iOS 6.1.3 battery drainage

Jajaba,

It does sound very coincidental I guess.

My wife actually went and got a new battery in her iPhone yesterday and it drained very quickly yesterday evening - so it isn't the age of the phone or the battery.

The previous time - a couple of years ago (with my iPhone 4) that power usage was an issue, it seemed to be because the Time-zone detection was constantly accessing the network. I have been checking this and noted, while doing so, that the "genius for apps" location service was on with a purple arrow next to it. I was not in the App Store and was basically not running anything other than mail.

I have now switched this off, plus the time zone location, etc. I'll see how the power issue is today after a full charge.

Setting>privacy>location services>System Services (at bottom of page) ... Switch off what you don't need.

I'm working under the assumption that most apps tell you if they need to access your location and I can choose whether they really do need to or if I can leave them off, so I've switched off most things in the main app list also, apart from the few things I use which do need my location (google maps, Siri, camera).

Ok,

That's six hours or more now and my phone is at 84% battery.

This is after switching off the location services for some of the system services (Genius for apps, location based iAds and time zone setting). As I mentioned before, I "caught" genius for apps using location services for no "apparent" reason this morning.

You can also switch on the "status bar icon" on this page of your settings file and see whether the location services are being used on your home screen. Useful, and eye-opening, as you see the hone suddenly show the little arrow in the status bar when you are doing nothing.

My wife's iPhone 4S has dropped to 55 over the morning which is twice as good as yesterday, but still pretty crap really. So, I don't think the location services is the complete answer but it does appear to help.

I took my two year old 4S (Verizon) 32GB into the local Apple store last week because of the battery drain issue. The "Genius" checked my battery and ran some sort of diagnostics. He restored it back to "factory" state. He advised me to restore apps one at a time to see if there is a buggy app. I did not restore from backup but re-downloaded from the App Store. So far I can now go 2 -3 days on a charge (light usage) and under normal use can get over 24 hours on a charge. Will keep you posted but looks like my problem is solved.

Timurjonchik hi,

I did follow your suggestion but after comparing battery performance with my iPhone 3Gs still the battery drains faster...

What i did was to completely turn off my iCloud.. not using it anymore and my battery seemed to have found its strength... for 21 hours 13 min , witn normal use of about 2 hours, now its still 66%.

I guess iCloud is the real culprit behind the battery drain problem.. I did also for my iPhone 3GS coz i charged them both yesterday, and now after using it for 1 hours 8 min, standing by 20 hours 59 min... still its 79%...

I bought my iPhone 5 because previously i thought my 3GS is already retiring... THANKS FOR YOUR TIP...

Of course it's the software, and more precisely, it's the update procedure. For me the proof is in a recent post by someone who reinstalled his phone as new, adding apps (and accounts?) one by one.

The update procedure is clearly complex, given the time it takes, and I'm not particularly surprised that even Apple cannot foresee all possible things that could go wrong. Despite their tight control, there is sufficient leeway for all kinds of interactions between apps and (their) settings that can cause some form of instability which translates more or less directly in increased battery usage because it affects the intricate power economy algorithms that are normally at play.

iOS 6.1.3 doesn't seem to offer me anything of interest over 6.1.2 (and it would prevent me from jailbreaking, which I'm still considering). If it weren't for that, I'd have followed a labourious, "manual" update procedure to limit the risk for such instabilities (and only because of the reports about battery life issues):

- make a fresh backup, locate it on disk and make a copy of it

- wipe the phone, restoring it to factory default as if I'd be selling it

- perform the update from iTunes

- restore my backup as if I were setting up a new phone (making sure I'd be restoring the right backup!)

That step 4 is what I did with my 4S bought off eBay, using a backup of my 3rd gen. iPod Touch running the latest 5.x iOS. The 4S was on 6.0.1 when I got it, IIRC. Worked about flawlessly, very few settings got lost, so restoring a same-device backup of a less ancient OS should work even better.

If 6.1.3 had real, inherent battery issues, lots of owners of newly bought phones with 6.1.3 preinstalled would be complaining too. Which doesn't appear to be the case.

i followed your advice; restored the iphone to its factory settings and then set it up as a new phone and for 4 hours now my phone's charge hasn't dropped, not even by 1%.

I then restored my phone from the backup and the drainage problem reemerged

well at least i know its not a problem with 6.1.3 or a hardware issue, but what is it exactly? is it one of the apps?settings?

that's very frustrating.

I have found out one of the main problems is that after the update it keeps trying to download emails 27/7 even if you dont have a email account on your phone i have found a way to stop set your fetch to manual for your email account then hard reset your phone holding the home & lock screen buttons till your phone powers off & back on this not a fix but defo improves battery life

I dont know may be this will help. Here was a lot of posts about how to fix battery with restoring iPhone as new and download all programms you need from the App Store again without backupping. I just tried this. I just restored my contacts from backup. My experience with the battery is 6h32min in usage and 22h5min standby and the rest 16% of the battery. My 3G is on, WiFi is on when I need it, locations are on just for maps, iCloud is off, Push is off.

Hope it helps to somebody.

I met a buddy today who also has an iPhone5 and ios 6.1.3. He had 7 hours of usage, 1 day of standby logged and 65% battery life remaining. I'm unsure of how old the phone was but that works out to roughly 1.6% loss of battery per hour of usage, assuming 1% loss per hour of standby. Compared to my phone, that is stellar.

1 day = 24 hours, so 100% -24% = 76%, then the 7 hours of usage devided by 76%-65%= 11%/7 hours = 1.6% per hour usage.

My average battery usage was 1% per standby hour, and 10% per hour of normal usage!. That means everything from surfing the web, checking email, phone calls, or just looking at the screen. I would get anywhere from 4-6 hours of solid usage out of the phone and thats it.

When I first got the phone, I had a wicked battery drain after restoring it from an Iphone 4 backup. I did a DFU restore and it was purring like a kitten till the IOS 6.1.3 update.

I bit the bullet again, and just finished another DFU restore. I've restored my email/sync accounts as they were, and will be manually redownloading my apps, not restoring them from Itunes/Icloud backup. On the plus side I have lots of free space again for pics/movies. I'll update here with the results as soon as I can figure out how well (or not well) this worked.

Cheers

If you are getting terrible battery life on iphone best to check signal put phone into field test mode http://osxdaily.com/2012/08/20/field-test-mode-iphone-signal-strength-numbers/ this link might be really helpfull. If you have turned location services, push email & you don't use Siri battery life should last close to a Day. Their are users having some battery drain from their phones this could be down to IPSW when installed. I have been speaking to LV2 support & they have advised not just restoring device but creating a new restore. This is done by uninstalling iTunes reinstalling either on another PC or creating a user account on windows & then redownloading iTunes. IPSW can get corrupt & cause the phone to overheat due to processor being in constant use. This does impact battery & you do see few % going every few minutes. If you have still don't get joy 08000480408 & speak to Apple they can perform a diagnostic on your phone it's sent via email so you will need an account setup in mail & contacts. Hope this helps anyone else seeing this & having same issue. iPhone 5 users try switching off LTE as their is 30 sec delay switching from 4G to 3G/2G so can also use battery switching between signal bands.

Hey i posted this on another board and it solved their problem so i thought I'd repost!

I had the same problem and tried everything and i found my fix!

Go to settings> privacy> location services> system services

Turn off Cell Network Search! Also turn the rest off if they aren't necessary.

The cell network search was what did it... I did a little research and it's not necessary.

Hope this helps!

Yes, on by default.

You've definitely turned off push in all areas of the phone? Inc the new advanced section in 6.1.3? Mail > turn off push and change fetch to manual. Then go to advanced and change from push to manual.

If you've got chrome installed try logging out of your google account.

I wish Apple would show has battery stats. At least that way we could see what was draining our battery.

Do you leave wifi on and connected? I'm wondering if not, maybe a weak 3G signal is doing it?

Only thing that works to solve the battery issue is a clean IOS installion, "setting up new phone". Don't restore. That will just reinstall potential corrupt settings. Set push to manual, and don't add any mail account.(Very Important). My mail account starts battery drainage, once battery drainage starts the only way to solve it is reinstalling a clean IOS and setting up NO mail account. (Only web mail until Apple solve it, but battery works OK now).

Hi. I woldn't have been hammering it during those five hours but to summarise

• Bluetooth enabled
• Picking up my Outlook Exchange and Hotmail messages
• A couple of calls
• Connected to my work WiFi network.

In essence my daytime usage never changes very much at all. I've had my iPhone 5 for about 7 months and up until I installed IOS 6.1.3 I had never experienced any battery issues at all. I always left it powered down and on charge overnight and it would be off charge from around 7am until 11pm without the need to recharge. I never took much notice of the battery indicator as I didn't need to. Within a day or two of downloading 6.1.3 I was down to 20% battery within 4 hours and if I didn't get it on charge pdq it would die within 5 to 6 hours from coming off a full charge. Since then I've kept it on charge at my desk and in my car.

I use BBC News and Sports apps, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Skype on a daily basis. It's now approaching 8 hours since I took it off charge this morning and the battery is at 71% (3.6% per hour seems pretty reasonable dissipation to me). I've now started reinstalling my most used apps direct from the App Store (five so far including FB). I've not noticed any effect on the battery so I'll keep adding those apps bit by bit and see what happens.

My gut feeling is that there is nothing wrong within IOS 6.1.3 itself but the way it interacts with some iPhones (particularly 5's judging by the feedback in these forums) seems to cause issus with some of them. All I know is that when I restored to factory default a couple of weeks ago I also restored the backed up apps and data and the battery drainage persisted. Leaving those backups to rot and downloading the apps independently seems so far to have done the trick. I'll post an update once I have everything installed again and confirmed that the battery life is holding out.

Cheers for now

Sorry to hear the fix didn't last longer. For what it's worth (and for anyone who has followed my earlier threads) here's an update.

Did a factory reset via iTunes 13 days ago on 08th May. Didn't restore backed up data but re-installed most of my apps from the App Store over Wi-Fi - not GPRS. Between updating to IOS 6.1.3 over the Easter Weekend and doing the factory reset, I was losing 80% of battery power within 4 hours of taking the device of charge. I had previously tried a factory restore including restoring the apps and data from iTunes. That approach didn't work and my battery drainage stayed the same. The second factory restore did work so presumably re-installing the apps from the iTunes back up also reintroduced whatever was contributing to the problem. I also updated to 6.1.4 which made no difference either way (nor was it designed to).

Whatever, since 08th May, my battery has held a charge for at least 15-16 hours per day without needing a re-charge. Charging overnight to 100% is enough to keep the device powered up all day with a few phone calls, collecting and sending emails via Outlook and Hotmail etc. I have Bluetooth on for at least 3 hours per day and when I've forgotten to disable it there has been no appreciable deterioration in battery life.

This approach clearly doesn't work for everyone but two weeks in it seems to be holding up for me. The phone had been off chage eight and a half hous when I took these screen shots.