Battery problem after update to IOS 9.3.1

See my earlier post before you restore. This is the link to the Apple directions: If you can't update or restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

It has GOT to be 9.3.1. Or maybe, one of a very few very common apps do NOT play nice with 9.3.1? I took my phone in and they gave me a warranty replacement because the thing got so bad it wouldn't even charge anymore.

I got the phone and it charged up fine, battery drain was negligible.

I noticed it was already at 9.3.1 and all seemed well while my phone was naked and empty. I manually went through and sorted all my settings, since I was not about to do another unproductive backup restore. By the time I got the following apps installed, it started draining like crazy and once again, will not charge! ??

Netflix

Twitter

Facebook

Messenger

HBO Now

That's all I had gotten on the phone when I looked at the battery strength and went "***?"

My battery has dropped 28 percent in the last three hours. Usage time 1hr, 13 mins, standby 2hr 4 min. Settings taking up 57%, then app store at 25%, home and lock screen 10%.

What the what?

I've removed Facebook, Messenger, Twitter, and restarted the phone. (Mostly because I know when I was an android user, Facebook and Messenger updates were always jacking things up on my phone.)

No change. So I took off Netflix and HBO Now. Again, no change.

Now, I'm like, do I need a new cable? To charge it? (Because it will not charge AT ALL.)

But that would have nothing to do with the super fast draining problem right?

So seriously, what the heck is going on, and why did I waste hundreds of dollars on an iPhone. This is far more aggravating than any android problem I ever had and I never spent more than $70 on an android.

(Also wondering why, ever since I updated iTunes on my computer, it has been starting and running slower than molasses in a freezer? >.< )

Anyway, whether it's an app not playing nice with 9.3.1 or the update itself, Something is rotten here.

I followed previous instruction on setting up as a new iPhone and I did not install any additional apps just setup my email and tested this for 6 days and no difference the battery went down as quick just using for email, messages and phone calls. I have even tried IOS 9.3.2 beta 3 and that seems just as bad if not worse and totally fed up now! My wife has a 6s and the update actually improved her battery but my 6s plus is far worse than hers now and I was getting a day more prior to us both upgrading!

That's disappointing. All our devices continue to have great battery life since I DFU'd my iPhone - I did not DFU the other iPhone.

I don' t think this is going to help you solve the problem. The system task that is using the battery - based on my looking at activity for all our devices when I started this - is identityservices. The problem is it was running wild on on two iPhones, two Watches, a MacBook and an iMac. It appears that this task is addressing a messages queue - and, on OS X at least, was complaining about an empty payload. I can't tell which queue that is - Messages, Notifications, etc. It makes sense, because when our phones were using cellular data during very high CPU usage - data usage was also very high - we normally use little cell data. That lasted during the time we were having the battery drain.

System tasks should be able to handle bad data -- not loop on them. I'm assuming there is something wrong with one of the messages queues -- and identityservices is unable to handle it. It seems to me to be a systemic problem -- all our devices running iOS and OS X are negatively affected.

I'll write this up for an Apple bug report - although I reported some of these findings initially.

JJust been on a chat session to an Apple Secret Agent regarding my issue and they do believe I have a software issue and booked my in for another Genius Bar Appt next Friday and said that they will do diagnostic check on the software and if they cannot find out what is going on look to replace the device as it is only two months old. Has anyone purchased an iPhone recently that actually came with 9.3.1 already installed, any issues? As robnbill said with their issue about maybe being related within the Apple account as affecting other devices such as watch (i too have a watch, iPad and Mac) as anyone tried signing in a "defective" device with a different Apple Account? I was tempted to create a new account and test it but I am fed up of wiping and reinstalled on my phone and may just wait until Friday???

I don't know if the genius will really have all the tools an engineer would have. You may want to check your Mac and see if, during the battery drain, it is recording a lot of identityservices messages. We were getting thousands in a two hour period - and it was draining the battery very quickly on our MacBook too. Right now I'm lucky it's still holding (since last Saturday) -- but, if it happens again - I would try turning off one queue at a time - e.g., Messages, then Notifications, etc. - on all devices to see if the drain stops. Our first experiment where the battery drain stopped was simple -- we turned off each and every device -- turned then back on one-by-one -- battery drain was gone -- then it came back in about a day and a half. I'm confident it is a an issue with the system task unable to handle a "bad" queue. If you want to play around and see what's happening - download Xcode and start up instruments.

Thanks robnbill, I have downloaded Xcode but never used before.

Can you give me any help getting this running?

Thanks in advance

Let me see if I can get you started.

Plug your iPhone into the Mac and let iTunes recognize it first.

Next, Start up Xcode and go here to start Instruments:

Once you have started instruments you will see this:

My iPhone is not plugged in at the moment. You should then select a profiling template - you will be able to select your iPhone at the top of the screen.

Next - Press the choose button and the monitor window will open with Activity Monitor - very similar to the one that is in OS X.

You can sort by the headers -- e.g., name, CPU, Total CPU time -- don't recall the exact headers right now - you'll see.

Remember there are some system tasks that only run when plugged in and locked -- photos and iCloud updates, indexing - don't worry about those - monitor for a while and watch identityservices and see what is happening with CPU activity.

I'm in the US - East Coast - and I need to leave now to run errands. If you post anything it will be a few hours before I get back to you. The reason I ran this is to see what is really draining the battery -- I'm not one to guess -- I need to see proof. FWIW - running fine now -- all notifications, apps are all running -- I didn't reduce any of those to get better battery life. I still suspect it's some sort of queue issue -- I don't think too many of us are having this issue. FWIW, I found a thread from this past August-September - same exact issue - it seems to have gotten resolved with 8.1.3. Did Apple err - and bring it back in 9.3? No idea.

Battery Drain (Severe) + Unusual High Data Usage

I’ve done a lot of research to find what the possible cause is of highly severe battery drain on the iPhone - plus, unexplained high data usage - and this is what I’ve found so far:

• Battery drain is very high - you know it - you see it - you know it’s way off. Usage and Standby times tend to be very close together.
• High data usage on your iPhone or your iPad. You will only see the abnormally high usage, when on cellular, by checking Cellular | System Services - running unusually high could be any combination of these: Messaging Services, Documents & Sync, Push Notifications
• There is a single system task (identityservices) that uses very high CPU draining the battery (you will not see this unless you instrument the device). You may or may not see a diagnostic report for these on your iOS device - it would start with Exc_ - and include identityservices in the title.
• This is a systemic issue in that it can affect all your other devices that may be signed in under one Apple ID. That means you may experience similar issues on your iMac, MacBook, iPad, etc.

These are some of the things that I or others tried - and the results.:

• Turn off all iOS and OS X devices. Reboot them one at a time. In my case the problem went away for a day and a half.
• iPhone - Restore using DFU mode, via iTunes, as a new device - not restoring from a backup. I did this at the recommendation of Apple. Results - what I consider now to be phenomenal battery life on all iOS devices. The system task is running normally and there is no abnormal data usage. Nine days as of today - and everything continues to run great.
• Change your password for your Apple ID - using appleid.apple.com. I have not tried this, a number of people in various forums report success with this. This does not require you to change your actual Apple ID.

In summary: I’ve traced this particular issue back to early 2015. It is not unique to iOS 8.x or 9.x - or any of the OS X versions. IMO, it is a systemic issue that could affect anyone. You may have it - and not even know it. I do think it is unusual and occurs under a set of circumstances that the system is unable to handle. Hope this helps someone.

They are probably correct in that the battery is fine. It's just that 9.3.1 is abusing it. Better be fixed in 9.3.2.

I decided to setup fresh again as a new iPhone installing just the basic apps needed all manual and monitor with Instruments and Activity Monitor and really unsure if the image below is what robnbill is relating to:

I turned on my phone this morning and hardly used with 29% battery used, I am more concerned about the com.apple.dt.ins process as at times this was using close to 10% of my cpu...

I think that this needs to be resolved when i go for my second Genius Bar Appt on Friday otherwise i think my love of Apple kit will be tested!

Hi,

The com.appple.dt.ins process I believe is actually the instrumentation task. I wouldn't be concerned about that. 10% CPU isn't anything to be concerned about. You'll have a number of processes that go up and down.

I'd recommend sorting by CPU Time column too -- I think you'll see at the time you took this "locationd" used 3 minutes 38 seconds. I can't recall what mine looks like -- I'll check later.

I'm assuming your iPhone had not been on very long when you took this snapshot. Suggest you let the monitor run for say 30 minutes with the phone locked, on wifi, and then take a look at the report.

In this snapshot the system task I was referring to was identityservices -- and yours is normal.

What you are looking for, when it is sitting there "idling", is high cpu usage for a process on a more or less continuous basis - sort by % CPU. In my case, my ID services task was running at 50-60-100-110%. And, it had accumulated over 60% or so of the total CPU time.

Check that and post what you find. Also, do you have any processes/apps where you told it to use location service all the time -- not just "when using"?

When you do the DFU and set it up as new -- it will do some indexing, etc. - but that shouldn't have been that much of a drain on your battery.

This has helped me significantly. The key is do NOT restore, just log in your iPhone and start everything new.

I did reset all, not helpful at all. Watched YouTube 10 minutes video, battery drops 10%! And overheated impossible to hold!

after I wiped out everything and log in as a new iPhone, everything normal again, excpet that yellow screen (I'm using iPhone se, seriously? Still yellow screen problem? I will definitely shift to Samsung next time. This is disdainful)

Update again. I got the phone unblocked, because it was actually simply dead flat. Then I have tried all the remedies listed above over 10 days. I used Xcode and could see nothing major running except the backboardd process which seemed a bit excessive, but not for long. I tried resetting, reloading, new configuration, no added apps just Apple basics, and nothing has worked.

More fool me I used my "free" upgrade with Vodafone and got a new 6S yesterday vowing this is Apple's last chance. Since then I have wiped the old one clean again, and as an experiment I then recharged it to 100%, there is no SIM card in it, and I disconnected the charger when the "Hello" screen came up. So the phone is now not even configured to my userid, nor had any factory defaults changed and no apps added.

After 8 hours since disconnecting it is at 56% charge. Now the Apple Genius confirmed there is nothing wrong with the physical battery, so that leaves IOS base 9.3.1 software to blame does't it?

Meanwhile the 6S is behaving OK, having restored all my apps and config changes, and battery life is normal like the old 6 one was before. Also the new one never complains about cords being illegal accessories, the old one still does not like even Apple cords.

When I am near another Apple shop I will try that discussion with Apple as to why I had to buy a new iPhone when there is nothing wrong with the old one except their software. Or do you think that this is really a physical battery problem? I cannot see how it can be as the phone runs hot, which can only be the processor, not the battery??

But I don't have this Issue with my iPhone 5 or 6s Plus !!

Try Restoring your iOS device as a New Device !

or try resetting all settings !