iOS 8.1.3 - Battery draining very quickly

Gator5000e wrote:

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?

Right. What's eating your battery is some app, probably running in background and using data. So a useful place to look (at least when not connected to WiFi) is Settings/Cellular, which will tell you which apps are using the most data, and, by extension, the most battery. Things that potentially use a lot of energy legitimately (get to illegitimately in a moment):

• MS Exchange account sync
• iCloud account sync
• Likewise, Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, Microsoft Live account sync
• FaceBook
• Twitter
• Snapchat (and other social networking)
• Find my Friends
• Any mapping program (Maps, Google Maps, Waze, etc) that is actually following a route, whether actively displaying it or not
• Audio and video streaming apps if you don't shut them down

The other category is apps that are stuck attempting to sync but failing, and that further are not well written, so they don't recover from this error condition gracefully. With over a million apps in the app store it isn't practical for Apple to test for all error conditions before releasing an app; what they do is look primarily for unacceptable content and security issues.

I should mention something special about MS Exchange. There's a bug in the Exchange ActiveSync protocol that has been there since the beginning of time. If a sync is interrupted the Exchange server will create a new connection to the phone. But the phone won't know this, and will continue attempting to use the old connection in addition to the new connection. This is probably the primary cause of battery drain after an iOS update, as the update has a high probability of interrupting an Exchange sync. To fix it you need to go to Settings/Mail,Contacts,Calendars, tap on the Exchange account and turn it off (all of the switches). Then reboot the phone. If the battery drain is back to normal this was the problem. You can then turn the switches back on and, allowing an hour or so to resync the account, your battery should stay normal. I've seen this less recently, so perhaps Microsoft has actually finally fixed it.

I've read elsewhere that Facebook synching all the time is a major battery hog. I don't have it on my iPhone, however.

But many of these other apps, especially email, I don't want to get rid of - thus reducing my phone's functionality greatly - all because 8.1.3 is behaving poorly. Otherwise, why have a smartphone at all?

I've deleted Battery Doctor, as per your implied suggestion. May try Twitter next, though I would prefer to keep it.

I had all the same issues mentioned on this and other threads on my iPhone 6: battery percentage falling by the minute, cellular data used at extreme levels, usage/standby levels almost identical, etc. The cure for me required two things: First, I improved my apple ID password at https://appleid.apple.com/. Immediately after logging in to all my devices with the new password, I had two days of exceptionally good battery life. On the third day, I noticed increased drain again (although not as bad as before). The only thing I could trace it to was using my old MacBook Pro and logging in to iCloud Drive. I shut down my MacBook Pro and the exceptional battery life returned.

I have no idea why these things fixed it, but it's been over a week now and all is well.

Dgoodin, did you access that apple id site via your phone or computer or doesn't it make a difference?

Via computer. I doubt that it makes a difference.

I have also heard about ActiveSync issues, though not so much about the connection itself. I've been using Exchange email on my iPhone since I bought my first iPhone 4 back in 2010 and I've never had a drain issue until now.

The AS problem I've been reading about has more to do with corrupt calendar invitations/replies through Exchange. Those corruption apparently cause some sort of push loop that kills batteries.

roscoe108 wrote:

I have also heard about ActiveSync issues, though not so much about the connection itself. I've been using Exchange email on my iPhone since I bought my first iPhone 4 back in 2010 and I've never had a drain issue until now.

The AS problem I've been reading about has more to do with corrupt calendar invitations/replies through Exchange. Those corruption apparently cause some sort of push loop that kills batteries.

Yes, the corrupt calendar invitation problem is real, but is a different problem. It happens when you delete a calendar invitation after it was accepted. And I think it was fixed by Microsoft. The connection problem goes back to the original iPhone. I've seen it from the server end, with individual phones having many connections but only one active. I've also experienced it several times a couple of years ago, but none recently.

I noticed my location services pointer was always on. Even though I forced quit every app, I finally through trial and error, found the culprit to be the Yahoo Weather app. Even though it wasn't running, not even in the background, unless I turned location services to NEVER for the app, it would stay on, and the location services pointer would come back on the second I switched Yahoo Weather App back to ALWAYS. Looks like I'll be using The Weather Channel app for awhile, or from now on.

I had also been turning off and on the services in SYSTEM SERVICES, but non of them mattered. Just the Yahoo Weather App.

I've had none of the heat, or battery issues, none that I've noticed. I'm running an iPhone 5. Apple fixed the On/Off button flex cord issue, replaced the battery, and the camera,(no idea why) back in December 2014 under recall.

I too though I had my data usage & battery drain issue fixed by visiting the appleid website to update my password. However, like you, 3 days later the problem came back with a vengeance. I went from burning 11-13 Mb per hour to 38 - 40 Mb per hour doing nothing important. I know the amount data usage since it was cell data usage alerts from AT&T that brought this to my attention when my wife's phone didn't have wifi available. Prior to that she would complain that the battery was draining quickly. It would be nice if Apple would add data stats for communication over WiFi as well. I would have recognized the high data usage earlier.

I replicated the problem on my phone with an unlimited data plan with everything turned off except cell data and logged into her Apple ID with all features turned off. The problem goes away when I log out of her Apple ID account.

I am currently working with a Apple Senior support rep that is in communication with software engineering to identify what is causing this. Unfortunately, the engineer assigned to the case must be running on auto pilot as it is clear he/she is not reading the notes sent to him/her. His/Her responses thus far have been to request that we rule out everything we have already ruled out and subsequently noted on the case file. If anything useful comes out of the exchange with the engineer, I post it.

The idea of the iCloud Drive playing a role is interesting. I'll give that a go. That'll be easy to test.

BTW, I have three iMacs and an iPad all logged into iCloud Drive, and battery life is great now. It's only when the old (2009) MacBook Pro is on that the drain begins. Again, no idea why that would be the case.

How old are your iMacs?

We have an iPhone 5, 5s, iPad Air 2, Apple TV 3, iMac models 10,1 and 12,1

I'm testing the iCloud Drive suggestion now.

I did the backup > restore > backup > re-add Exchange process about 2 hours ago. Then I remembered that I'm logged into iTunes and iCloud on my Macbook Air, and into my iTunes account again on my wife's HP laptop. So, minor epiphany there. Logged out of all my Apple IDs on the Macbook, laptop and iPhone, for both iTunes and iCloud, and now waiting to see if that will make a difference on top of everything else I've done today.

So far, I'm down just 1% in the past hour with some moderate usage. So far so good. Fingers crossed anyways.

My iMacs are late 2009, mid 2010, and late 2013.

I did a restore and set up the phone as new and I am still having the fast battery drain issue. So either I have a corrupted version of iOS 8.1.3 on my computer or there is an app that was updated and is now causing issues.

I have a back up dated before this whole issue began and even before 8.1.3 was released. So my question is, if I restore to this back up, will the apps that are part of the back up be in the state (version) they were when the backup was made or will they be updated versions?

Also, my iPad does not seem to have the same problem and it has similar apps on it. Could I restore the phone using a iPad backup?

Thanks in advance.