iOS battery drain fix (caused by mail pull with ActiveSync) - one possible solution

Hello all,

i just want to share with you a fix which solved my battery drain issue on 2 iPhones (one iPhone 4 and one iPhone 4s).

Both iPhones are on iOS 6.1 and, on each iPhone, there was one different Exchange account configured (one for me and one for my wife).

The issues arrived once both iPhones were updated to iOS 6.1. and once mail has been configured with an Exchange server account (on both iPhones).

This issue occured on the iPhones:

- after upgrade

- or after a clean restore with restore from backup

- or after a clean restore and manual reconfiguration of everything

Symptoms:

- battery drain of 1% about every 3 min (20% every hour)

Analyse:

Once I configured my Exchange account to "monitor" "Inbox" and one another folder, I went in the "Inbox" (with the iPhone's Mail app) and I've noticed that the application was synchronising every 2 seconds (the tourning circle in the status bar, which shows you the sync is occuring).

I went then on my Exchange server and in the logs, I saw abnormal activity regarding the ActiveSync. (every 2 seconds)

I tried to disable the sync for the "Calendar", as apparently this could have been an issue (because of reccuring events stuff) but this haven't stopped the abnormal sync to occur.

The only thing which stopped the abnormal sync was to disable the "Mail" sync. (disabling pull for "Contacts", "Tasks" and "Reminders" didn't change anything).

After some troubleshooting here is what fixed my issue:

Once configured, the ActiveSync process tries to look in different folders. If some of the folders are empty, this could cause the sync to occur abnormally.

On the 4s, there was the other folder I wanted to "monitor" which was empty.

So, once I added a mail into that empty folder, the abnormal sync stopped and it's not occuring anymore. (even if you delete that mail you just put in that folder).

On the iPhone 4, only the "Inbox" folder was "monitored". But this folder had mails, so it couldn't have been this one. So, I went through some other folders not "monitored" and when I found an empty one, I added a mail into it. Once I added a mail inside, the abnormal sync stopped.

Once the abnormal sync stopped, the battery drain issue was FIXED for BOTH iPhones.

So, if you have a battery drain issue, you can give it a try ;-).

I hope this will help some of you to get it solved.

Cheers,

Bogdan

PS: don't hesitate to add a comment here if this solved your battery drain issue, it would be appreciated :-).