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Where is this magical iPhone 6 Plus battery life?

iPhone 6 Plus users, are you getting the great battery life that most reviewers and reporters are describing with the iPhone 6 plus? I've had mine for two weeks, and while I wouldn't say the battery life is bad exactly, it hasn't been the stellar improvement overall compared to my old iPhone 5 that reports have led me to expect. Many people seem to indicate you can go a day and a half or two days with moderate usage without recharging, and I am lucky to make it to the end of the day and not get a low battery warning.

I've fiddled with settings (background app refresh, push e-mail, deleting Facebook app altogether, turning off Pebble/bluetooth, etc.) and while it may make some difference around the edges, I'm certainly not finding that I have more than 50% battery left at the end of a day of standard usage, like some people are saying. My usage isn't light, but it certainly isn't heavy, either. I'm not watching a lot of video or playing many video games or anything during the work day. I'm probably actively looking at the screen for maybe a total of 3 hours a day.

Are my expectations too high? Do I have a substandard battery? I am willing to change settings, but at the same time, a great part of the appeal of the 6 plus for me was not having to do that battery dance all the time. Any ideas?

iPhone 6 Plus, iOS 8.1.1

Posted on Dec 10, 2014 2:44 PM

61 replies

Jan 16, 2015 9:51 AM in response to djsnugs

I feel your pain djsnugs. I've tried the calibration thing to no avail. I did a chat with AppleCare yesterday and since I've tried all the usual recommendations already, they suggested that I wipe the phone and restore. I feel like if it's a software issue with some app(s), restoring will just put me right back where I started, so part of me wants to try wiping the phone entirely and seeing if the stock model lasts better. At least that would narrow it down to an app for sure. However, I'm not sure I want to deal with the hassle. Today, I'm turning off Bluetooth and Push and Location Services altogether, and I'm going to see what the battery looks like at the end of the day. Frankly I don't even really want it to work because my brother in law doesn't have to turn all that stuff off to get his 2-day battery.... I shouldn't have to, either.

Jan 16, 2015 9:57 AM in response to Edward Hargreaves

Edward,

I check in on that from time to time and I don't ever see anything shocking. I would love it if Apple would include a tab for % of battery (not % of usage) used since the last full charge (not in the last 24/7). That might be more illuminating. But maybe, for kicks, I'll post a series of screen shots here throughout today to document how the battery fares without Location Services on.

Jan 16, 2015 9:59 AM in response to Darren Raymond

i had a problem with my 6 plus where all of a sudden after working perfectly for awhile i got into a situation where usage and standby time were equal - usually indicating something is running in the background - what was odd was (at least according to the battery monitor) the battery wasnt draining especially dast - in fact i saw the 2 numbers go up to almost 20 hours

i went into background app refresh and turned off a bunch of things that i really didnt need refreshing in the background and everything went back to normal

right now my 6 plus is showing 1 hour 7 minutes usage 6 hours 23 minutes of standby and the battery monitor shows 97% left

dont know if this relates to your problem but you might take a look at what you have refreshing in the background

Jan 16, 2015 10:05 AM in response to needleman_mark

Mark, the usage/standby thing is interesting to me. I've always assumed that "standby" meant time since last full charge that is not included in "usage" time. It sounds like you're saying that standby = time using phone + time not using phone.

Anyway, I've had background app refresh turned off for a few weeks now, in the hopes that it would improve things, but I haven't noticed a change. I don't really find that Background App Refresh does much for me, even with Tweetbot or an app you'd expect would benefit. I'm fine to wait the 2.2 seconds it takes the app to update. Not a big deal.

Jan 16, 2015 10:11 AM in response to Darren Raymond

According to an apple support page:

View Usage to see the amount of time your iOS device has been awake and in use since the last full charge. The device is awake if you’re on a call, using apps, listening to music, browsing the web, or sending and receiving email, or if an app refreshes in the background. View Standby to see the amount of time the device has been turned on since its last full charge, including the time the device has been asleep.

my reading of this (and its a little ambiguous) is standy time includes usage time - but i could be wrong

i didnt mean to imply that what i did would solve everyone's battery problems - it did fix mine though

Jan 16, 2015 10:15 AM in response to needleman_mark

Mark — I didn't take you to be saying that. I appreciate everyone's attempts to help. And it seems to me you are interpreting the Apple support page correctly. I didn't know that!

djsnugs

Level 1

0 points

Jan 16, 2015 11:40 AM in response to Darren Raymond

wow talk about bump. Obviously you never got your issue sorted out then either.

As far as you're phone seeming to charge "too fast" are you using an ipad charger to do it cause who uses the weak 1 it comes with to charge anyway? They're so slow.

I would never intentionally charge my phone slower but that does give me another interesting idea for a test. Use the crappy charger i comes with and see if it takes forever to charge. I bet it would just zip up to 100% in no time which should be a good thing, but in this case i would fail the test. Fast charging being a bad thing, the irony.

All the geniuses could do for people with our case is suggest a restore and then tell you to go here http://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/

I watched a video on the browser and surfed some sites and i'll admit the battery looks a little better than before the restore but overall i'd say that's a problem cause of the "little" better part. There is literally zero things installed. What's going to happen once i go on an installing rampage and start having video apps n such being launched n closed etc?. Even with nothing installed i am not impressed.

I was hearing little whispers you know, like little birds chirpin about some kind of fabled tablet like battery life on this thing. Wow g that's funny cause the cheezy piece of junk droid 7 incher i have lost like 3 percent from streaming video on both wifi and on LTE in a moving vehicle at full quality and brightness for an amount of time that would have brought my iphone's battery to it's knees. After that i went into the teamspeak droid app, put it in the background so i could chat it up and surf the web a bunch at the same time n wow it still only lost 3 percent. Oh whats this? MY iphone 6 plus lost more percent in less time and all it did was just sit there in my pocket on idle with my screen sleeping like it always does? LOLZ (sobs)

Oh well. Prolly not much we can do man. Their crystal ball battery diagnostics thingy says our better is just fine and we're just crazy.

Jan 16, 2015 11:37 AM in response to djsnugs

Yeah, this is the kind of thing I'm experiencing too dj. I feel like they must have at least 2 different vendors of batteries, one of which gave them a bad batch or something. There's no way your phone should drain so fast doing nothing.

I did charge via iPad charger/2.1 once or twice, but in general the percentage goes up pretty fast even when I charge via the included 1 amp charger. Something's not right.

djsnugs

Level 1

0 points

Jan 16, 2015 11:42 AM in response to Darren Raymond

lol i just put this thing into an alarm clock that has a usb in it thats supposed to charge and its like the worst charger ever even worst than the 1 the phone comes with and it like fired up full blast like a rocket to 100 so fast my head spun lol.

Jan 16, 2015 12:11 PM in response to djsnugs

djsnugs wrote:

Their crystal ball battery diagnostics thingy says our better is just fine and we're just crazy.

So do your own controlled test:

Make a backup. Restore as new. Test the issue again. Here's a way to test your battery 'issue' without any bias, which you could do before or after setting it up as new:

• First, charge up the device to 100%. To enable the percentage indicator, go to Settings > General > Usage, and turn on Battery Percentage.

• Once the device is charged to 100%, make sure to close out all Apps that are running on the device. In iOS 7/8, you close out running apps by double-tapping the Home Button, and then swiping your finger up across the preview screen of each app to move it off the top of the screen.

• Then, turn off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and cellular data. Settings > Wi-Fi > Wi-Fi: OFF, Settings > Bluetooth > Bluetooth: OFF, & Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data: OFF. This will not prevent you from receiving any phone calls.

• Go back to the Home Screen, and take a screenshot. Press both the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button together briefly, and you will see the screen flash white for a split-second, and an image will be saved to your Photo App Camera Roll.

• Disconnect the iPhone from the charger, and lock the screen so it is dark.

• Let the iPhone sit in this ‘standby state’ for as long as possible, preferably overnight.

• In the morning, unlock the screen, and then take a screenshot of the Home Screen again.

These two screenshots will help to document how long the device was in standby mode, and how much battery percentage was used.

djsnugs

Level 1

0 points

Jan 16, 2015 1:08 PM in response to TJBUSMC1973

my original post says i showed the genius guys like 50 screenshots showing dismal battery life math. They wanted to hear none of it. I have tried every single variation of my own battery test you could ever think of for a month straight before i finally said Screw this and made a genius appointment. Any sort of test you can think of i have tried. I've seen how fast it dies with apps in the background. I've seen how fast it dies with literally no apps running in the background. I've seen how fast it drains after doing a full restore so you have literally zero apps installed so you can't even start to blame stuff in the background cause there's nothing installed other than what comes out of the box. I always have my brightness extremely low. Home screen is always at the top of any battery screen shot and that's mostly from me just staring at the percent bleed out like a stuffed pig. I swipe apps off after i'm using them and i've been doing that for years. I am not a noob. This battery is god awful. I just did a scrub so unfortunately i forgot to back up most of those screen shots that prove i went down to like 20% in less than a half day of my phone sitting there doing nothing. Want me to start making new ones? What good will it do. Apple won't help me. I already showed them 50 screenshots of the worst battery math ever.

Jan 16, 2015 1:33 PM in response to djsnugs

djsnugs wrote:

my original post says i showed the genius guys like 50 screenshots showing dismal battery life math. They wanted to hear none of it. I have tried every single variation of my own battery test you could ever think of for a month straight before i finally said Screw this and made a genius appointment. Any sort of test you can think of i have tried. I've seen how fast it dies with apps in the background. I've seen how fast it dies with literally no apps running in the background. I've seen how fast it drains after doing a full restore so you have literally zero apps installed so you can't even start to blame stuff in the background cause there's nothing installed other than what comes out of the box. I always have my brightness extremely low. Home screen is always at the top of any battery screen shot and that's mostly from me just staring at the percent bleed out like a stuffed pig. I swipe apps off after i'm using them and i've been doing that for years. I am not a noob. This battery is god awful. I just did a scrub so unfortunately i forgot to back up most of those screen shots that prove i went down to like 20% in less than a half day of my phone sitting there doing nothing. Want me to start making new ones? What good will it do. Apple won't help me. I already showed them 50 screenshots of the worst battery math ever.

So, you did the exact same thing I recommended in my steps? You set it up as a new device first? Then you disabled data connectivity, took a screenshot at 100% showing the time, and then let it sit overnight not connected to a charger, then took a new screenshot in the morning?

That's great. Go ahead and post those two screenshots, please.

djsnugs

Level 1

0 points

Jan 16, 2015 2:18 PM in response to TJBUSMC1973

i also got another 6+ i could get around and do some video side by side tests to see whos battery comes out on top and we can even start a betting line the odds +500 my battery to lose -500 for theirs to win. Screenshot results from both phones coming soon. Who will come out on top?

I've tried every variation of the see how long it goes overnight thing except your stuff is in a unique order and obviously i can't do that right now cause i need to receive calls so screenies for something like that are gonna take a heck of a lot longer to obtain but i will certainly try your method because i have nothing to lose and thanks and wish me luck.

Jan 16, 2015 5:10 PM in response to Darren Raymond

So, at roughly COB, here are my additional screen shots.

Battery percentage has gone from 98-91% in roughly 6.5 hours of light usage. Does that seem about right, even to people whose batteries last a long time? I would estimate that I've had my screen on and active for maybe a total of 30 minutes during the whole day. No videos, no big downloads, haven't left the house. I would definitely consider this a light usage day.

I found it a bit strange that FaceTime had gone up in usage percentage between the morning and mid afternoon, since I definitely didn't use it for anything. But then it seems *really* strange that it becomes an even higher percentage by 4:42 pm. I didn't use it at all. What is FaceTime doing that is causing it to use battery life?

Location Services, Background App Refresh, and Bluetooth are all still off.

Edit: I suppose if the other apps' usage was higher in the front end of the 24-hour measuring period, then FaceTime can rise even when doing nothing, simply because it's recalculating the 24-hour period.... This is why "time since the last full charge" would be a much more meaningful metric than the last 24 hours.

djsnugs

Level 1

0 points

Jan 16, 2015 6:45 PM in response to Darren Raymond

so basically this is just from it sitting doing nothing 99th percentile of the time. I have tablets,comps, n such sittin around that this thing has become a phone of the dark ages. I'm talking pre cell phone days even. This thing is worthless to take out with you. It sits there on my desk like a lan line phone because that's basically all it is good for. It's not even good for that. The call quality seems pretty dodgey.

As far as safari goes i watched about a less than 3-4 minute video and that's it. This is fresh off a restore with zero apps installed. There isn't even an email or anything synced up. It sat there as a brick... P.S> wow emailing that screeny to post this costed me like 4 percent man.

Where is this magical iPhone 6 Plus battery life?