Q: iOS 6 iPhone 4s battery drain

I fail to see how this could be a general iOS 6 issue. I updated my iPhone 4 the day iOS 6 was released. I had no perceptible change in battery usage. I got my iPhone 5 three days ago and the battery usage is about the same as my iPh 4.

The problems people are having must have something to do with the interaction of iOS 6 and their settings and/or apps.

Ok, here's what solved the problem for me, on my iPhone 4s: I turned off Genius for Apps.

When it was on, the CPU use was extremely high, between 60% and 90%, and my phone was very hot. As soon as I turned it off, CPU use dropped to 3/5% (I checked it with AppSwitch).

Since then, I've been monitoring the CPU every few hours, when the phone was idle, and I didn't notice anything weird; my battery drain was back to normal, and my phone wasn't hot anymore.

Of course this is just my experience: there may be something else causing the problem.

Your experience doesn't mean that all of us has problem only with apps or something like that. I did a few hard resets with new phone setup. Doesn't help for me at all.

I have really great battery life on my iPad 2 since upgrading to iOS 6 (complete DFU restore) but the drain issues only exist on my iPhone 4S. Yesterday I did a completely clean reinstall of ios 6 on my 4S (in DFU) but this time I did not restore from back up at any point. I've noticed on the clean version of the OS battery drain does still exist as some other user have noted. However, then I thought one thing thats different between my 4S and iPad (in terms of software) is passbook which is on my iPhone but not my iPad. So I turned passbook updates on Settings>General>Cellular>Passbook Updates and also turned off passbook in Settings>iCloud>Passbook and instantly noticed that the battery drainage seems to have slowed down. I'm going to now try running down the battery to 0% and then recharging back to 100% and running it down again to see how it lasts.

Had terrible battery drain after upgrading to iOS6 on a 4S last weekend.  Phone was running a bit hot too.  I didn't really want to do a full ('new phone') reinstall, so was keeping that as a last resort.  Tried lots of other suggestions on here, but missed one (more on that later).  None of them seemed to work.  I noticed that if I turned Cellular Data off, the heat and the battery drain went away, but this meant I had to turn it on every time I wanted to pick up mails when I was out and about.  Not very convenient.

The thing I missed was the suggestion to delete and reinstate any Exchange email accounts.  I have one for work.  Last night I deleted it, did the reboot with power and home button pressed down.  Then I added the work email account back.  I charged the 4S overnight and am pleased to report 5% drain in 6.5 hours standby and 1 hour usage so far today.  This is a massive improvement.  I suspect this battery drain may be down to different things for different users, but It's worth trying this Exchange account delete if you haven't already.

@Davaela: I was just saying that the problem (and I don't deny that some have a problem) cannot be with just the OS  itself or all physical devices. I used iOS 6 with an iPhone 4 and for the last couple of days an iPhone 5 with no battery problem in either case.

Undoubtedly there are some defective iPhone 5s out there. It is also plausible that the OS interacting with some particular settings or app or combination is causing a problem. That would be a bug, but not one that can be generalized.

P.S. Although I have had no battery problems with iOS 6 or the iPhone 5, what I have noticed is it seems to take a little longer to recharge to 100% which I do every morning while doing my morning stuff on the computer. Maybe the new USB lightening cable is slower, maybe I am filling a bigger tank on the iPh5 than my previous iPh4, or maybe this is just a misperception.

I checked and my app genius is already off.  I wish it had been on, lol.

Maybe I should just let it go for a while and see if it does get better with time? I seem to recall--maybe a false memory--that things got better with time under iOS 5.0 after Apple sent the first fixit update. And as another poster says, maybe I should just quite fiddling with all the settings and let it go for a while using the same basic settings I would have used in iOS 5.1.1.  I'm outta options, so that's what I'm going to do till the next Apple update shows up, hopefully sooner rather than later. I'll just have to get used to watching the battery percentage drop like a rock for a while.

I'm taking my phone to an Apple Genius Bar appointment this afternoon.  They're supposed to be replacing my phone but we'll see.  I'll keep you guys posted...

For those who want to how fast the battery life should be decreasing on the iPhone 4S this is what we should be getting roughly these are Apple's claim on iPhone 4S battery life:

• Talk time (3G): Up to 8 hours = 12.5% per hour decrease in battery
• Talk time (2G): up to 14 hours = 7% per hour...
• Standby time: Up to 200 hours = 1% per 2 hours...
• Internet use (3G): Up to 6 hours = 17% per hour...
• Internet Use (Wifi)  up to 9 hours = 11% per hour...
• Video playback: Up to 10 hours = 10% per hour...
• Audio playback: Up to 40 hours = 2.5% per hour...

I think this should give everyone a good idea of what the batter life should be and it's good to pay particular attention to standby time, and internet use on Wifi as these tend to be the most common uses. And I can definately say that there is no way I am getting 2 hours of use on 1% battery consumption during standby on my 4S. Mine is more something like half an hour for ever 1% in standby.

It seems situational but definitely a software issue.

Glad you weren't affected but enough people around the world were affected and spoke up.  This is way more real than the maps complaints, at least for me.

I haven't run anyone in the US where maps are as bad as the media hack.  I'm running into people left and right, including myself whose battery drops so fast you can notice within an hour.

Some have fixed it by deleting and restoring bookmarks, settings, etc. but it doesn't seem like Apple to ignore so many people speaking up.  Also disabling key selling features seems like a bad band-aid and Apple would want to fix it.

This software issue could be making their new phone look bad so I hope they fix it quick!

Is posting it here the same as reporting you we're affected to Apple?  Should others post here or do something else to report this correctly?  Is taking it to the Genius Bar the only way to officially report?

If it helps at all, my iPhone 4 has about half it's previous life on AT&T with maps and other restrictions off and on, while my iPad 2 wifi-only still has great battery life after the ios6 update.

Well I took my phone to the Apple Genius Bar (Over an hour away) and they replaced it with a new one (4S with iOS 6) and my battery life still seems the same.  I still see it draining faster than it did with iOS 5 on it.  Much faster.

I don't know what to do at this point.  I'm about to take my phone back to AT&T since I just bought it, and get an Android.

same issue plus spontaneous shut down of apps likes Safari while browsing, WhatsApp while chatting, which i could go back to previous iOS version