iOS 8.1.3 - Battery draining very quickly

Yes, it is amazing how estable I feel the battery now.

I will try logging in to iCloud only for a backup and i'll follow your suggestion: only in the night and plugged to the charger. Then in the morning I'll logout.

Regards.

Sorry to keep this thread going as it seems to want to die, but I was curious, Amalokch, how your experience with logging in and out of iCloud, if you tried, fared? Did you go back to great battery life after logging in and then back out later on?

Thanks.

After receiving an email from the Apple Senior Advisor indicating the engineers were also spinning their wheels on my issue, I replied with the following email:

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Dear ----,

I’m a bit, may be more than a bit, concerned that the engineers are worried about stuff we have already ruled out. Even though the original case may have mentioned or there may have been an emphasis in the write up on this case about the iPhone 5 battery being potentially bad or experiencing excessive battery drain, I’m 100% certain, will be a non issue once we figure out why, as a recent example, my iPhone 6 spun its tires burning 850 Mb in Documents & Sync in the last 18 hours.

We started with this being an issue with my wife’s iPhone 5. But, we no longer have that phone, it has been sold. It is no longer about an iPhone 5 or its battery. It’s about a problem we have on both of the phones we have now, a 5s and a less than 1 month old iPhone 6. And, it is NOT a hardware issue.

The problem is brain dead simple to replicate on ANY iPhone. Just log into my wife’s iCloud account at the same time her iMac is running utilizing the same iCloud account. To eliminate the possibility of ANY 3rd party software conflict, I replicated the problem with a brand new, right out of the box iPhone 6 with nothing installed and only logged into the affected iCloud account.

The problem's essential symptom is:

Excessive Unproductive Network Communication with Apple’s iCloud Servers

The problem being ‘in-force' is easily identifiable using the Documents & Sync stat located in Settings>Cellular>System Services>Documents & Sync, the only objective and indisputable means to claim that a problem exists for me with only the native features provided within Apple’s iOS. Yes, it is true that other consequential symptoms are excessive battery drain and the phone can become very warm when the ‘Excessive… ‘ is performed using Cellular Data Services, but those are fairly subjective observations.

Of course, the fact of this stat being outrageously high is a problem for us. But, the problem to be solved is answering the question of ‘WHY is this number so large?’ and the focus should be on remediating it.

Hello again!

I must to say that every time I login into icloud the battery start dropping insanely quickly. The only thing that help me is logout from icloud. I still can not find other solution.

Just thought I'd provide an update on the progress getting to the bottom of my problem.

Last Friday, I was contacted by AppleCare outreach. Over a 5 hour period, logs were captured on my iPhone 6 while my wife's iMac was on and off. We were able to clearly see the results of a problem when her computer was on. When her computer was off, data usage fell to near zero. And, of course, battery drainage and heating subsided. When her computer was turned on and logged into the affect iCloud account, all of the problems resumed.

Apple collected those logs from my phone and did a data capture of my wife's iMac. They are confident they have enough to identify why the problem appears. They expect engineering to respond in about a week with the results.

I provide another update with I have something more to share.

Location services, go the following location in iphonesettings:

Settings->Privacy->Location Services

scroll all the way down and Click System Services.

Disable Cell Network Search, Setting Time Zone, and Wifi Networking.

You can also try disabling these one at a time.

Taken fromthis website

Before go bed... I close all apps and put it to airplain mode... my phone was 54%. When I woke up it was 28%... I never seen that before...

and during day, I don't understand how it can drain so fast... Happy to see that im not alone... but sad for apple... won't probably buy iphone again if this issue is not resolved.

The ONLY thing that has worked for me is to sign out of iCloud completely. See my earlier posts if you need to know how to do that. I have locations services on, and most apps allowed to use cellular data. I do have background refresh off as well as all push notifications off. But since I've signed out of iCloud, my phone last 2 days with normal (for me) use.

So what do you suggest? Killing all apps and restart after iOS update or re-install instead?

At the risk of jinxing myself, I am happy to report that all of a sudden my battery life has been acting normal even while signed into iCloud. I do not know if it was the 8.3 update or if Apple fixed something on their end that stopped my phone from constantly trying to connect or sync with iCloud (or whatever the heck it was doing) but it apparently has been remedied.

As you may recall, I was able to solve my batter problem by completely signing out of iCloud in the settings. I would occasionally sign back in to let the phone do an automated iCloud back up over night. Then I would sign back out in the morning. With this, I was unable to drain the battery in one day. I was going to bed with at least 40% battery remaining.

After the 8.3 update, I decided to not sign out of iCloud one morning just to see if there was any improvement. And what do you know, there was.I was getting similar results to what I was getting while signed out of iCloud. So something has changed somewhere for me, anyway. Yesterday, for example, I took the phone off the charging dock at about 7AM. I used my phone quite a bit during the day, 5-6 calls (one for 40 minutes), had a lot of texts, did some surging, and streamed SiriusXM while walking for about 90 minutes. During the walk I had 3 fitness apps running at the same time measuring the length of my walk (thus using the GPS) and one of the apps measured my heart rate as I was wearing a Bluetooth heart monitor strap. At about midnight, my battery level was still at 30%. Wowzer!

I will add one additional factor to all this. I had removed my Facebook app and now access Facebook via the mobile site thru Safari. I don't think that will make a ton of difference as FB was never shown in the battery usage screen as being a hog, but i don't mind using FB this way.

Also, all this time, I have had location services on for most apps but background refresh and push email turned off.

So, as I said, maybe Apple did something in the 8.3 update or maybe they corrected something on their end to stop the constant iCloud drain. Anyway, as of now I am back to great battery life, even while signed into iCloud.

Hope everyone else gets this worked out as well.

Ok I will try tonight to update 8.3...

Hope to see improvement

After 4+ months of dealing with this problem that included 3 data captures of my wife's iMac, the trigger for us regarding the problems syncing with iCloud, and 5 hours of logs off my iPhone 6 to be analyzed by Apple engineers that included times my wife's computer was both on and off to demonstrate the difference in data usage and battery drain under those conditions, I can say with very reasonable certainty that the iOS 8.3 and corresponding Mac OS 10.10.3 update has solved the problem.

We have now been running for about 2 weeks and data usage with the iCloud Servers attempting to sync has dropped from a rate of 31 GBs to under 15 MBs per month. Yes, you read it right. We were burning 2000 times as much data doing absolutely nothing important on both of our phones, a 5s and a 6. Just imagine what that does to battery life! The 5s would last about 5 hours and the 6 was dead in less than 14.

The distasteful aspect of this process was how the engineers were quietly fixing the problem at the same time sending messages to my contact person within Apple that were dismissive in nature in the face of indisputable unreasonable results. I must say, this experience with the multiple times the engineers' responses were inappropriate put a little tarnish on the old Apple shine of the ‘It just works’ mantra. This was my first experience in 34 years that caused me to stop recommending Apple products with out reservations and a disclaimer.

Note to Lawrence: Since the update solved the problem, then I can only conclude that there was a logic bug regarding the reaction within the process to the incoming data that was corrected. There was noting short of logging out of iCloud that circumvented the problem for us, Gator5000e and probably many others. I am not trying to imply that this is the cause of everyones battery use problem, but it is reasonable that it was a cause for many.

meant to say,

After 4+ months of dealing with this data usage and battery drain problem that included 3 data captures of my wife's iMac, the trigger for us regarding the problems syncing with iCloud, and 5 hours of logs off my iPhone 6 to be analyzed by Apple engineers that included times my wife's computer was both on and off to demonstrate the difference in data usage and battery drain under those conditions, I can say with very reasonable certainty that the iOS 8.3 and corresponding Mac OS 10.10.3 update has solved the problem.

We have now been running for about 2 weeks and data usage with the iCloud Servers attempting to sync has dropped from a rate of 31 GBs to under 15 MBs per month. Yes, you read it right. We were burning 2000 times as much data doing absolutely nothing important on both of our phones, a 5s and a 6. Just imagine what that does to battery life! The 5s would last about 5 hours and the 6 was dead in less than 14.

The distasteful aspect of this process was how the engineers were quietly fixing the problem at the same time sending messages to my contact person within Apple that were dismissive in nature in the face of indisputable unreasonable results. I must say, this experience with the multiple times the engineers' responses were inappropriate put a little tarnish on the old Apple shine of the ‘It just works’ mantra. This was my first experience in 34 years that caused me to stop recommending Apple products without reservations and with a disclaimer.

Since the update solved the problem, then I can only conclude that there was a logic bug regarding the reaction within the process to the incoming data that was corrected. There was noting short of logging out of iCloud that circumvented the problem for us, Gator5000e and probably many others noted on other threads. I am not trying to imply that this is the cause of everyones battery use problem, but it is reasonable that it was a cause for many.

I am also having the same problem. It's frustrating. My phone has 55% last night before I went to bed and nothing is being used on it. This morning, dead (within 6 hours). Normally, I would have had 50% left. So frustrating.

Have you updated to iOS 8.3?