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iOS 6 battery drain and overheating while 3G

Does anybody observing than iPhone (mine is 4s) drains battery very fast and became hot after upgrading to iOS 6 when surfing 3G? Any suggestion how to "fix" it?

iPhone 4S, iOS 5.0.1

Posted on Sep 22, 2012 1:58 AM

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18 replies

Sep 22, 2012 4:13 AM in response to Kinst

Had same problem, would lose 50 % of battery in 4 hours at work. Never an issue with IOS5 on my 4S. I downloaded IOS6 over wifi. Tried all settings changes and disabling, did the battery reset, no help.


I backed up my phone to both the cloud and via iTunes. Did the full reset and then restored from backup. My problems went away. Used my phone last night for several hours last night and only dropped 20 % battery. Went to bed and left turned on, only dropped 5% overnight. I consider mine fixed and running IOS6 fine.

Sep 23, 2012 10:53 AM in response to Kinst

Well, in my opinion the battery life with iOS 6 on iPhone 4S is now much better!


1 % left and I have 8 hrs and 17 minutes usage and 1 day 7 hrs standby time. (I browsed the web, sent some E-Mails with pictures & received some text E-Mails, made some calls, used iMessage, Siri, Facebook, iCal, Contacts and other apps like Dropbox. Also I have 2 E-Mail accounts on "Push" and iCloud activated with all its features, except iCloud Mail and iTunes Match!)


With iOS 5.1.1 I hardly reached 6 hrs usage time.

Sep 26, 2012 9:27 PM in response to Kinst

Yes, I'm having to charge my iPhone 4S 2-3 times per day (from fully drained to 100%), and using and charging my phone causes it to get burning hot.


I've actually taken to wrapping it in a hot/cold rice wrap (placed in the freezer) when charging, but it still gets steaming hot as soon as I start to use it.


Very disappointed...

Sep 29, 2012 5:25 AM in response to Kinst

I can tell you with certainty that the problem with IOS 6 battery drain is due to HIGH CPU utilization.


I downloaded and used a utility that provide a lot of information on you iPhone the key thing was the CPU utilization. My wife’s 4 was going from 100% charge to a full power off in about four hours just sitting on the table.

The utility show the CPU usage on her phone was running from 88% - 100%.

I tried a lot of the suggestions that are out there but the biggest impact came this morning.


I went into Setting / iCloud and turned off Contacts and Find My iPhone (the only iCloud items I was using) and the CPU is now running around 7-10%.


Hopefully this will take care of the issue until Apple provides an update because the contact syncing for my wife and I was is a KEY feature we use.

Sep 29, 2012 6:54 AM in response to davis1633

Just did a small test. Using iSlash game (cutting shapes with moving objects inside) 0% drain within 10 minutes, no heating if the iPhone. Just after angry birds for 3 minutes - 3% with instant heating.

For me the problem is in graphic utilization. When no use (iCloud is on for everything) the drain is about 1% and less overnight.

Something wrong with graphic processor usage in iOS 6. Pity than nobody care about this.

Oct 13, 2012 3:53 PM in response to Kinst

Same trouble here. Not only I but also some friends os mine with iPhone 4 and 4s are experiencing battery draining and a lot of overheating while using 3G. 😟


In fact there are several similar complains with other users (check http://bit.ly/RrBHYL). The regular recommendation is to disable 3G to avoid overheating and preserve the battery.


This is a disappointing situation, to say the least. Without 3G I think I'm better served with some old small flip phone. 😠

Oct 19, 2012 8:51 AM in response to Kinst

Similar issue with my iPad 3 LTE and it doesn't appear to be related to graphics as the rapid drain occurs even when the screen is off. My iPad sits on my desk about ten hours a day attached to my PC via USB cable and I am generally streaming Pandora and am connected to wi-fi. Since the iOS 6 update about once a week I'll find that the iPad is getting quite hot, yesterday it actually uncomfortably so by the time I noticed it, and the battery is draining at about 1% every two minutes +/-.


For a while I thought it had something to do with accessing Netflix at lunch as it was happening primarily in the afternoon so I began clearing Netflix from the "multitasking" bar after use but that didn't do it. Yesterday it happened again so I did a reset and it seemed fine but as soon as I hooked up to my PC this morning it began again so there may or may not be a clue there. I now have it on a regular charger and it seems fine so far so once it's charged I'll hook it back up to the PC and see if it starts the cycle again. As hot as it got yesterday I'm growing concerned that the battery is being damage by the temperatures particularly because I have it in a Snugg folio case which holds the heat in.

Nov 9, 2012 6:14 AM in response to Kinst

Hi... I had this problem and made a few trips into the apple store... the end result is that the DataAccess portion of the framework was flaking out. Seemed to be related to a corrupted install (and subsequent backups). Go to settings->general->about->diagnostics and usage->diagnostics & usage data. I had a number of dataaccessd_2012... crash logs. Resetting and restoring from backup didn't fix the issue because it seemed the corruption was part of the backup. I had to do a full reset and not restore from backup, but rather start "clean" and re-install my apps manually. It's a real pain, but so far seems to have done the trick. Hope this helps!

iOS 6 battery drain and overheating while 3G

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