Q: iOS 6 iPhone 4s battery drain

I just realized that my auto-brightness isn't working as it did prior to my iOS upgrade 6. It just keeps reverting full brightness even in a dark room. That could be part often battery drain issue too. Come on Apple, lets get an update out that fixes all these problems.

I would love to help Apple figure out this problem.  Apple, go ahead and give me a call or send me an email so you can test out things on my iPhone 4S that I just got and hopefully figure out what's eating the battery.  I already had a Senior Advisor do everything in his power to try to help me fix the issue/find the cause but he couldn't figure it out and said it must just be a problem with iOS 6 which will be fixed in a future update.

My phone and I would be a perfect candidate for any testing you guys are doing as I am having all issues described in this thread and am already one step ahead of most people that posted here due to already working with the  Senior Advisor from Apple on the problem.

This is my first complain EVER about my iPhone. The battery will not last an entire day now that I have upgraded to ios 6. And my phone rarely ever ran out of battery during a day. I hope they fix it soon!!!

I'm on the phone with an Apple Senior Advisor again...  I'll keep you guys posted...

I have an Apple Genius Bar appointment tomorrow and they're going to replace my phone.  Not sure this is going to help but from diagnostic tests they just ran again it does show that it may be an issue with the phone as well as iOS 6.

I'm having the same issue - after upgrading my 4S to IOS6 the phone barely lasts 4-5 hours without draining the battery.  Hopefully a solution is upcoming!

Someone on another Apple forum mentioned that auto brightness in iOS 6 must be set with a low range and a high range--something that is not exactly obvious to regular users like me, nor is that published in any Apple literature so far as I know. Anyway, here is the procedure to set it:  First, turn on auto brightness and then hit the top right button to put in standby mode.  Second, go to a relatively dark place--say a dimmly lit room--and then turn it on and adjust the brightness lower range to your perferred low-end dim setting. Then put it in standby mode. Third, go to a brightly lit place and turn it on and adjust the brightness to your perferred bright setting position. Fourth, exit the brightness settings.  That sets the range and you should not have to touch auto brightness again.  All that said, I think autobrightness worked just fine in prior iOS versions and have no clue why Apple chose to include this somewhat Rube Goldberg scheme. One thing Apple might could do in iOS 6.0.1 (in addition to fixing the crippling battery drain problem) is have a slide that allows one to return to the simpler auto brightness method of iOS 5 and prior, or go with the hard method in iOS 6.

My iPhone and ipad battery capacity is wrecked after moving to ios 6.

I have tried all the suggestions and no luck.

This is an IOS bug.

Just tried to recover   using iTunes previous backup and the option only allows restore with upgrade.

Will see what this does.

Please Apple provide a response to the postings and a solution!

If I had known it was a developer release I would not have accepted the update

As per suggestions in this and on other Apple discussion boards, I did the full-on hard clean restore in iTunes (not from a back up), set the phone up as a new device, and then did a clean install of all of my apps, videos, music, etc. After that, I went through and turned off all of the potential battery drain settings like iCloud Safari, Passbook, iAds, compass calibration, locations services, and set all e-mail to hourly fetch, etc, etc, etc. Also turned off and diabled everything in Notification center except for badges on Phone and Messages. After a full power-off and restart, I put it on the cradle to charge for the night blissfully thinking that my 4S would at least equal (and maybe even exceed) its incredible battery life under iOS 5.1.1.

   Woe be unto me, however. Starting at 100% in the morning, I was down to 85% by noon with no use at all (and I mean no use), and down to 65% by about 7PM with some very light use such as reading a couple of articles on the Washington Post app, checking a couple of e-mails and sending a couple of texts to the wife.  You may say that 65% sounds good, but it isn't. With basically the same settings and very light usage in iOS 5.1.1 (typical usage for me), I would have 85% remaining at the end of the night at 11PM.

  This confirms for me that it is indeed something with iOS 6.    BTW, I did the same restore thing for my wife's 4S--which had even better battery life than mine in iOS 5.1.1--and her battery is ending the night at something like 40-50%.

  One guess I have--and it is pure guess--is that iOS 6 was designed with the iPhone 5 in mind, and has extra code that somehow taxes the 4S processor or wifi/3G transmitter/receiver in ways iOS 5.1.1 did not. If this is the case, I'd suggest Apple consider separate software versions for the two devices. The diabolical advantage for Apple if it were to do this is that it could in two years time say it is dropping software updates/support for the 4 and 4S, forcing all of us to buy the new iPhone 7 !

  APPLE, please fix this. And please don't wait months to send out the update! Please!

Well I have a new iphone 5 now. Let me tell you it ***** with iOS 6 as well. Plus it has dust under the camera lens and dead pixels on the retina display. The battery life also is just terrible.  I have no idea how apple figures battery life. I have to charge like 3 time a day. Sorry bit I'm returning this phone. Looking for alternatives.  This  iOS problems is huge in my opinion. More so Tim needs to apologize. What has happened to apple iOS?  And quality control. I really miss Steve.!!!!.

I have an iPad 3, and oddly, I have no difference in battery life on my iPad.  However, my 4s is another story.  I have basically the same apps on both too.  But on my 4s with 5.1.1, I had good battery life.  I don't understand.

I too am struggling with IOS6 battery drain but in my case it appears that my 4S phone is okay but my Ipad2 is the problem.  I have tried many of the suggestions on this thread.  The only thing that seemed to help marginally was to disable the Facebook intergation. It seems to hold the charge whilst in standby mode but it drops dramatically with any use.  The battery indicator also seems to be confused (as mentioned by others in this thread) as some times when leave it in standby but not charging the battery meter indicated that the charge has increaded slightly!!??  I really do not want to delete Facebook from my Ipad as it use it a lot. I also use it for research, book reading, email and work  on the move.  I like so many in this thread do not feel I should have to disable the very features that are the reason I purchased my product.

I did have the same problem with my Ipod Touch when I upgraded to 5.0.  I really should learn not to be an early adopter of these updated and wait till things are sorted out.  These problems should well and truly be sorted out prior to release of updates.  They are extremely damaging to the Apple reputation and extremely frustrating to all users you purchase their products in good faith.

The very least Apple should do is acknowledge publicly that there is a problem....tell their Genius people about it and move with every speed to fix it.  Unfortunatley until they do we must wait with baited breath and less than smart phones/ipads

Mine goes from 100% to 75% in two hours. Even if i don't use it.

I've been reading back through the posts as I didn't have a chance yesterday. Lots of the same thing over and over.  One post I did read was about using an exchange server for email. I posted about this also days ago. I noticed in the diagnostics that mail was crashing every few minutes. My work email account was not working any more so I contacted our support and they said that they had to reinstall the app after updating to iOS 6. So I have turned off the mail account and I have gone back to normal battery drain. I am down to 14% after 30 hours. Still have Siri, Facebook and everything else on.

I have also found that each day it's getting better and better. Like something is working itself out behind the scenes and after it has done what it has to do, it stops using the battery. Maybe you should all stop restoring and installing over and over as you are installing the same problem over and over. Let it work it out by itself. That's my thought anyway.

I am not as clever as a lot of you on this forum, but I have learnt a lot by reading it. Thank you all for sharing.

I have been contacted by someone from apple asking if it was ok to call me as they are working on the problem. I hope they do, but maybe not as I am in Kuwait.

So lets hope we all get the result we are looking for.

Deb

I have never had my battery completely die on my iPhone 4S. I updated yesterday and not using the phone I was drained to 10% within a matter of a few hours. I recharged. At 5 o'clock this morning I woke up to check and my phone was completely dead. I shouldn't have to turn off tons of features to get a little battery life back. Fix it apple or android here I come.

P.s. I would usually charge 2-3 times per WEEK!