iOS 6.1 Battery Drain Problem

Hello everybody,

Am an iphone user since 2009, i know its really frustrating to have an idevice in hands,whose battery life is well below what apple advertise. So i decided to comment on this issue.

Every time apple introduce new iphone,Apple's Phil Schiller says, "Our engineering team has done an incredible job, we have industry best battery life in smartphone."- Real problem is that how far is this true in real world usage.

Yes Apple team, we know what you are saying to users who experiance battery issue,( 4 inch retina display/ 3.5 inch retina display,super thin design,LTE,Utra fast Wireless,3G,GPS,Wi-fi,push notification).

But the thing is that even iphone 2G ( original iphone), which dont have all these feature also had a battery issue.

And with more advanced networks like 3g/HSDPA/LTE, we are all the victims of poor batter life in smartphones.

Let me tell more in detail, on the the keynote of iphone5, Phil Schiller said iphone5 has an incredible battery life,and yes with a super thin smartphone,its a great job, to see all those ( 8 hours 3g talktime,8 hours 3g browsing,10 hours browsing, 40 hours music, 10 hours video, 225 hours standby) on the slide you presented.

Let me ask you the question, did anybody get this kind of battery performance in your shiny new iphone5??

Many normal iphone user even struggle to get 15 -20 hours standby, (apple advertise 225 hours ), yes apple we are getting 10% of what you advertised.

When talking about battery life in smartphone, another thing we should accept is the "usage" of the phone.

We have to accept the fact that battery life depends on settings.,and the usage of the phone.With full brightness,all push notification,GPS on,LTE usage,high graphics games& apps, battery life will be less than what apple advertise,we all know that,we are not blaming apple for that.

But the real problem is that after evey iOS updates,with all those saves profiles and settings,many users struggle to get 10-15 hours standby. So its clear that every iOS update (wether it ios3 or ios6) is the worst nightmare if you are concerned about battery life. iOS 4.1 had battery issues, we still remeber the poor battery performance of 4S, in ios 5.0 (apple says they fixed battery bugs in ios 5.0.1, and 5.1, but truth to be told, we havent experianced any change).

And now in iPhone5.

(basic troubleshooting like, restore/restore from backup/reset network settings, wont make that much change)

Battery life, is one of the strongest selling point of iphone5, but that too also compromised after these iOS updates.

So our request to apple team,is that please consider this as serious issue,and fix the battery bugs in iOS.

My Iphone 5 is not working as wonderfully previous to this 6.1 update. The battery is draining very fast using LTE and even Wifi or doing nothing by night with airplane mode. I also suspect that usage statistics doesn't work as before that it really showed my use. It is impossible that I have 17h 48 minutes of standby and 13h 30 minutes of usage in 19 hours!!! My battery is now at 1%. Previously to this update I was really at standby for more than 2 days... I want to recover my Iphone before this awful update!

10h later without real activity (I was sleeping) and only -15% of battery! :)

So I can confirm my problem of battery is solved!

As a reminder my iphone is a 4S.

Try the given solution!

Same problem here. Both goes for my iPhone5 and iPad2. None of them had any issues before upgrading to iOS 6.1.

Repair tech did a hardware reset and monitored battery life on "clean" installation on my iPhone5. Once restored to backup the issue was back.

please help,,, why is it that the battery of my iphone 4s drains very quick after i update it to ios 6.1? I already tried the factory reset but nothing happens. It drains so fast that even in standby mode it drains rapidly,,, what is wrong with this update?

I'm having the same battery drain with ios 6.1 and iphone 4.

Yesterday i managed to get these stats from 100% to 2% battery:

usage: 9h 9m

standby: 1 day 11h

But now i have battery draining very fast...

Any chance to get ios 6.1.1 or 6.2 fixing that battery issue?

Having the same problem on iPhone 5 64GB. In less than 4 hours in idle state it burns battery from 100% to 16% (no apps opened). Going to try to return to 6.0.1 - had no problems there.

My 4S is very noticably draining faster also.

s0sullivan wrote:

I updated my iphone 4s OTA 2 days ago, as mentioned above in several posts, I have had the same massive decline in battery life, and excessive heat. The life of my battery since the upgrade has been about 5 hours max.

I just plugged the phone into the computer, did a restore using itunes (official restore, i.e. restoring the installation of iOS 6.1, not downgrading) and then restored a backup I did just moments before running the restore. So everything is essentially the same as it was 2 hours ago, only wiped and restored from scratch.

I did that an hour ago, and since unplugging, the iphone is still on 100% and is cool to touch. The phone is connected to 3G and wireless. I have used it very little, but checked email, and gmail using the gmail app.

By this time, before the restore, I would be on about 80% battery by now.

I did this last night, and it seemed to work in my case (Verizon iPhone 4). Overnight, the phone went from 100% to 97%, and after using it a while (though it charged a bit when I loaded my ringtones on the phone) it is only down to 92%. So, tentatively, I am willing to say it worked. If it turns out it didn't, I'll post again.

I'm under warranty, so my carrier has to fix it. I tried the same today with the iPhone5, as my carrier advised me to do that (they already did a hardware restore and checked the battery). I went through the whole process, except I didn't use a backup but only synced. So I basically had to setup the phone from scratch.

It didn't work. Draining battery as fast as before. Only, now iMessage and Facetime won't activate 😉

My iPad2 is now essentially broken. No warranty, and not usable. Do I really have to buy a new one?

<Edited by Host>

Restore if your still having the problem Its a problem with the battrey Then you will have to take it to apple

I'm sorry but what really bugs me here is that I shouldn't have to reset and restore my device every time something goes wrong like this, with compression it takes 15 hours to restore my music and I rarely have that sort of downtime to be able to do that.

I thought this was an Apple OS, not Windows!

I have an iPhone 4s and encountered the same battery drain issue.

I reset my network settings only and didn't have to do a full restore.

It worked like a charm. Everything is normal now with no more battery drain issue.

To be on safer side i let my phone battery drain completely before charging it to 100 %.

This was a solution i had used after one of the previous updates had caused the similar battery drain issue.

Hope this works for a few of you out there. Let me know if it does 🙂

Well I bit the bullet and backed up my iPhone 4, took it back to factory and then restored it.

Now it actually seems like my battery life is even better now than when on 6.0.2.

Had it on about 8 hours since last charge and it still has 73% left. Yesterday about this time it was already down to 20% or less.

We have this problem x2!! My wife and I both now have terrible battery life on our iPhone5's since iOS6.1. Don't they test this stuff before releasing it? Between the comments I see on here, news releases and face-book it seems this is a huge problem affecting nearly everyone. Apple, please comment!! Don't just ignore us, this is a big deal!! When can we expect a fix? I do not have time for this or any more iPhone 5 problems...!

I have reset and restored my phone twice and my wife's once, both are still loosing battery rapidly with very little use. My phone has been left alone on the counter and not used at all today and it lost 60% from 8:00am to 3:45pm (starting with a full all night charge). My wife's phone, same story... Before iOS 6.1 we were getting full day use of our phones with plenty of battery to spare (In a normal work day I typically consumed about 40% by the end of the day. Yesterday I had to survive on my charger with minimal use)