Battery drain issues since IOS 7.1.1 update

I have installed an app, called Battery Doctor, and while it's mostly filled with annoying irrelevant stuff, it has a function that lists the active processes. Interestingly, it shows Facebook, Messenger and Whatsapp to be running all the time. But also Pocket and some other apps I didn't expect to find there.

I'm not sure the app runs correctly because it also ommits some apps that run in the background (like navigation apps). But at least it might give some indication on apps that misbehave. Note that I have disabled Background Resfresh. Clearly this function has nothing to do with allowing an app to be running in the background.

In the (free) app, tab the left most menu button (Status) and then click the button on the top right (with the four squares). A menu with round buttons will appear. Select the second one: "Discharge Bank".

Also, I don't have the problem of the "Usage" and "Standby" timers to be equal. They are different as they should be. But still, after 2,5 hours of usage, my battery gives up.

For everyone who is still under warranty, I would make a bee-line for the nearest Apple store and have your phone looked at (battery diagnostic, review settings for anything obvious, etc). I would demand a new battery for starters, and if that doesn't work, a replacement phone.

I spent weeks dealing with my battery issues. I literally tried everything, wasting 20-30 hours of my time diagnosing, adjusting/testing settings, restoring, etc. I bought a good activity monitor, which led me nowhere. My sense from my internet research is that less than 50% of those experiencing issues have been able to fix their issues by adjusting settings, restoring their phones or deleting apps. To this day, I still believe there was a hardware issue causing my issues.

If you are out of warranty, you could try to buy an OEM battery and do the replacement yourself. Apple will charge you $80 (which may be worth it), but if you are reasonably handy, you can do the swap yourself for a fraction of the cost. If that doesn't work, I would say that a phone replacement may be in your future (iphone 5/64GB, $269). Or, you can just deal with it until the 6 comes out.

Mine is out of warranty and I have no intention to buy an upgrade for 899€ or 1217$ over here. Especially as I could easily have the same problems again. Also, we don't have apple stores, so if you have a problem, you're without a phone for at least 3 weeks.

Did you get a new battery and did that completely solve the battery drain issue? If not don't suggest that as a fix especially for anyone our of warranty. That could be $80 for a brand new battery that drains rapidly. And it makes no sense that it's a hardware issue if your phone functioned fine on IOS6. Has to be software related to the upgrade. Exactly what software is in conflict with IOS7 the issue. And until Apple comes out with a fix, good luck.

I am under warranty on my iphone 5. If your battery test fine Apple will not just give you a new battery especially if it passes all their tests, which mine did. So you can "demand" all you want, good luck getting it. Apple does not care how much time you spend trying to fix the issue or how much time you spend drivng to, waiting at, being helped at, and driving home from the apple store. I'm sure there is a dollar threshold that Apple has set for just when they will give you a new battery or phone and I assume that you must have to be hitting their cost for a new phone before they will do anything for you. As far as the battery their cost is probably less than $5 so why they don't just give you a new batter is beyond me. Of course it doesn't really matter if a new battery doesn't fix the problem.

Mine is 4S so it was not in warranty. I've bought a new OEM battery, replaced it and there was no change.

But, deactivating Background App Refresh it seeems that the phone is not warm anymore and now the Usage and Stanby times are different (they where exactly the same before this). And it seems to last longer... I cross my fingers.

Unless your phone is brand new your battery is going to deteriorate. If you haven't already you need to go to the apple store and have them run a diagnostic on your battery. If you aren't under warranty find somewhere that will do it for a reaonable price. If your battery is dying, I think apple said under 80% needs to be replaced, get a new one. If it is the battery nothing else you do will fix the problem even if it just started in IOS 7.1.1

If your battery is fine and your phone is showing the same or very similiar times in the usage and standby times your phone is doing something the entire time or most of the time it's on standby thus draining the battery. That has to be an automated action like refresh, push notification, cellular data searcing for signal, etc. The phone is not actually resting as it should on standby and thus draining your battery since it's doing something that requires battery usage. If those numbers aren't similar then it's obviously a different issue causing the battery drain. But I'd still try turning off the mail push and changing it to fetch and see if that helps and any other function that works in the background. That won't hurt anything, doesn't cost anything and only takes a minute to change. Check your battery charge, take a screen shot, and then check it again 30 minutes later. If you see an improvement then that is probably helping.

The bottom line is that no one wants a iphone that they have to turn off all of the functionality or that has to be tethered to a cord the entire time. Apple needs to fix this problem.

Easy, I'm just trying to help people here 🙂 OK, so I am basically in agreement with you that a battery replacement is not likely to improve the situation (unless your battery failed diagnostics). I was not suggesting that it will definitely fix the problem, simply that it is a potential option for those who have tried EVERYTHING else. In my opinion, if you are out of warranty and have tried all of the other "remedies", the final 2 options (other than a future Apple update fix, good luck with that one) are 1) battery replacement and 2) replacement phone. What other options would you suggest?

Also, per my previous post (top of page 6), I received a replacement iphone out of blind luck during my last Apple store visit. I restored the new phone from my latest itunes backup, so with the exact same software/settings as before, the new phone would theoretically have some sort of battery drain issues. This was not the case. I am getting normal battery perfomance (60-70% after a day's use, not staying warm) even though I have the eaxct same settings and apps as the old iphone 5 that was draining battery. To me, this at least suggests that there could have been a battery or hardware issue.

Lastly, unless you're willing to wait for an update that fixes the problem (don't cross you fingers), your only recourse is to make a few more stops to the Apple store to demand a fix. Your phone is clearly not functioning to Apple published spec (8-10 hours usage, 250 hours standby). My phone was warm to the touch even while sleeping, and draining battery within 2 hours of use. If I were under warranty, I would 1) backup my phone 2) erase all settings and data (restore "as new", and hence removing 3rd party software from the equation) and if you're still having battery problems, 3) walk into the Apple store and demand answers. I would add 4) talk to the store manager if that doesn't work. Of course, there is the potential that a rogue app is causing problems, but in my case, even after removing all 3rd party apps from my phone, the battery was still draining...

Hi to everyone.

Recently, after many months after iOS7 premiere I updated straight to 7.1.1 from 6.1.4. Similar to many people here I started to experience strange iphone5 behavior. Usage time was about 2h15min and standby time about 12h. Percentage jumped like crazy from 42% to 36% for example, in a minute. Then I reached 22% and phone died. I plugged charger and battery status was 30%...

I decided to switch every feature off after resetting my phone to factory settings, and removing everything from my phone (fresh ios install). Second thing was to discharge it completly and charge to 100%. It helped me to reach 2days standby, and 5h16min usage time, and it is not over...it shows me 1% since 50min...with screen on, 3G on... So it is better after fresh install and battery calibration but battery metter shows completly inconsistent numbers/percents.

P.S. I confirm significant amount of data transferred by contacts and calendar comparing to other apps.

Hello all

Same problem here on a 4S and a 5S. Neither had problems before 7.1 but now batttery drains in a couple of hours after having turned off nearly everyhing and trying everything I can think of. I had hoped 7.11 would fix everything but no luck.

But I want to add the observation, that if I switch the phones to Airplane mode then there's no drain at all.

Charge stays at 100% for a couple of days or more, so I'm pretty sure from that it's neither the battery nor the phone for me.

So before you run off to the store or buy new batterieis, perhaps you'd like to chack that?

It's something in the software and connected to searching for a signal, or checking in for me.

I'm getting quite dissilusioned with my iphones. I bought a really cheap motorola running on kitkat for my daughter and at 1/3 the price it beats the 5S in almost every important respect- signal strength, wifi speed, screen and with 3 day battery life no problem if you don't play games.

I sometimes have to borrow it in places where the iphones can't get reception and use it to surf the net when the ipads can't get anything either. I'm not at all sure I'll buy another iphone as the competiton have quite definitely caught up.

Achi,

Indeed, I was talking about the iPhone dissapointment with my brother just a couple of days ago. And we are longtime iPhone users and big fans.

But, maybe the tide is turning....

I hope iPhone6 to be a big hit... if not, time to look anywhere else....

Sad.

Hi there

I've been doing quite a lot of digging since I last posted and I've come up with a couple of things.

Firstly, I checked out some battery apps and I'm not convinced they do anything. One of them- battery doctor- gives identical figures for all the things it claims to do , usage etc on each device I tested and that's just impossible. I'm pretty sure it's just making it up.

It claims so to make the phone charge more quickly too and I think that's physically impossible.

However, Ibackupbot which you have to install on your computer does seem to provide some useful info.

It will tell you how many times your battery has been charged, what the maximum capacity should be and what it really is and what percentage charge it is at.

So, if you see any discrepancy there than you can be sure it's worth going for a trip to the store. If you don't see anything then you're still in the dark unfortunately.

So, if your 5S battery is supposed to be 1560Mah and it's maximum capacity is now only about 1100Mah, then I think you should get it changed. Similarly if the phone says it's charged and 94% and the program says it's really only charged at 42% you should see someone.

Or if it's been charge 460 times or something then you have a really tired battery.

http://www.icopybot.com/itunes-backup-manager.htm

Having read around, I do believe a significant number of people have battery problems and the batteries they are putting in the phones are dirt cheap- literally a couple of dollars. I really think that's disgusting.

Be careful buying one yourself though as they are quite easy to fit and there are loads of poor quality batteries or even really old batteries out there being sold as genuine OEM batteries (Apple don't let their suppliers supply to anyone else so take note).

One thing I have done which has made a huge difference is going into Mail/contacts/calenders under settings and switching email 'push' off.

This is completely different from notifications and everything else, and I hadn't realized that.

Now you just have to check for emails when you want rather than the phone checking all the time but that's hardly a big deal.

The phone is still not right, but it's a significant difference and I can just about get through the day now instead of it being dead just on standby.

Scandalous that we need to be that careful all the same.

I hope that can help someone.

All the best.

PS, with 3 iphones, 2 Ipods, 2 ipads and an iMac, I really prefer Apple stuff although I like to keep an open mind.

PS ibackupbot

If you decide to give ibackupbot a go, you plug in your phone to the computer and load the program.

Then, you go to where you see the phone connected on the left screen rather than all the back ups and you click on

'more information' on the right screen (well that's what it looks like on a mac)

Then you'll see something like this:( 5S)

CycleCount: 74

DesignCapacity: 1550

FullChargeCapacity: 1487

Status: Success

BatteryCurrentCapacity: 90

BatteryIsCharging: true

ExternalChargeCapable: true

ExternalConnected: true

FullyCharged: false

GasGaugeCapability: true

Gas gauge means you've got the battery percentage switched on rather than just a green icon.

Good luck

I had the same problem, usage and standby were exactly the same meaning the phone was constantly working even when in standby and draining the battery. Genius bar tested battery twice and said it was fine, it must be a software issue and since the phone was find until the upgrade I thought that was probably correct. I already changed the background refresh, along with all of the other "turn it off" fixes and none of those helped. What actually worked for me was number four on this former apple employee's website, turn off mail push notification and change it to fetch. That completely solved my battery drain issue and my usage and standby are actually accurate now. Since it's been working consistently for about two weeks I have not changes any of the other setting back. All push notifications are off, background refresh, etc. If i need background refresh for google maps, etc., I just turn it on when needed and back off when not.

Check this out:

http://www.overthought.org/blog/2014/the-ultimate-guide-to-solving-ios-battery-d rain

I always check here before I do any ios updates to see if the latest one has an issue with the 4s and if it has been addressed yet ...and yes, apparently it does and has not been addressed. So, I wait and don't update. I'm still on 7.0.2. In my opinion, it doesn't matter if it's a rogue app, push, notifications or whatever...what I am reading is that people had phones that were working fine with all their apps,(rogue or not) push on, notifications on, etc and they did the update and then they have to reset their phones or turn everything off and delete apps. Anyone who wants to claim it's not the update but the way people have their settings is not looking at the glaring evidence that the battery drain starts immediately after the update....and the way you were able to use your phone just the day prior is no more....so you have to change everything or do the annoying and time consuming reset and back up process. I love my iPhone, but this is ridiculous that every update people have to worry about losing data or battery power drainage. and FYI....I appreciate those that come on here to help, but please don't be so impatient/curt with people who may come on here like myself to see if or what is happening to others concerning a new update. sometimes it just helps to know that it's not just you that is having problems. I have had to read through sometimes hundreds of posts in the past to fix past battery drain issues until I found the solution that worked for me...because they don't all work for everyone.

I also want to add that another reason I need to keep checking this topic is that the solution to another issue I have.... which is FaceTime not working due to an expired certificate (apparently expired in April) is suppose to correct itself by installing the latest ios update...so I keep waiting for an update that isn't going to cause me another issue like battery drain.