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Paul Squyres Author

Level 1

40 points

IOS 9.2 Rapid Battery Drain Issue

Since upgrading to iOS 9.2, my battery has been running warm and draining fast!

It seems to drain a percentage point every 30 seconds. I went to the Apple Store and they claimed they haven't heard anything about a 9.2 battery issue yet. When I was at the store it was at 99% and went down to 62% in about 10 minutes - no apps running in background. The manager did a wireless diagnostic on my phone, and told me that a couple of apps I had was using battery but nothing substantial. She mentioned that the opersting system Bluetooth app was crashing constantly and could be the culprit. Manager told me they could replace my phone but if I did a restore of my current phone, the problem would continue since she thought it was a software issue rather than a hardware issue. I'm still having the issue and still waiting for Apple to fix this. It is clearly an issue with 9.2 as other people have begun posting the same types of problems. Also the phone is considerably warm to the touch. I have never had a battery issue prior to the upgrade, and have never had an issue using location services either.

Posted on Dec 11, 2015 6:24 PM

Top-ranking reply

Paul Squyres Author

Level 1

40 points

Posted on Dec 13, 2015 12:26 PM

After reading several other posts for possible fixes. I have done the following and I am NOT experiencing the rapid battery drain anymore, so problem seems to be resolved. Albeit, it isn't an ideal solution, it seems to have fixed the issue:

1. Perform an encrypted backup in iTunes of the phone. NOTE: If you perform an encrypted backup all of your health data (IE: Apple Watch data, exercises, heart rate, etc.), and passwords are maintained. If you do not check encrypted when performing a backup, then all of that information is lost. You will have to renter passwords everywhere (IE: safari, email, apple id, etc.)

2. Turn off Find My iPhone on your phone in :Settings, iCloud, Find My iPhone

3. Errase all Content and Settings on your phone in: Settings, General, Reset, Erase All Content and Settings

4. Once your phone reboots as a new iPhone, following the steps on your phone by connecting to a wireless network, enter your apple ID and password, then select Restore from Backup from iTunes.

5. Connect your phone to your computer and either start iTunes or it will automatically start when your phone is connected.

6. In iTunes, select restore from backup (your latest one should be selected). If prompted, enter the password you entered when making the encrypted backup.

7. After a while, depending on how much content it has to restore, you should have a duplicate of your original phone back. You will have to enter your Apple ID, reset up Touch ID fingerprints, and Apple pay credit cards. All of your apps will be downloading in the background, which for me, is going to take a while as I have less than 1MBPS out in the country. All of your apps and folders would be maintained in the restore.

As I stated, this is not an ideal solution, but it seems to be working for me. It is going to take a while to restore all of my apps though, as my internet connection and cellular connection are SLOW......

Hope those steps help anyone who is having this frustrating issue.

Good luck!

View in context

159 replies

Dec 14, 2015 9:25 AM in response to smoledman

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 9.1

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 9.0.2?

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 9.0.1?

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 8.4?

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 8.3?

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 8.2?

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 8.1?

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 8.0?

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 7.1.3?

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 7.1.2?

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 7.1.1?

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 6.1.3?

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 6.1.2?

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 6.1.1?

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 6.1?

What about the lots of people that reported battery drain issues with 6.0?

I could go on, all the way back to 1.1, but the point is that lots of people report battery problems all the time, and not just after upgrades. And people who don't have battery problems don't post, so this results in a very skewed view of how widespread a problem is. There has been only one time when there actually was an iOS battery problem. It was fixed within 2 weeks, but it resulted in 15,000 posts and 2.5 million views, back at a time when there were under 100 million iOS devices. There are 800 million now.

The real question is do you want to argue about the issue, or solve it? There was already one excellent recommendation in the 2nd post in this thread. It will be overkill for some users, but it will fix the problem.

Dec 14, 2015 9:28 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

Thanks for the suggestions Lawrence, much appreciated!

As I mentioned prior, I do use the OEM (2.1a) charger and cable so I am good there. I will try the re-calibrating the battery gauge and schedule for a visit to Apple soon. I will report back either way with an update. Thanks again for your help!

shirpa

Level 1

0 points

Dec 14, 2015 10:05 AM in response to Paul Squyres

I agree with Banjo72. Both my wife and I are regular and frequent users (her iPhone and both iPads) and we've both noticed significant and sudden battery drain issues since installing 9.2.

Last night, I had over 75% battery life in my iPad and this morning it was completely drained, with Bluetooth turned off. The only apps on overnight were Mail and Safari and the screen was powered down with the magnetic cover closed.

Also, it seems very slow to recharge, only 22% after 2 hours plugged in, which indicates that something is drawing down while recharging.

Apple, what's up here?

Dec 14, 2015 2:01 PM in response to Paul Squyres

Thanks, yes.

I went at the store on Wednesday, 9th of December 2015. I had battery issues with my iPhone 6 and also experienced poor call quality. So the member from the Genius Bar attended me, diagnosed the iPhone and at the hearing of the call quality issue as well as the battery drain (from 100% went to 4% for about 4.5 hrs of usage) issue, offered me a new phone.

So where is my problem? Well, the new iPhone 6 with iOS 9.2 has got me the same battery drainage. From 100%, within 5 hours of usage it went to 4%. Went to the Genius Bar and they told me it's almost impossible that a second phone to have a hardware problem, especially the same problem for which they replaced me the phone before. Plus, they said, the battery appears to be at 104% capacity.

It is odd, so i have erased all content and settings just to have the same problem. Have tried to restore from iCloud, then tried to use as a new iPhone, nothing worked so far. At night i have even installed a fresh copy of the iOS 9.2 and set the phone as new. Well, the battery keeps draining at the same pace, very fast.

In conclusion, the Genius Bar advised me to wait for a further iOS update to check if it will solve the battery drainage. Any other solution?

Thanks,

Valentin

Dec 14, 2015 2:54 PM in response to Betel.Development

On Friday I upgraded my iPhone 6 (Verizon) to 9.2 by doing a full restore, because that has seemed to prevent or fix issues with past upgrades. It has been losing about 20% an hour of battery ever since. Apparently the restore isn't a silver bullet. I just downgraded to 9.1, and I guess I'll be waiting for a 9.2.1 update.

amantica

Level 1

0 points

Dec 14, 2015 3:29 PM in response to Paul Squyres

Do I have to restore using iTunes or would a restore via iCloud do the same thing? My phone is currently idle and has been for the last 20 mins and I've lost 10% of my battery.

Dec 14, 2015 4:13 PM in response to amantica

You can restore from iCloud also. Before you go that far, if you go to Settings/Battery which app is using the most energy?

Qida

Level 1

40 points

Dec 14, 2015 6:59 PM in response to smoledman

This iOS9.2 battery drain issue is puzzling for me.

Normally, a standard wipe and restore from iTunes will resolve all battery issues.

But this particular instance, it does not.

I believe there is 2 type of battery issues here:

1. Usage = Standby time. This one is the affecting my iPhone 6 Plus. It will not be fixed by a wipe and restore from iTunes. - It also seems to have 1 symptom.. drain cellular data as well. Something is working 100% of the time, so that the iPhone does not even sleep.

2. Normal Settings corrupted. - This one is some people will receive when they do OTA updates, and constantly happens after a OS update. This can be fixed by a wipe / restore from iTunes.

Guys maybe we can state in detail, do you fall into either "1" or "2". And whether a wipe and restore helps you? If most of you guys are of the "1", and wipe and restore does not help you, maybe we should write a feedback to Apple.

Moukahal

Level 1

0 points

Dec 15, 2015 12:24 AM in response to Paul Squyres

latest updates,

I suffered two days from battery drain, deleted some apps (but i doubt its the reason cause I always work on them with no issues)

today battery is working fine and back to normal

unfortunately I have no explanation for this, unless iOS been doing an internal operations draining battery after the upgrade.

Dec 15, 2015 4:40 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

HI Lawrence,

I was able to drop by the local Apple Store (man they were crowded!) and long story short, the battery and IPad hardware checked out to be in acceptable working condition. I even brought in the OEM chargers and OEM Lightning USB cables which all checked out to be in acceptable working condition. I was not given any information on the number of people affected by this past firmware 9.2 upgrade but was told that there have been more people coming in for this specific issue than any other issues currently. One tech indicated that with the normal onslaught of holiday sales and traffic, those coming in for 9.2 related issues is only compounding the ability to resolve the problems. I was told that my IPad could process indexing for up to 24hrs after the restore and that it was very important to keep the Ipad on and charged during that timeframe. I did up turning my IPad off thinking it would charge faster but it appears I may have done more harm then good and should have left it on, the final recommendations were to perform another reset and restore, battery calibration and if. Not resolved to wait for the next update which is 'supossidly' being pushed through as soon as possible. Nothing more was stated and while there, believe it or not there were 8 others with the exact issues I was having.

I believe that standby time is my culprit, battery usage is not indicating much since it had not been used much since the update and restore were completed. This may also be the reasoning of why reset and restore may not have resolved my specific issues with battery drain.

There ypu go, again I appreciate the help and if you think of anything else I am all ears 🙂 I appreciate your help!

Dec 15, 2015 5:00 AM in response to Waterbound

I hadn't thought about indexing, but yes, with the way Spotlight works it would need to index everything, and that can use a lot of energy. It can't do that when powered off, either (but it can while asleep and connected to power).

If standby time is equal to usage there's something running in background on the phone. With new information that could be indexing. When I see this symptom I double-press the HOME button, kill all processes by flicking them up, then reboot the phone by holding HOME and SLEEP until an Apple logo appears. This usually fixes it. Normally I do not kill processes, so today I had to kill over 100 apps.

I did not have a battery issue after updating, but 5 days later I did. The app at the top of the battery list was Calendar, using 90% of the energy used (the numbers displayed for apps is the percentage of total energy used, not of total battery capacity.) Using an old procedure, I turned off my Exchange account, rebooted, and turned it back on. I'm waiting now to see if that fixed it. I had a similar problem 6 months ago, but it was weeks after updating, so I'm sure that case was not related to the update. And I'm pretty sure this one isn't either, because it did not happen right away.

JAQRIPP

Level 1

0 points

Dec 15, 2015 9:15 PM in response to Paul Squyres

I Am also having battery issues with the the 9.2 update on my iPhone 6. The percentage shows 10% and then the phone shuts off and shows the the image to plug it into a charger. It also drains a percentage every 30 seconds. It shows 15% and I plug it in and it shows 6% battery life, I unplug it immediately and it shows 14%. It's the original charger and original chord. There's no ryhme or reason it's just screwed up. I hope apple reads these forums because this new update *****!!! I never had these issues before! FIX IT APPLE!

Dec 16, 2015 3:37 AM in response to JAQRIPP

Apple does not read these forums.

See: http://www.overthought.org/blog/2014/the-ultimate-guide-to-solving-ios-battery-d rain

Really read it. And check out the footnotes, especially:

1. Users will report poor battery life after every iOS update. Always. For eternity. This is not newsworthy.

Vicrp

Level 1

0 points

Dec 16, 2015 4:21 AM in response to Paul Squyres

I Have the same problem with battery drain...in less than one hour, the battery has lost 20%. even with the charger connected, I noticed that the iPhone has lost battery and when I turn on recovering from a 85% to 98% in less than 10 minutes.

Dec 16, 2015 4:26 AM in response to Vicrp

check out the link in the message above yours.

IOS 9.2 Rapid Battery Drain Issue