iOS 8.1.3 - Battery draining very quickly

Me too. Somewhere around 21% or so. Second only to email which is well over 30%. Is that normal? I'm not emailing a ton (20 messages a day maybe) but I do have my work Exchange account on there in addition to Gmail and Hotmail...

Mine has been at around 30%, sometimes higher. I don't use Exchange so my email is pretty low on the battery usage list. Do you have Exchange fetch mail or info?

Exchange doesn't show up separately in Battery Usage. I think it just gets lumped in with all the other email accounts. But in System Services, there is a line item for "Exchange Accounts." It's currently at 418 KB and grows at a rate of about 500 KB per 24 hours. I have no idea if that's good or bad or what.

And just so I'm clear, you are restoring from backup, not as a new iPhone, using a backup file you've just made? Or are you using an older backup file (i.e. pre-8.1.3)?

For what its worth I have been having good results with the fixes in this thread for a few weeks. However I have a couple macs at home. If I power my MacBook, my phone gets warm and starts draining again. Even does it if its just sitting on at home and I and my phone are miles away! I have tried narrowing it down, but cannot figure it out. I have disabled everything on my mac and phone for iCloud, and continuity. Removed just about every app from my phone. And did a factory reset.

My other mac (2011 mini server) is always on and has all that stuff enabled and it doesn't cause this sort of issue.

Curious if anyone else notices a difference if they power their Macs down? It is a really strange issue.

When I use the current iTunes version, connect my phone - and select it in iTunes - you get the split pane with the iPhone name and summary in the top pane

and then a pane labeled 'Backups' below.

After doing a new backup and sync...

From the top pane (which in my case is under the header iPhone 6) - I first selected to 'Restore iPhone'

this completely factory restores the iPhone. Wipes out EVERYTHING.

Following that - I then did the restore or maybe is then setup from Backup to the iPhone.

You need to first do the restore process... then use the backup to set the phone up.

it's super intuitive in iTunes. Just make sure backup first... restore iphone - then use the backup to bring it back online.

I just realized my iPad Air 2 is also on 8.1.3 but not experiencing the battery issues the phone is. Now, the iPad is WiFi only. If my complete restore as a new phone and manually resetting it up (not from backup) fails, is there any reason I couldn't use the iPad backup for the iPhone? Or is that just a stupid question and idea?

jfialkowski wrote:

For what its worth I have been having good results with the fixes in this thread for a few weeks. However I have a couple macs at home. If I power my MacBook, my phone gets warm and starts draining again. Even does it if its just sitting on at home and I and my phone are miles away! I have tried narrowing it down, but cannot figure it out. I have disabled everything on my mac and phone for iCloud, and continuity. Removed just about every app from my phone. And did a factory reset.

My other mac (2011 mini server) is always on and has all that stuff enabled and it doesn't cause this sort of issue.

Curious if anyone else notices a difference if they power their Macs down? It is a really strange issue.

Not all that strange if you are syncing both your iPhone and your Mac with iCloud. Every time something changes on your Mac that might require an update to any iCloud content (mail, contacts, calendars, notes, reminders, and files from iWork) your iPhone gets a notification that it has to act on, even if that action is to note that no update is required.

Yeah, but I long ago disabled iCloud on my phone. Not like its that useful from my phone anyway.

Gator5000e wrote:

Funny, but the biggest culprit for battery usage under the usage section of the settings it the Home & Lock screen and Settings. Weird.

Remember that those values are percentages that add up to 100%. So if nothing else is going on then the Home & Lock screens are going to be a higher percentage, but of a smaller total usage.

Word. Very good point.

Okay, thanks. Currently have done the restore, backup, and re-added Exchange. Just waiting for my 4,811 songs to reload 🙂

Will circle back in a day or two once I've had a chance to reassess everything. Cheers for the help!

Wow, why can't Apple say that? That is the first good (excellent) explanation of why those values are so high. But then, the usage screen is not telling me what's eating my battery, not really, right?

Roscoe, did you use a pre or post 8.1.3 backup? I am currently restoring from scratch.

That's exactly what I've been trying to determine. Other than the Battery Usage screen, if you go Settings > Cellular > System Services you also get a sense of what's running on your iPhone, either in the foreground or the background. However, there is no way to tell from those SS values if some application is running too much, too high, abnormal, or anything. It's a bit confusing.