iOS 6.1.3 battery issue

After install of ios 6.1.3, experienced the batttery drop - did a hard restart on the phone and the battery level seems to have stabalized and back to normal. I did NOT turn anything else off/on or do any other adjustments.

I'm experiencing the same on my iPhone 5.

My battery will go from 100% to 50 in 1 hour. This did NOT happen before I upgraded to 6.1.2.

Today my phone died at 49%, and I couldn't start it. Told me the battery was drained. I tried to do a hard reboot, but it didn't help.

I finally plugged it to my computer, and i started. 49% battery left.

My phone is restored without an old back up. Did a total clean restore. I've disabled notifications on 80% of my installed apps, disabled WiFi when not used, killed all apps not used, even tried to kill LTE, and still, my phone drains battery like crazy.

I really hope Apple is aware of this issue, and will fix it soon. If not, I'll probably have to buy another phone next time, which I really don't want to since I'm getting a little addicted to iCloud (I have a MacBook too).

I have to say, this must be an IOS issue. My 3GS has like 4 apps and I NEVER had any battery issues like this before last week. The worst of all is to be on the phone either talk or txt and battery is 30% and BLINK game over, no 20% or 10% warning. Just CYA, charge your phone idiot. Why did I do the upgrade, I knew better, especially after reading all the horror stories with IOS 5 even. I do 3 things with my phone talk, txt, email, a little surfing. It has to be Software. But, who cares......=•))

There are a number of issues and my observation with my 4S is this. The battery IS draining a lot quicker with the same usage, however the battery monitoring is also at fault.

Try this, let the battery drain with your normal usage, when you get to around 25% or so, plug the phone in and leave for about a minute, does not have to be mains power, can be in the USB port of your PC/Mac. When unplugged, my phone will have gained at least 10% battery and then will run quite happily. There is no way that the phone is plugged in long enough to gain that much power, yet it does and all battery monitoring apps reflect this new capacity.

Not had chance to try this on my wife's iPhone 4, but I can replicate it on the iPod touch, even though that does not seem to be affected too much by battery drain.

I've spent a lot of time on this, so will try and summarise.

I have an old (3yr-ish) iphone 4. Although the battery was well used, prior to the 6.1.2 update it would last from 7am to midnight with no problem. Usage was calls, text, hotmail and Words with Friends, not much else.

Immediately after the 6.1.2 update , the battery started to drain very quickly, it would last maybe 4-6 hours. Nothing else had been changed on the phone.

I followed all advice I could find on the net, and ended up restoring as a new device, installed no Apps and didn't configure hotmail. Still had the same problem, although it might last an hour longer..

Waited a few weeks and installed 6.1.3. Same problem.

Spent two days on the phone with a very helpful lady from Apple California to try and resolve.

Basically, I reinstalled the phone as a new device and monitored.

Couldn't improve the situation.

Went to apple store. They checked it out and said something strange was happenin, with the battery readings on their diagnosis software, some sort of mismatch that might be resolved with a firmware upgrade. ( sorry, I can't remember exactly what it was!). Firmware upgraded, same problem.

Advised to get a new battery.

New battery installed and things have improved, my battery now lasts from 7am till about 7pm. I have no apps installed and only have light call, text and hotmail usage.

I am using it less than before the update, I have a new battery and still have less battery life.

I have another friend who has experienced battery drain and a couple who haven't (iphone 4 and 4Ss)

My conclusion is this:

My original battery was not as good as it used to be.

A new battery is much better.

IOS update 6.1.x is probably much more battery Hungry than previous versions.

It appears to absolutely hammer a specific group of iphone models but not others, maybe a certain batch/chipset/firmware version or mix of the three.

If this doesn't affect you it doesn't mean there isn't a real problem, it is very frustrating and disappointing.

I guess at some point apple will sort it out, when they do, I might buy an iphone 5, otherwise, I feel like I'm being pressured into it!!! :)

Good luck

I disagree with you totally. My iPhone 5 is less than 2 weeks old and was fine until that ios update came along. The ipad isn't doing to well either. We have an iPhone 4s that is losing battery life also. All devices were fine until this update. And none of them have the same apps on them.

Well, my iPhone 5 is fine, as is my wife's, my boss's, his boss, and everyone else I know who has them.

In my novice opnion this all has to do with hard core users who like myself not only pay attention to the % but the constant need to charge the phone. I noticed the crap battery like before the updates, and then when the updates came it got worse. How the **** does a battery lose a gross amount of power SITTING DOING NOTHING WHILE LOCKED??????? I payed good money for this phone from a company that rocks out superior software and security features, under the assumption that the need to buy not only a new compatible computer to support the **** thing but a frigen $30 charger because the battery was going to be BIGGER! Make scense? Did anyone from this company do a test run? I think it has to do with something that is completely out of our control running on the phone on it's own that unless you're a software engineer at Apple you can switch everything off spinkle magic chicken greese and pixey dust all over reset, backup, make out with it, and yada yada yada, they're going to have to fix it themselves. And food for thought, why should you have to kill everything to save the battery life. Makes no frigen sence. We bought the phone to use those features in the first place. $$$$$ money money money money. Apple you ounce inspired people, now you just take their money and **** them off. And another thing stop frigen messing with how I can transfer or store or access stuff I've bought off of itunes.

Bricefw wrote:

In my novice opnion this all has to do with hard core users who like myself not only pay attention to the % but the constant need to charge the phone. I noticed the crap battery like before the updates, and then when the updates came it got worse. How the **** does a battery lose a gross amount of power SITTING DOING NOTHING WHILE LOCKED???????

Because the phone is NEVER DOING NOTHING. It is a full multitasking computer, so programs in it have the ability to run whether the phone is actively in use or locked. If it is using battery life while you are not actively using it SOMETHING is running. With 700,000 apps available, it could be any one or more of the apps that you have installed, and most likely it is doing something you asked it to do.

http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-1506910.html

Am having the same issuse too with my iPhone 5! I really can't stand it. Full charge in 3 hours of using the phone the best battery i had with my iPhone 5 was on iOS 6.1.2.

Back when the iPhone first came on the market in 2007 it was roundly criticized because it didn't support multitasking. Steve Jobs defended this design decision, saying that if Apple indiscriminately allowed applications to run in background that battery life would suffer. He was right.

Then Android phones began to appear, and they did support multitasking. And thye DID have terrible battery life (and still do). But Apple had to add this capability to be competitive. The result is degraded battery life. iOS 6.1 added more built in apps, all of which can use power (like Twitter). That's one reason that 6.1 has worse battery life than earlier versions. But ALL versions from 2.0 on CAN exhibit poor battery life if you have too many apps that run in background. (Note that appearing in the Quick Launch ribbon and running in background are not the same thing. Just because as app appears in the ribbon does not mean that it is running; probably 99% of the apps out there do not run inbackground. But the ones that DO can eat battery very fast.)

Your missing the point.

Performance was always bad with smart/feature phones compared with the simpler phones of old, my iPhones have at best given me 2 days at a push and I've adapted to live with that.

For me, 6.1.3 in particular has made things worse, whereas 6.1.2 and before the effects were not noticeable, at least for me. With this latest update something has specifically changed as I can easily replicate a fault with the battery monitoring software, show an iPhone drain with no background apps running (except the OS systems). My wife's iPhone 4 still has 6.1.2 on it and can get way more use out of it before the battery dies than I can from my 4S.

And before anyone says "but they are different phones", battery life between the 2 was comparable and similar before I installed the latest update.

It's you who are missing the point. 6.1.3 was a very minor change that could not in any way have affected battery life; all it did was close a security hole that would allow someone who had possession of the phone to circumvent the unlock code.

The real point is that any time you upgrade an iPhone there is a small chance that your battery life will change (see the 7th message in this thread for the evidence). Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but for most people most of the time there is no change. It's random, and independent of the specific version you have installed. It's probably caused by a process that got interrupted in the middle of doing something when the upgrade started, which resulted in corrupted data in the app. For every phone that lost battery life the specific cause will be different (as you can see by reading the threads about battery life and the many different ways people have fixed it), which is why there is no general solution that Apple (or anyone) can provide that will fix every phone that has lost battery life.

With complex systems, even minor updates can have unexpected results I areas they are not supposed to affect.

As I said, prior to 6.1.3 I had not had an issue, others may well have though but this is not a slight drop, its a degradation comparable to the battery having being abused over the 16 months of its life so far (which it has not been, all equipment I own is carefully looked after).

Certainly there was not an issue for me with earlier iOS 6 releases, or I'd been using my phone a lot less and never noticed.