iOS 8.1.3 - Battery draining very quickly

OK So my search for better battery life continues. However I may have stumbled on something. Previously, I had enabled iCloud Drive on my apple ID. I had momentarily enabled it on my phone months ago, then quickly disabled it. However it seems it was still communicating with the drive somehow.

Yesterday, after being down to 60% battery well before noon, I tried signing out of iCloud all together, created a new iCloud ID (without enabling iCloud drive), and then signed in with that. Since I have done this, my phone has been cool to the touch, and My battery is still at 98% this morning.

I've never had iCloud Drive enabled, to the best of my knowledge. I do have photos stream on, as well as Find My iPhone. Everything else under iCloud is turned off.

How did you create a new iCloud ID? This the same as your Apple ID, is it not (the same ID you use to access iTunes, etc)? So you just signed out of everything on your devices and computer, created a new Apple ID and signed back in again. Does that sound correct?

Under Settings->iCloud, scroll all the way down click sign out. When prompted, Leave all data on phone when signing out. Once signed out, on that same page you will see a sign in option or an option to create an iCloud id. I used that and just used another email address and made sure I did not enabled drive.

OK, but doesn't that change your Apple ID for everything....iCloud Drive and iTunes, etc? (Sorry to be dense here).

Your iTunes account is separate. I am still using my original. It does setup a new iCloud account (and all it entails) though.

Gator5000e wrote:

Lawrence, I'm not sure where you arrived at the conclusion that the update process is the problem and not the iOS itself.

7 year's experience reading threads exactly like this one after every update. And every time most of the posters were absolutely certain that the problem must be the version they just updated to. Just like you. Here are some examples:

iPhone 4s Battery Life?

iPhone 4S 5.0.1 Update Improves Battery w/ Settings Reset

iOS 5.0.1 - Made my iPhone 4S battery performance worse!

What happened to the battery fix? I have been waiting for tech help since 5:33pm

Battery draining and phone warm

iPhone 4s Battery problem maybe found!!

Battery life/iOS 5.0.1

iPhone 4S battery issue detected (really)

Battery Draining much faster on 4S, what can I do?

Battery Meter/Life Problems with 4.0.2

4.0.2 guzzling my battery. Your's too?

4.0.1 battery life

Battery runs out very quicky in iOS 4.0.1

Battery nearly nonexistant after 4.0 upgrade

Dead battery after few hours on standby using 4.0 software

3.1.3 battery problem

OS 3.1.3 battery issues

3.1.3 upgrade - shortened battery life?

Battery life cut after 3.1.3 update on iPhone 3G

3.1.3 Firmware is a battery killer - how do I back out this upgrade?

Poor battery life with iPhone 3G running 3.1.2

3.1.2 EXTREME battery drain - what gives?

3.1 Battery nightmare

iPhone 3GS with fw 3.1 – battery life gets even worse

Battery Issues with 3.0.1

BATTERY drain with 3.0

upgrade to 3.0 drains my battery

Battery Drain after Update 2.2.1

Battery Life Radically Decreased after 2.2.1 Firmware Update

Gator5000e wrote:

L

Something in iOS 8 is not playing nice with the cellular portion (for lack of a better term) of the phone. Something related to the cellular portion of the iOS is draining the phone.

Why does my phone not have this problem if it is as you describe? And why don't you see 100 million other posts from all of those who updated to 8.1.3 about it?

You can pursue this hypothesis if you wish, but I seriously doubt that it will fix your problem.

I Have had every iPhone since the 3GS. I know when there is an issue. since I'm not an engineer I have no idea what the cause is. But it's real for me. I'm glad your phone is working well. But when I have the phone replaced and set up with just the stock apps and default settings, there is something going on. And as to why 100 million don't post here, I can only guess most dont know about this community. Most will go to an Apple Store. And others have no idea if battery life is a problem. They just figure they have to chareve their phones many times a day and it's normal. I asked my friend yesterday how his 6 is with the battery. He just shrugged and said I don't know. I just plug it in a few to da a day. And this site isn't official apple support anyway so most people go to the store, as I mentioned. When I had my phone replaced three other people were at the bar with battery issues. So the participation on this site is not indicative of how widespread or not a problem is.

ALso my battery went from 72% to 67% just typing this message. Anyone who can solve this would be my hero!

Gator...

Yes, creating and logging in under a different Apple ID creates an issue regarding purchases.

I was actively working with one on this thread to identify what was causing his drain. But, he understandably was willing to use a workaround by adding a battery pack. The troubleshooting process can be very time consuming.

I posted many times here and elsewhere regarding similar problems I and my wife were experiencing. I even initiated an Apple support case. No, I didn't pay for it as it is an Apple problem, either a software bug or data corruption and not a user error.

After working through the process; escalated to a senior advisor, a trip to the genius bar for documenting the issue and involving Apple engineering to troubleshoot the problem, I do not have the source of the problem identified. We do know that it was related to our Apple ID account as I was able to recreate the problem on multiple devices logged into the same Apple ID.

It may or may not be related to cell data service. But, if we were logged into iCloud using the problem Apple ID even with all services in iCloud off, the problem persisted. However, it seem to be gone when cell data was turned off. But, it might be deceptive as excessive use of the cell modem creates a lot of heat and drains the battery. And, cell data usage is easy to track since it is natively provided in the OS.

We did experience a very short, 3 day reprieve, from the problem when the password was updated. I don't know why as I do not have access to what is done as a consequence of changing it.

I can conclusively say that downgrading to 8.1.2 had not positive result since I did that and the problem persisted.

When our Apple ID and all associated data when into engineering troubleshooting (setting to a special password for the account that provided Apple access), our phones were logged out of iCloud. Yesterday our account was taken out of troubleshooting. We are now not experiencing the problem. However, Apple will be following up with me in 4 days to verify all is okay.

The process of bringing our devices back online created duplicate calendars and those were deleted. I did notice that shared photo streams remained but the photos were removed.

Unfortunately, nothing was communicated from engineering regarding any changes that were implemented by them. And, I didn't not have direct contact with them during this process. Had I had the app referenced somewhere in this thread that identified processes that were running like activity monitor available on the Mac OS, I may have had a better shot at identifying the source of the problem.

I truly wish that my problem is solved. But, if it has been and it was data corruption that was removed, then I'll have to suggest that it will just reveal itself again in the future for me or others since data corruption is not created by the user and the potential introduction of corruption should be identified and prevented by Apple's software.

If I have anything else to offer in the future, I will report it. If you have any questions about our experience, I will respond as best I can.

Best of luck to all of us.

Lawrence,

I'm very happy for you that you do not have a problem currently and haven't had a similar problem in the past.

Having said that, just because you have not experienced the problem that others have, doesn't make it a phantom problem that seemingly appears at the release of every new OS.

I don't think your dismissive nature of your posts is constructive.

I never said it was a phantom problem. I said it was a rare problem, and I stand by that. And I said it isn't a problem specifically with 8.1.3, which others have confirmed by going back to 8.1.2 and forward to whatever they may have had access to. My point was that if you have this problem it needs to be solved for you, as it is unique to your situation. You will note that it is not one problem; people who have solved it have found totally different solutions. I also said (and demonstrated) that it is not a new problem; it has been around for 7 years. I had hoped that my posts encourage people to look where the problem might be, rather than to waste time looking for where it is not.

Update from me:

Despite having seemingly resolved the issues last week, the battery drain and overheating have returned. It's not so much a problem when the phone is on standby, but when using it, the battery will drop around 1% per minute of use and will get very warm to the touch.

In Settings > Cellular > Systems Services the main offenders are Exchange Accounts and Siri, both of which are adding up to over 1.5 MB each in less than a 24 hour period. After completely deleting my Exchange account from my device and disabling Siri, battery consumption is back to normal (read: good) and the iPhone stays cool to the touch when using it for longer periods.

Now, this is not to say the problem won't return later on, but I'm going to leave Exchange off my phone for the time being and see what happens. I think it goes without saying that I should not have to delete any accounts from my iPhone just to use it normally. I've owned a number of iPhones over the years (including a 5c running on iOS 8.1.2) and I've never had these kinds of problems before.

My update is:

I just turned off WiFi and reset my cell data stats to get an accurate reading as I noticed that the phone was getting warm.

One hour later, I’ve burned 40.6 MB in System Services and 40.4 of those are Documents & Sync.

Needless to say, it’s back in spades. Oh, what fun!!!

Sorry to hear it, Brian. Although every Apple Store I've ever seen is totally packed with customers, I can't honestly say that Apple does much in the way of customer service, especially when we're all but forced to update iOS with packages that are detrimental to the functionality of our devices.

You listening, Apple?

We're not crazy or imagining these issues. Most of us have been Apple customers for many years and know our devices well enough to determine whether or not they're operating properly.

Record sales, revenues, and profits will eventually peak, and one day you will have to actually start protecting your customer base rather than just growing it. Ignoring problems like this is not what I would call being a step in the right direction.

Good deal and hopefully things stay true. Knock on wood - I am now about a month past doing the steps that worked for me - and back to going a full day on one charge with plenty of charge to spare. Forgot to plug in last night and still was over 40% this morning (although I used the phone less than usual the day before - was still off power for about 24 hours at that point - no phantom drain).

Even before doing the Exchange reset, the first two steps restored my phone to a state of practical battery life with the 'device heat' and excessive drain issue eliminated. Before I gave that much time though (maybe the issue would have returned?) I did the exchange nuke and pave reset. That has made battery life better than I had recently remembered it being even before the 8.1.3 update.

I'd say for some, maybe many - the exchange sync revision issue, killing what ever loop that a present issue causes, is the fix that works.

(it's something to do with exchange image snapshots of current mail statuses - and even this description layman's could be way off a proper explanation - but apparently the number of these versioning can exponentially climb on an active account where some base sync value has corrupted or fallen out of normal sync).

the issue with devices, even those that have gotten new phones and have the same issue - has to come down to something in process of elimination. That being said - It's frustrating that any issues exist like this... these kinds of bugs shouldn't exist.