Q: iOS 6 iPhone 4s battery drain

Ok, so I have narrowed down what worked for me (in this order):

- wipe the phone and restore via itunes from a backup

- settings - general - reset - reset settings

- reboot

- turn off safari sync on icloud

- turn off all system location services, can leave on things like camera/dropbox etc

- go into settings-general-cellular turn off all of the bottom switches (primarily passbook)

- notifications - turn off all unnecessary things like passbook/photos

- turn off shared photostreams

- disable facebook calender sync

my phone usage for the battery went from ~3-4hours to 9.5 hours

I am a heavy user, so a lot of facebook, twitter, text, whatsapp, flipboard,youtube, emails - all checked daily

Hope this helps you guys

Apperantly uninstall viber solved it !

I removed Viber. No change here.... problem remains the same

One of the bizarre things is that my iPhone 4S with iOS 6 now shuts down automatically on about 15 % of charge. With iOS 5, I was used to have warnings on 10 % and still have some time to react, but now it happens that I get the warning on 20 % and in about five minutes (at least when using an app with location services, online streaming etc.) it's off.

So frustrating! And what is even more is to get tips (even from Apple official pages) such as disabling location services, push emails, shared photostreams, iCloud, and basically all the features that we should be enjoying from the new releases. Yes, I can shut down the phone altogether, but that's not what I paid for.

the same story on iphone 4s after ios6.0 installed.. were using phone for 7 minutes from 100% battery charge, then fell asleep for 7 houres, 17% - of batery on iphone when i awake (all networks were disabled) + wifi is greyd out.. actualy my iphone know is almost working not, it s not smartphone now.. Did apple ever test ios6.0??!! shame! i m realy angry! turnig off all the systems on the device is not solving a problem, apple should make a bugfix soon, or they will lose customer..

Think Googooguy has it right - when I first downloaded iOS6 battery was terrible - tried all the resets different restores etc but nothing helped. Anyway, if I went into settings, where the wifi and Bluetooth options were, I also had a ghosted out Hotspot header which I couldn't access. I don't need hotspot so I went into General, Cellular and both were already off. I turned them on, scrolled down and turned everything off, scrolled back up and turned cellular data and 3G off (although I think the cellular one is the culprit so 3G should be fine) - I instantly had a major improvement on battery life. So I think either the cellular or hotspot are the issue.

I updated on Friday Sept. 21 by just doing it on the phone. It froze so I had to connect to iTunes and it restored it to factory settings and then I restored from my backup. The battery life was horrible, draining a percent every few minutes. So I did a serach and found this thread yesterday.

I saw the suggestions for restoring to factory settings and then restoring from a backup (which I had done already on Friday) so I did that, again! And I included a hard reset (holding down the home button and the on/off button at the same time) as well. That was at 12:30 in the afternoon. I saw a decrease over the next 12 hours of only about 25%. Great! Problem solved after the second restoring process; right? WRONG! I plugged it in overnight to charge, woke up this morning and its back to losing a percent every 3-5 minutes. Seriously?

How this can be considered an improvement when you have to "go here and unsync this, and disable that, and restore and then restore again; stand on your head and chant to the east the words of ancient prophets, spin around 3 times and spit over your let shoulder" is beyond me! An update should improve upon what you already had. I understand that there will always be glitches with technology and I don't have a problem with needing to make some adjustments to improve performance, but I expect that engineers and quality control folks will have tested and re-tested updates before releasing them. That is just sound business practice! OK, I'm done.

the same issue here after updated to IOS 6 on my iPhone 4s i need charge it three times a day to keep it going

why apple always have the similiar problem when they come out with new firmware, it's so annoying waiting for

officail update solution. Now I need bring 2 backbattery pack with me every day

I have the same problem with iPhone 4. But the strange thing is this: http://db.tt/N8EJ41tn

I apologize it's in Finnish, but as you perhaps can see: my time of usage is the same than the standby. But guess what, actually my phone WAS on standby the whole time and I didn't use it at all. As some have suspected, there's definitely something running in the background constantly and you can't stop it! :(

I got this problem with both my iPod Touch 4 and iPad 3.

The odd thing is everything worked fine for two days (even if I had the impression my iPad was lasting shorter, while my iPod seemed to last longer). Then, suddenly, my iPod battery drained in a few hours (my iPad also started to go worse). I started to investigate, resetting all settings and removing both Facebook and Twitter on both devices, without much success. In fact, on my iPod, I got a 100% usage time (usage duration equals to standby duration) even while I didn't ever used it. Finally, I found that my iPod seemed to always refresh its Safari's Reading List. I can't even remove any entries from the list: when I swipe and click 'delete' on an entry, it stays on the list (I can remove them on the iPad, but they keep coming back, presumingly being re-synchronised by the iPod). Removing Safari from iCloud on the iPod seems to have improved its situation. Still, I can't remove any entry from the Reading List on my "stand-alone" iPod, I assume one plist file should be locked somewhere, but as it don't need yet to synchronised them, I hope it will go better (at least, the usage time is now coherent).

Bad news. I did a complete restore + erased all settings (back to factory setup). but it did not help...

Before that I  also remove ALL applications (i thought maybe one is making the trouble). No change....

Now I have no idea what to do....

my iPhone drains about 1% every 2 minutes, so 10% in 20 minutes.... without use ! just on standby...

THIS FIXED MY BATTERY DRAIN ISSUES (See Bottom of Page for Too Long; Didn't Read version)

Final Update on iPhone 4S and battery issue.  See above posts for entire story. 

21 hours since clean restore.  All regular apps, music, podcasts and e-mail EXCEPT Facebook added back.  Also, did not add back a few apps I never use. Battery life has been supurb since the clean restore, actually better than my baseline use with 5.1.1.I lost virtutally no power overnight when phone was in standby.

I have avoided adding back Facebook App, given the number of posts indicating that it is the problem.

CONCLUSION:

Facebook or another unidentified app was either crashing and rebooting causing the processor to run continuously or just plain forcing the processor to run contiuously.  Deletion of the app did not cause the offending program to be fully deleted.  The only way I avoided issue was by not adding Facebook (or another unknown app that was causing problem) after a clean restore.

Workaround That Fixed My Issues:

1. Re-set all settings and reinstalled iOS 6 from iTunes.

2. Installed as new iPhone (did not restore from backup- I had battery drain issue return when I did);

3. Added back e-mail, music playlists and podcasts.

4.  Added back apps.  Did not add back Facebook.  Will hold off on adding that until next patch of iOS6.

What worked for me:

I think Deelan is on the right track. My iPad 3 was messed up at first my iPhone 4S was eating its battery for breakfast.

iPhone 4S {star = ideas I like}

- initially I turned off parts of everything: notifications, Bluetooth, FB, personal hotspot, etc - this helped a little, but not enough

- reboot

* settings - general - reset settings (may have helped)

- I did not wipe it clean

- turn off safari sync on icloud

* turn off all system location services - and started turning back on only as needed

- notifications - turn off all unnecessary things like passbook/photos

- disable facebook calender sync

* turn iTunes Match on and off several times

* drain iPhone battery until it shut itself down

* update 75 apps or so

Symptoms Timeline:

Day 1 - could watch battery drain

Day 2 - iPhone warm, battery drain continued

Day 3 - iPhone charged overnight after complete drain - now working normally or better

Learnings:

- TIME - give it time - I think IOS6 had to work through some iTunes Match AND other issues and from experience this takes time

- Update apps - a lot of apps were updated over those 3 days - some may have solved some problems - who knows?

- Patience - I don't have any, but in the end letting it work through some issues was key - turning everything off prevents this

For what it's worth.

IPad 3

- I restored from iCloud backup and the issues were resolved. Battery last a long time, iTunes Match and video syncing issues were solved and my iPad is happy once again.

I had all apps closed (still do), charged all night to 100%.  TOok a phone call today for 30 minutes and am down to 88% battery life. --

Iphone 4s

IOS 6

AT&T

No apps open

No alarms/do not disturb activated

Took a 33 minute phone call

Usage 41 Minutes

Standyby 45 Minutes

Battery 87%

-- Everything is turned off that can be (no iCloud, location services off.. etc). Brightness turned down really low as well.

I found the battery draining issue almost immediately. I went into a 2 1/2 hour movie, iPhone 4 in my pocket, all apps removed from the background, no Bluetooth on, but Wifi on. It went from 68% to dead in 2 1/2 hours with no usage.

I found the same to be true of my new iPad (3), which I used for some light web surfing when I got home; it went from 90% to 72% in less than an hour.

-Possible Reason-

This may not be the entire issue, but I used an app to watch system usage. It kept spiking randomly from 20% to 32% on the iPad, with no other apps in the background, and the status app doesn't send data or use location services.

I disabled WiFi and retested. It dropped to a steady 15%!

I checked it the same again on my iPhone 4; it was spiking from 40% to 68%. Disabled WiFi and it went to a steady 30%.

The WiFi seems to be bursting and/or dropping/reacquiring the connection again and again. Disabling WiFi when unnecessary seems to be a solution on my end. I'll update in 24 hours to notify if it remains true.

No one is perfect, but for Apple this is a no brainer IMO, given their track record.

-N.