Q: iOS 6 iPhone 4s battery drain

I don't doubt the sincerity of the reported problems. But, it cannot be iOS 6 per se. I had no problem when it was downloaded to my iPhone 4.

It also cannot be the iPhone 5 per se. When I got my iPhone 5, I have not had a problem.

So, it must be defective phones or some weird configuration of settings and/or apps that is the problem people are having.

Having only a couple of days with my new iPhone 5, the battery usage seems to be about the same as my old iPhone 4. I was hoping for an improvement. Maybe after a drain and refill, it will be better yet.

I tried to drain my battery last night like many other people in this thread, and again, like other people in this thread, my 4S hovered around 1% for a good 45 mins before dying, so I suspect the percentage gauge is being misrepresented  on iOS 6.0. Turning off everything that makes a smartphone a smartphone seems to work though, Siri, iCloud, Location Services, most Notifications, and the battery life has never been better, which I wish i didn't have to do.

Hmm the one common tread to this fast-growing thread is IOS6. It may not affect everyone, but every single post is from someone who just intallled IO6. Having tried just about everything I am particularilly suspicious of Facebook integration and any new functionality that sends and receives info repeatedly. I, like a number of others thought I had this solved by a restore and clean start. But alas as I started using the phone I realized the battery drain issue remains. It may not be as bad as it was at first, but I can't get through a day even with moderate use. I don't think this is solved yet, and you may want to try things like turning ff the new FB app and its new (and desired) integration. But this is not solved. :)

First of all thre IS an obvious problem here.  and it is with iOS 6.  How this is related to other apps does not seem to be all that relevent as most of us i assume got those apps through approved ways (iTunes- AppStore), and i also assume that most, like myself, had phones that worked with those same apps prior to the upgrade.

Second of all Apple IS aware of the problem and are taking steps to resolve this.  Many like myself have been contacted direct by Apple through only our involvement on this forum and have been asked to run a special app (see below) to allow Apple to ferret out the problem.

I had a business trip yesterday and needed a phone that i could rely on so i broke down and reinstalled 2 days ago the iOS6 and set up as a new phone on my 4s hoping that this would help the situation.  Since then the battery issue has improved a lot, but it still seems to be less than it was prior to the update, but it is giving me almost a full day of use.

The full restore is a real PITA as i am still re imputing various passwords, accounts and other details and so i have lost many hours of work and family time trying to fix an isues that in my opinion should never have happened.

Due to the reinstall i do not think that the Apple app is still on my phone, but i am not sure and will have to look a bit more.

Anyway, this is likely my last post here and i wish all the rest luck.  And hopfully this is NOT something that i will have to endure again with future updates and i am a LOT less likely to be one of the first to install a new update and will likely wait until the first revision is released.  Too risky with a tool that is so important to work and life.  I did expect better from Apple.

Its the software in general or the software was optimized for the 5 only and none of the legacy models.

I have tried everything I can to improve the battery life on my 4 (2 full resets via DFU and set up as new phone, 3 battery recyles, turning everything off, etc,) but nothing seems to work. Currently I am running a clean ios6 with only the pre-installed apps. I have not signed into anything (itunes, icloud, exchange, etc.). The battery is still running down 1% per minute or so just using Safari.

Apple provided me a work order and I hope to hear from their tech guys in the next day or so.

The whole reason I got a MacBook Pro and an iPhone was to get away from Microsoft and its horribly buggy updates and constant patches. This feels waaay too familiar!

Guys, I resetted (setup as a new device) my iphone 4s twice with almost everything off (except 3g) these days. Then i installed nothing. Even in that case the battery drain is there when you surf the net via safari with 3g. I can reproduce this. So whats draining the battery when everything is off? Looks like safari is peaking the cpu because you can see that with loading of the pages (loads a page without showing nothing (1-2-3 seconds) then the page is loaded in a fraction of a second entirely). After 1 to 4 minutes you can see the battery percentage dropping with 1%.

So the conclusion is that some (hardware) builds of the iphone 4s got this problem with ios 6 because not everyone has the same problem obviously. I did not have this issue with not one of the 5.x releases when there even was a battery issue at the beginning of the ios 5 release.

I already installed a lot of battery monitoring apps but not one of them shows the cpu/battery usage of individual processes in the background so looks like an IT guy as me can't troubleshoot the iphone without jailbraking.

I hope apple can solve this issue with the next version upgrade of 6.1 because its really frustating by now as there is no wide news articles about this issue like the one with the new maps or some wifi problems (what i don't have by the way).

Thanks for all the tips, but I basically have turned my Smartphone into a Dumbphone now. Everything is turned off (even Wifi) and it still drains the battery like 1% every 5 minutes. The reason I bought an iPhone was that I would buy the security and safety of checked apps and a nice and stable phone. -Quiet happily paying the premium Apple is able to charge to get this, up until now. This isn't acceptable. As usual, it's not possible to get some info through the Apple "Berlin wall" and  get some info on what is going on or get some sensible info on what they are doing about it. Since I started writing this the battery has gone down 1%, no 2%.

ok. me too. i have a iphone 4 new really new. just upgrade to IOS 6 and now my battery its drain faster than ever with no reason. i´m not using my phone at all and my battery % it´s going down....and app doesnt work well. my ipod turned off no reason.. whatsapp , instagram, even Settting menu kickme out whitout reason...apps  just freeze a few seconds and off.. back to the main menu .. come on apple. Do something!!! .. Fer@ chile.

i Put my iPhone 4 into Airplane mode at night when i sleep. It will lose 20% of its charge in 8 hours in airplane mode. before I updated to iOS6 it might lose 1%

I let mine phone shut off from no battery.  It stayed on 1% for 5-8 minutes, so I guess it was calibrated!  My last thing to try.

Turn off maps in location services. That will save tons of battery. Location services is under privacy in the settings icon.

I haven't noticed battery problems recently, but I got contacted out of the blue by Apple because of an earlier post I made in this thread.   They are going through the thread contacting people to have them enable battery logging (install a special profile).  They are using this data to figure out what's going on, so don't be surprised if you get a call or email from Apple (916-399-7992).

Same thing here........I got an iPhone 4s 3 weeks ago, and the battery life was amazing when I was using iOS 5.0, but since updating to iOS 6, I'm lucky to get 4-5 hours of useage out of the phone.  I've done hard resets, turned down the brightness, switched off location services, email is now being fetched etc, so now I have an appointment at the Genius Bar on Sunday......hopefully they'll figure out what the problem is.

This is so frustrating!

I have deleted all content and reseted all settings but it still drains my battery.

There was no cure for turning off location services, push, notifications etc etc..

Still i could make battery to last little longer for deleting all content and settings but still there's something going on. If apple promises 300 hours of standby, i cant get even near of that...maybe APPLE WILL START INVESTIGATING THIS PROBLEM!