn't change enough as well.

This worked a little for me (thanks to incamera):

Go to Settings>General>About>scroll down to Advertising>turn ON Limit Ad Tracking.

Back to Settings>Privacy>Location Services>scroll down to System Services>turn OFF Location-Based iAds

So i tried a bunch of things: complete restore, flight mode, no wifi, no cellular, no localization, etc. and mix thereof.

The bottom line is that the only thing that worked for me (4s) is to disable 3G! I get good behavior like that but with 3G enable, I lose about 10% per 2h in full standby. Was working great with iOS 5.x. Not sure this is a clue as well but hotspot through wifi doesn't work anymore, used to, I get no address from dhcp on connecting device, but hotspot though Bluetooth works fine.

This is really painful.

Obviously you must have tried a complete restore, set up as new.  Thwen you have done pretty much the works, i would take it to the Apple store and see what they say, and maybe they will change it over, or find something we have missed. good luck I hope you can solve this issue

I have done a bit of reading today, I have given up on the idea of restoring to iOS5 as I did not save my .shsh blob. What I have found out is that restoring to a new phone is good as it wipes the messed up settings that could be contributing to the drain AND I have also read that the FACEBOOK APP is a battery killer. So I have removed that from my phone too. I can log into Facebook using Safari and I have still got the Facebook Messenger app installed with notifications on. I will post back here in 4 hours to let you know what percentage my battery has dropped but so far 10 or 15 minutes in playing words with friends I have remained at 100% which is good because this morning 1 hour after I unplugged my phone it dropped to 57%!

I final piece for me in the jigsaw following on from this

http://www.care4pcs.co.uk/2012/10/how-to-be-happy-gmail-user-on-iphone-or.html 

is to turn off wifi when you do not need it. When I leave the house I turn off wifi, because the majority of the times when my iPhone has got very hot and crashed is when I am away from home. I suspect that if the iPhone is in the vicinity of public wifi (wheather secure or not secure) it will try and connect, even if you have 'automatically join known networks' set to off. This is easy of course if you have an unlimited data contract for your iPhone. I may be wrong, but it is working for me. It makes sense for me because it is another way of reducing the work the processor (and battery) has to do and therefore reduces the chance of overheating.

Having said that, I never had this problem with my iPhone 4. I now have a 4S.

Try it. Hope it works for you.

My phone is still working fine after I followed incameras advice (which I believe is on the previous page). 

GrahamE.......I have turned off wifi and also bluetooth (and made a few other adjustments).  Not sure if either, or both, or these also made a difference but my phones battery is great now. 

.Well, just under 4 hours later, and having played words with friends, run a few apps here and there, it's at 80%. It's on medium brightness with bluetooth off, but wifi and 3g on. This seems to have worked for me

Got my iPhone5, I configured everything from scratch (mail, whatsapp, facebook, twitter) and the iphone became warmer & warmer till my daughter complaint about it. Besides, 3G was always connected and transferring data so my monthly data last only a couple of weeks and the battery drains in 4 hours withouth using it at all...

I restored from icloud, but it didn't work either.

I finally went back to the Apple Store and got a new iPhone 5. Unfortunately I fhad the same problem. Back again to the Apple Store and got a new iPhone 5. After 2 weeks the issue is still there....

It seems that there is no solution for this issue.... Probably is a HW issue due to the fact that my old iPhone 4 is working fine.

I will go back to the Apple Store but with no hope at all..

alvarez013 wrote:

 

Got my iPhone5, I configured everything from scratch (mail, whatsapp, facebook, twitter) and the iphone became warmer & warmer till my daughter complaint about it. Besides, 3G was always connected and transferring data so my monthly data last only a couple of weeks and the battery drains in 4 hours withouth using it at all...

 

I restored from icloud, but it didn't work either.

 

I finally went back to the Apple Store and got a new iPhone 5. Unfortunately I fhad the same problem. Back again to the Apple Store and got a new iPhone 5. After 2 weeks the issue is still there....

 

It seems that there is no solution for this issue.... Probably is a HW issue due to the fact that my old iPhone 4 is working fine.

 

I will go back to the Apple Store but with no hope at all..

Good luck with the apple store. My phone is still FUBARed and they just basically told me to suck it up and wait for another update (and mine is still on warranty!)... It took me months to update to 6.01, and my problems started when I did update, I have no great desire to install any future updates any time soon because I'm afraid my phone will get even worse (if that's possible). Again, look at all these people turning stuff off, essentially making their phones dumb phones and Apple is totally ignoring the issues... Why should WE be trying to fix what they messed up in order to make our phones useable?  All the money Apple makes off their phones, you'd think they'd roll out updates that are tested and true and scramble to fix the issues when so many users are having problems!

I am reading all these 'fixes' and shaking my head because none of them work for all people. I've done everything witten on these 121 pages and my phone is still messed up. I absolutely loved our phones (son is having the same issues) and now I despise them as I always have to carry a charger with me now. As I have said before, I will never spend another dime on ANY Apple product because of this. I have two bricks now that are pretty much useless unless you're near a charging source. Well done Apple, well done. Next phones are going to be droids.

Ok... it's been over 5 hours now since I unplugged it (fully charged at 100%). The phone for the last hour has been on standby just sitting there, dropped from 80% to 79% So there you have it. Do a restore to NEW (not back up) and do NOT add the Facebook app to your phone. Make sure of course, you have push email off, and it's ok to have notifications on for Facebook Messenger.