iOS 6.1 Battery Drain Problem

Had the same battery issue on my 4S since 6.1 upgrade - it seems in some case there is an issue related to the Exchange Calendar support.

Disabling "Calendar" for any of the Echanges accounts, in Settings=> Mail, Contact, Calendar" seems to do the trick.

While I war running out of battery after only 5-6 hours since the 6.1 upgrade last week, I'm now back to normal for my own usage (15-17 hours), and this for the last 3-4 days.

Hopefully 6.1.1 will fix that soon...

note:

Disabling Calendar sync will obvously remove any calendar entry synced from your exchange server (it won't delete it on the server side, only on the IPhone).... So obvously not an ideal workaround, but enables you to get an IPhone up and running during the whole day.

Recently upgraded to 6.1 and today the phone lasted about 4 hours before it completely drained. After reading this thread I nuked my Exchange account. It's not draining as fast but it's still draining more quickly than before. Seems like there are several issues at play.

Have been facing the same issue on my iPhone 4 due to iOS 6.1. Tried all the DIY methods but in vain.

This is what's been working for me for the last couple of days:

After the phone got switched off due to battery draining completely, I charged it in the power off mode for about two hours. The battery indicator showed 100%. Everything worked fine after this with regular usage - both WiFi & 3G switched on. The battery indicator never moved from 100% for the next 15 hours, after which the phone got switched off again (presumably there's an issue with the battery indicator as well). I again repeated the same procedure (charging for a couple of hours in the power off mode) and the phone worked just fine for the next 15 hours or so. Charging the iPhone while switched on doesn't work for me. This is a temporary solution that worked for me; hope it works for some of you till Apple comes out with a permanent fix!!

I agree with you!! There must be a problem with the battery indicator as well! By simply turning off my ip5 and then back on, i get 3 extra percent on the battery! It has already happened twice since i updated to ios 6.1! My battery seemed fixed but it drained 3% just while typing this message with all notifications off and on wifi and i dont have any exchange accounts!! Apple fix this asap!!

Had the same battery and 3G issue on my iPhone 5 since 6.1 upgrade -

I am not able to connect to 3G after upgrade to 6.1, even though 3G is on I am not getting any 3G icon.

Apart from that I have started facing internet connectivity on my iPhone 5.

Before upgrade to 6.1 my battery last for 2-3 days now after upgrade it lasts only 6-7 hours means I need to re-charge my iPhone twice a day.

Dear Apple:- Please provide the fix to these known issues ASAP.

AMAZING!! 3% battery drop for a 6 min phone call....the battery wouldn't last more than 3,5 hrs to drain completely....where is the promised 8hrs talk???

I found that the kindle app stays on in the background even if I exit the app.

I am monitoring this using the free battery doctor app.

I always thought once you exit an app, it stops running in the background?

can amazon please fix this. I like the kindle app, but not if it drains my battery

ios 6.1 draining from my iPhone 4, please fix this problem now!!!!!!!

No, iOS does "multitasking", apps never exit when you leave them (I don't even know if there's an exit() call...) so they can continue to do certain things. That's not a bug, that's intended behaviour.

I factory restored my 4S this night and guess what: it didn't help!

Nice going Apple, after Jobs everything is going to ****!
I'm very frustrated 'cause niether my iPad or my iPhone works well!
FIX THAT ASAP!!!

One more update. After reading more on the Exchange blogs, I noticed that the problem appears to be triggered by accepting a calendar invite while on the ios device. Indeed, that is what I had done, and I kept getting invites over and over for the same meeting. So my new strategy is to not accept Exchange calendar invites on the ios device.

I had to delete the Exchange account and recreate it to stop the logging looping. This takes only a couple minutes. Be sure to record all your account info first.

I turned off Badge App Icon under notifications->calendar, and set calendar notifications to Banner, so they don't require a response. This way I'm not tempted to accept any invites on the phone. The only reason I accepted the invite anyway was to clear the badge on the icon. This is not a great solution, but may be the easiest work-around until we get an official fix.

I also noticed that I had calendars enabled for other accounts that I never use, like icloud, and yahoo, so I turned those off.

So far, so good. Been running with push enabled for my calendar no problems since yesterday evening. But we'll see how this holds up in a few days.

For those of you who are sure their problems are not Exchange related, I sympathize. Be aware that some email clients, like gmail, may use Exchange in the background. Also, I would suggest you try hooking up to iTunes and doing "restore as new", "restore from backup" if you haven't already. Other than that, I don't have any suggestions, because I am not seeing those other problems. My problem is clearly related to the Exchange calendar issue.

It's weird that for some people the problem exists even without using an exchange account. All I can say is that the battery draining stopped for me after removing my exchange account (which connects to gmail), then a reboot. After I did this, my iPhone 5 started acting normal again (like it used to when I bought it) for two whole days and still going strong.

Apple, you seriously need to give us some info and even more important, fix the battery drainage... I went from my iPhone 4 to Android (LG) and hurried back after seeing that the OS is so unstable. It also drained my battery while in standby one night (from 64% to dead). I came back to Apple because of the stable OS so I could rely on my phone. Today it's 1,5 month later and I'm paying about twice as much for getting the exact same problems... Very disappointing.

I'm finishing work in an hour and I'm going straight back to EE and demanding a new iPhone 5.

I've done two 'restore from backups' and seen no improvement. Yesterday I did a 'restore as new' and left it in an unaltered state i.e added no apps, no email accounts, no music, no photos - basically, my phone is as new.

Fully charged the phone to 100% and left it on my bedside table. No bluetooth, no Siri, no location settings. Went to bed about 10 hours later and the phone was down to 19%. Usage read 30 mins, 10 hrs standby.

I fully charged the phone again last night and brought it to work with me today and it has sat in my bag. It is now down to 25%. Usage reads 24mins, 9hrs standby.

The only app I've used since 'restoring it new' yesterday is the Settings app.

There is something seriously wrong with my phone. I can't blame it on Exchange because a) I don't use an Exchange email account and b) I have not set up and email accounts on my iPhone. I haven't even set up my iCloud account!

I can't blame it on any third-party rogue apps because I haven't reloaded any on since 'restoring it new'.

I'm going to see what EE say but at the very least I'm hoping for a new iPhone becuase mine is definetly faulty. Bought it on the 27th November so it's less than 3 months old.

I'll keep you all posted.

Fixed my iPad 2 issue (50% charged but battery icon says FULLY CHARGED) by toggling the lock screen button. Apple should find a fix for this ASAP.

I had the same problem with my iPhone 4S after I upgraded to IOS 6.1; it would burn through a full charge in about 3 hours. I blamed it on my old, well abused, 4S, and replaced it with an iPhone 5 the next day, as I thought, that was the issue. Guess what, the same problem occurred, same as the 4S, as I did a restore from my old phone, a normal way to replace a phone, and therefore, restored the old issues. Never-the-less, while I was a business trip a couple of days later, as a passenger, I played. First, before I left the office, I reset the phone to a "new" phone, and only installed the standard Apple Apps. Then I began to add back the settings I had been using in the past. What I found out, in my case, it was the iCloud syncing function, in specifically, synching my Safari boodmarks, that was the problem. The minute I disabled that function, it would now sync to iTunes on my computer, not to iCloud, the battery drain stopped, and now everything is great. Hope this helps.