Q: iOS 8.1.3 - Battery draining very quickly

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.

So after trying most of these fixes I've been trying some on my own! Turn off iCloud Drive. Shockingly it's stopped the drainage! I've been testing it for about 10 mins and it went from 1% a min to 2% in the last 10 mins. Seems to be an iCloud issue? Hmmm.

I am sorry to report that this fix is not universal.  It seemed better for a couple of days after restoring the phone  but after two weeks my iphone 5 is dead by 6 pm.  Yes its battery is good.  Yes I have turned off all the sneaky things that drain it.   Yes I reset my apple password (man what pain that was!).

This  thread reminds me of new age medicine. (Maybe I should face  East and chant OMMMM).  But  it really is not our job to be phone  gurus, probing the psyche of our devices.  The problem is that Apple screwed up with iOS 8 and  Apple needs to fix  it or people are just going to go buy some other kind of phone! Me for example.

Funny thing is that I went to the Apple support web page and it sent me a text with a link to run a diagnostic. I ran the extended diagnostic and then I was taken to a page that said it is recommended that you send your phone in for service or repair. Well, I couldn't do that, so I made an appointment at the local Genius Bar for yesterday. I took the phone in and the tech ran some diagnostics. He never really told me what the issue was but he said he would replace the phone anyway. so he did. I got a new iPhone 6 yesterday.

The thing is, it's running 8.0.2 (it wants me to update to 8.1.3). But even so, I am seeing some significant battery drainage. The phone charged to 100% and this morning at about 7AM I took it off the charger. Now, about 3.5 hours later the battery level is down to 80%. So it doesn't appear that iOS is causing the battery drain - at least for me anyway. It must be one of the apps that I am using. I have, I believe, most background actions turned off. I'm glad Larry has his issue straightened out but mine still persists and is caused by some leak somewhere.

About ready to give up.

This thread has seemingly died. Has everyone resolved their battery problems? I know I haven't. Or maybe everyone just bought a battery case.

BTW, I downgraded to 8.1.2 with no positive benefit.  Because of that result, I reestablished 8.1.3 on both my wife's and my phone, a 5 and a 5s.

We have ruled out hardware and the 8.1.3 update as our problem.  I suspect that the iOS was encountering a condition that was unexpected and not handled creating an endless loop and consequently high data communication, battery drain and high heat.

As I mention earlier, we are not experience the problem during the last few days.  We just logged back into iCloud 3 days ago on all devices.

Even if it is a data corruption issue that has already been cleaned by Apple, the iOS case management of that condition needs to be fixed.

I don't know if my iPhone 5s battery drain/overheating problems are due to 8.1.3 or something else. I had been experiencing battery drainage of about 1% per 2 minutes of use, 5-10% an hour on standby. Here is a list of everything I've tried, followed by what seemed to have helped (ironically, as you'll see):

- Turned off Wi-Fi, 4G, location services, Siri, background app refresh, and iCloud

- Deleted Exchange account entirely

- Backed up iPhone

- Performed a full restore

- Brought iPhone back using previous backup

- Re-added Exchange account

None of this seemed to help very much at all. Then I did the following:

1. Turned Wi-fi, 4G, location services, Siri, and iCloud back ON

2. Allowed location services only for "Find my iPhone"

3. Turned off all services on iCloud except for "Find my iPhone"

Strangely, inexplicably, and ironically, that seemed to have actually HELPED battery life, and overheating is now non-existent. My battery consumption returned in the following manner as of yesterday:

- Took iPhone off charger at 7:00 am

- Full day of moderate usage, including roughly 20 minutes of phone calls, 20 or so emails sent, BBM chats, some web browsing, checked LinkedIn a bit, etc.

- By 7:00 pm that night, my iPhone showed 70% battery still remaining

So I have no idea why battery consumption would all of a sudden become dramatically improved by turning on location services and iCloud, both only for "Find my iPhone," but I'm guessing that the drainage has something to do with iCloud in some vague way that I don't understand. Perhaps 8.1.3 is constantly making the iPhone hunt around for iCloud, and yet iCloud Drive is also causing battery drain once you are connected to iCloud.

Connecting to iCloud, yet turning iCloud Drive off seems to have been the key here, at least for me. Just saying...

Well, I am an Apple Advisor. One thing I can say is iPhone 5 does have a small replacement program, as there were some batteries that were not that great.

Battery life for moderate use is 6-10 hours. Battery optimization is best. turning down the display brightness, turning off automatic data push for emails and social media apps.

Here is the website to check out for the iPhone 5 replacement program

https://www.apple.com/support/iphone5-battery/

Thanks for chiming into the discussion.

I think we are all trying to solve the generally the same issue.  However, it is very likely that the cause may be different for many of us.

BTW, I did have the battery replaced in my wife's iPhone 5 and that too had no positive effect on the issues we were having. 

In general - it seems different potential issues causing the same thing... In my case - the issue was easily detectable by the phones high temperature during charging... it simply was never going into standby mode.. whatever function it was looping - it made the phone have a very short battery life and also charge slower too - in fact a lower power USB charger couldn't even keep up with the rate of draw the phone had even sitting off.

In my case all the problems started with the install of 8.1.3. In my case - the steps I outlined fully resolved those issues and, knock on wood, still going great. I use my iPhone relatively lightly during the day and unplugged from around 7AM, it still had over 60% battery life at 7PM. It never gets hot and all is well... like it was before I upgraded.

Clearly the steps that worked for me don't work for everyone and also should work to identify then when he issue actually began. Something in doing the update tripped up something... and I was lucky in that the whole iTunes restore iphone, then restore backup, and reset Exchange got it all back to good as new status. And I had tried various half measures - including factory settings resets and such that didn't require the total wipe and restore - to no avail.

For some hopefully what worked for me will work for you. For others, there are legitimate bad batteries too.... for others yet, I sure would think it be great if Apple had a little more diagnosis on a problem just to give the simple solution. I don't know what the update flaked out that was solid before - but I'd suspect that since my restore was from the a backup i'd made while I had all the issues that whatever issue got fixed may have been fixable without going through all that.

Can only go forward. At least in the battery usage the system does give some explanation of what apps are using battery life.

Well I had my iPhone 6 replaced the other day by Apple and it didn't seem to help. I have restored my phone twice, once with a back up and once as a new phone and re-added my apps. Neither made much difference. Just this morning I went from 100% battery to 74% battery from about 7:30AM to 10:30 and did nothing with it. No calls, no internet searching, no texting, etc. I punched the home screen one or two times to check the battery level.

I am restoring again as a new phone as I type this. I will not add anything except my contacts to see what happens to the battery life over the next few hours with nothing loaded. If it's not an iOS problem, and I had a rouge app, then battery life should not be an issue over the next few hours, correct?

Also, a side note. Each time I have restored via iTunes on my computer, it always tells me a carrier settings update is available. It's not a new version each time. Wouldn't the carrier settings stick after being applied once? Could the carrier settings be an issue here (clearly I am grasping) but you never know. I am with T-Mobile. I get a fairly good signal here in Central Florida so i'm not sure it's a signal issue.

And Roscoe, you believe that the battery is good because you have Find My Phone turned off?

No, I have "find my iPhone" turned on in both iCloud and in Location Services. And no, I'm not convinced that this has helped. I think that not being connected to iCloud at all is problematic, that that having Drive turned on while connected to iCloud is also problematic. So I've connected to iCloud but turned Drive off.

I can't make any claim as to whether or not this is any kind of solution. All I know is, I did the above and my battery life has returned to normal. It could have been purely coincidental, but that's the only other thing I've done differently (iCloud on, iCloud Drive off).

It truly makes no sense.

I did a full restore as new on the phone about 2PM after charging the phone to 100%. While setting it up, I kept everything off - no iCloud, no Siri, no location services, no background refreshing. I loaded no apps. Only the stuff that comes with iOS 8.1.3. I had one 20 minute call since 2PM. And I received one text message. Otherwise the phone has been in sleep mode - screen off.

With all this, from 2PM to 4PM, I am down to 90% on the battery. A 10% drop in an hour doesn't seem right to me with the limited activity. Any one thisk I am off base here? Navyman88?

When you said "full restore" are you referring to a 'Restore iPhone' in iTunes?  And, when you say "no iCloud, no Siri, no location services, no background refreshing" does that mean you declined to set these up when you swiped on the home screen 'Welcome ... ' for setting up a new phone?

Brian, yes, I mean Restore Phone in iTunes. And yes, I elected not to set up iCloud, location services, etc. after the Welcome screen at the start of setting up a new phone.

Does that tell you anything?