Q: iOS 6.1 Battery Drain Problem

This will be my last post to this thread because my battery is now totally restored to normal.  I just wanted to fully document my experience in appreciation for all those who helped me out with their posts today while I was troubleshooting my phone -

1. After downloading ios 6.1.2 my battery was draining at 1% every 2 minutes

2. I tried to restore/reinstall as new phone through itunes and this did not do anything for me (however on other people's posts, this seemed ot help others).

3. I uninstalled all mail accounts, reset network settings, then reinstalled all mail accounts with all original config. and battery improved to draining 1% every 15-16 minutes.

4. After the phone was fully drained at the end of the day, I fully charged phone to calibrate battery and then restarted the phone.  Now my battery is draining at 1% every 68 minutes, which means at standby it's now good for over 100 hrs.  Yesterday my phone was good for about 2-3 hrs so I could not be more thrilled.

I love the Apple Support Communities, I can always find my answers here. 

Hi, do you mind clarifying what works best? The last one: draining your phone and fully charge it, reboot it or doing ALL of it? Thank you.

Just adding my 300 dollar's worth - same problem, iPhone 4S "upgrade" to 6.1.2 leads to battery drian 1% every 2 minutes. It seems there is a consensus here about things to do to fix it, but really this is a terrible screw-up by Apple and I just wanted to add my voice to the complaints.

Has anyone heard of an issue with the proximity sensor.https://discussions.apple.com/message/21319028?ac_cid=tw123456#21319028. I've found a possible problem and trying to get as many people as possible with the battery draining issue to check their phones. 

Same problem with me. Upgraded to 6.1.2 yesterday and baterry drained in 3 hours. CPU usage was 100% all time. Turned off all  mail, calendar and contact sync  didn't work. At the end I deleted icould totally and it works.  CPU usage now at below 15% and battery drained at normail rate. WAITING SOLUTION FROM APPLE !

how do you check cpu usage? seems like problem is something running in background. mine improved after turning off skype and calendar apps. I thought it was proximity sensor but my wifes normal iphone5 also has blinking bright infrared light. mine working normally again.

Not an Exchange user. Upgraded NOT ota to 6.1.2. Deleted iCloud. Battery drain seems better.

Looks like an iCloud problem to me.

just fixed this on my phone, somehow.

1) went to app store

2) downloaded a contact manager so i could backup my contacts, ran the app and backed them up.  i think it was called "my contact manager." this app asks for permission to access the contact list (there are new privacy setting in ios 6 so maybe a bug somewhere??)

3) plugged phone in to my pc and used itunes to do a complete backup to my laptop

after that i was going to the factory reset but noticed my phone wasn't hot anymore and now it's running fine!!??!?!

the battery had started getting hot right after the ios 6 update and was dying within 4 hours.  have been dealing with it for days and the only thing that worked was to put it in to airplane mode.

rebooting the phone, deleting email accounts, turning on/off icloud and other settings had no affect at all.

hope this helps someone out there.

4 hours 3 minutes usage and 15hours 25 minutes standby,battery 21% remaining,is that normal?It's on cellular most of the time.I was using my phone most of the time to surf the web.

Adding one more voice to the throng, I also have 1% drain every 2 minutes since update 6.1.1 and 6.1.2 does nothing to change it. Will try some of these solutions but where, if there is not patch, is the official instruction (and maybe apologie) from apple showing the fix?

I went to the Apple store yesterday to have diagnostics run on my phone to confirm whether the battery is good or not.   I have done restores and set my phone up as new after 6.1.1 and 6.1.2 to no avail.  I've deleted and reset my email accounts (Gmail, not Exchange) with no improvement.   They did a DFU restore on my phone (different from the restore in iTunes that updates firmware).  I have not added back any email accounts or apps and ran the battery down until it shut off last night.  I unplugged it from the charger this morning around 7:00 and it stayed at 100% until 11:57 AM.  That time included receiving and sending several texts, placing 2 phone calls, and 5 minutes of talk time.   Yesterday, that amount of talk time would have easily drained my battery by at least 3-5% and the time off the charger would have easily drained it by 10-12%.  I'm going to slowly add thing back to my phone and observe the battery as I go to see what happens.

Hi!  My usage time is almost the same as yours, but my cellular data is always off. I only use wifi for e-mail checking, twitter, and flipboard.  My phone is usually used for calling, texting, and some viber messaging.  Before ios 6.1, the battery lasts for two days with light gaming.  Now, with ios 6.1.2, it only last a day.  I've tried everything except DFU.  Hope someone can give a concrete solution to this.

DFU seems to have fixed mine. 

I had tried restores from iTunes, disabling LTE, doing a reset, deleting email accounts and setting them back up, and just about every recommendation that someone had in this thread.   I took my phone to the Apple store on Friday to have diagnostics run to confirm that it wasn't actually the battery.   When I left the store on Friday afternoon after the DFU, I had about 30% of battery.  I ran it down until the phone shut off and charged it overnight.   I took it off the charger at 7 AM yesterday and didn't have to charge it until after 5 PM this evening.   I placed several calls, sent and received several texts, checked email, and used my GPS during that time. 

I restored from iTunes and even though I had to rearrange my apps that reverted to an earlier backup, it seems to have worked... In fact, I seem to have much better battery life than before!

but where, if there is not patch, is the official instruction (and maybe apologie) from apple showing the fix?

What? Apple admit a problem???

...AND offer an apology????

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