iOS 10.1 Battery drain

My wife called Apple Support to explain her progressive battery degradation after installing iOS 10.1 and being told in early December that her battery was "good" (at 85%) and not available for a replacement even if Apple Care haven't expired two weeks earlier. At that time, her phone was lasting about 6-8 hours and experiencing unexpected shutdowns.

Apple Support was great after hearing how the battery instability had left she and I unable to reach each other after our one-month old had to go to the emergency room and I had to get our two year old looked after before going to the hospital. This was two weeks ago and my wife's phone was lasting 1.5-2 hours on a charge at that time. Apple Support ran a diagnostic and then authorized a no-cost battery replacement. They made us an appointment at a local Apple Store and today when we went in, instead of a battery replacement, my wife got a replacement iPhone 6. The store was backed up on repairs and the manager did a phone swap instead of making us wait 2.5 hours for the battery swap with a 2 year old and a month and a half old.

Kudos to Apple Support and the Lynnhaven Mall Apple Store for hopefully solving the problem with my wife's iPhone 6.

These last two updates are at fault. Too many having the same issue. Sure there may be some battery wear which is normal. But there are too many stories like yours and mine to just blame the batteries. And imagine how many more people out there that are having the same issue. Most people won't bother to post on a forum.

Add me to the list. IPhone 6 shutting off abruptly, battery goes from almost full to 1% then shuts down. Sometimes it stays on for quite awhile (20 - 30 minutes) at 1% before shutting down. Today left the house fully charged at 100% and phone went to 1% and died within 15 minutes. This has been getting progressively worse over last couple of months and now phone is becoming unusable.

Apple, what are you doing about this?

I'd suffered the 30 percent bug in Hong Kong and Japan with my iPhone 6 a few months ago, using GPS and Pokemon Go. About a week ago, I set up a chat with an Apple person, who said my battery was good after the diagnostic.

It hasn't been so bad since I've been back in the U.S., but today I went from 58 percent to 8 percent battery while out and about playing Pokemon Go, in less than an hour! I plugged it back in and it charged slowly, then went back to around 50 percent, then went back down to 20 percent, all in the space of a few minutes.

So they have a problem, I really don't want to spend money on a battery which Apple won't sell me anyway because I have an iPhone 6 with a "good" battery, and I hope a software fix will come soon. I replaced my Macbook Pro with a Dell recently, and the Google Pixel is looking pretty good right now.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/why_does_pokemon_go_rob_so_much_batte ry_power Pokemon Go is a battery killer app. Too much drain. With that in mind, your battery has done actually very well if you ever got over 100 hours of play.

I don't play that much! I didn't play that much today. My husband was doing find with his android phone, playing more than I was. And my stepson has a 6s with previous problems just like mine in Hong Kong, but he was OK today. But going from 50something percent to 8 percent in around 30 minutes, clicking occasionally on Pokemon Go, then having inconsistent readings within a minute or two, is unacceptable!

It is. The question is, what would it take you to convince you that your battery is done.. If walking to a medical center, we likely listen to a doctor. At a garage, to a mechanic. In a store, to a store rep. In this case, you have to trust science and the unfortunate reality that batteries do die. Sometimes it is factory, other times, environmental. The 6S had an unknown number of recalls out of the 40 millions made Sep-Oct 15. Plsvn was told several times that his shutting down iPhone had a healthy-fine battery until his serial number came up for defective battery recall.

Belisarius, I disagree about it being such a small group. I believe many are just putting up with it because it is often random and doesn't happen all the time. Heck, I did that for months before googling and ending up at this forum. Also like others have mentioned, as soon as they/I talk about it...other people chime in saying they have the same problem. Just an example: A co-worker overheard me on the phone with Apple support about this case. He came over and apologized for eavesdropping, then shared that his son started having the problem with an iphone 5. My co-worker didn't upgrade it, but when he gave it to his son, he upgraded immediately and now has the same problem.

I also agree with others. Of course my battery wasn't 100% after 1.5 years, but it didn't have any problem until ios 10. All these people posting here, on twitter, that I hear at the office...didn't have batteries that failed at the exact time they upgraded. Replacing the battery is like using a hammer to solve this. It solves it, but we never know what the underlying problem really was. The support team at my work runs into this too. A laptop has a problem and they don't have time to isolate the issue, so they just reimage it. Was the OS bad, no...they just used a big a hammer because no one wanted to figure out what component is the problem. I could say the same about hardware issues. Let's say the laptop has an issue and they just put the hard drive with the software into another laptop (same model). It fixes it. Is the laptop bad? No, big hammer.

At any rate, I did get the battery changed out today at non-authorized center. I had no interest in making an appointment with Apple and then needing to argue about spending MY money to replace a component on MY phone. I've already wasted about 12 hours of my time troubleshooting this with them and then going through the backup, wipe (unwanted upgrade to 10.2) and restore. Also having an OEM battery in this case didn't help me with longevity or support either. In reality, I only need this phone to last 6 more months and then I can decide whether to get a 7 or dump Apple after this experience. It is great to hear that some folks were treated well and got the phone replaced after all this. The last response I got from support can be shortened to: "you are not alone, no solution, too bad."

As far as the battery swap today... The tech said the first battery they put in had the same problem. Normally batteries ship with about 50% charge, but my phone reported 95%. They were concerned the phone was bad, but tried another battery. That one reported something around 50% which was normal. Just another odd bit of information to report. No huge battery drops today, but it will be at least a week before I am willing to say it is resolved. Also, I still think the battery drains quicker now than on previous OSs.

Belisarius - Looks like they deleted your last response because it is in my mailbox, but not here.

Your gf doesn't have a 5 issue, but my co-worker does...directly after the upgrade. We're both small test cases. The people in your town don't have the issue that you know of. About 50% of my friends/co-workers do (various phone models.)

Didn't you post earlier about race circuits and battery imprints and so on? If the new OS is using a different imprint (amperage or however you phrased it) and that breaks existing batteries that were working fine...then that sounds to me like an Apple issue. Yes, replacing the battery fixes it, but Apple caused it.

Going back to the laptop example... After 20+ years in IT, I've never heard of a windows upgrade causing a laptop battery to go bad or have bad performance. Also we can accurately test laptop batteries. Heck there are utilities from the manufacturer that will tell us when the battery needs replacing.

In my case and many others,Apple is testing and saying the battery is good. If the battery is truly bad, then where is their accountability. Why can't they show us that? I'd be a whole lot happier if the battery did test bad and then they told me I needed a replacement. It would still be a hard pill to swallow because it started after the upgrade, but at least there would be some evidence to back that up.

When a laptop battery is bad, it takes the full time to charge. However, it discharges quickly. It doesn't jump around. If you plug a discharged laptop battery in, it fills up slowly. It doesn't jump to 30 or 50%. With 10, my battery had the shutoff issue. With 10.2 the level jumped around, but it didn't just shut off. Once it jumped from 95% to 15%, but continued to operate way longer than it should have at 15%. This sounds like the OS improperly reporting what the suggested battery life is.

I'm 100% positive that if I could downgrade my phone that battery would have been fine. I'd also bet that taking that battery out of my phone with 10.2 and putting into another 6 with ios 9 would result in it operating normally. Unfortunately, I have no ability to do these tests. I sure hope Apple is.

As far a whether my non OEM battery was reset when installed, I don't know. I wasn't behind the counter while they worked on it.

If I fully reply to your post, which surprisingly, is still here, the reply would be deleted. Was reading earlier an articles that made it the best reply, due to comments mid made by a sweetie person. Their battery issues predate iOS 10. Welcome to read it at

"Also we can accurately test laptop batteries. Heck there are utilities from the manufacturer." True, inside a lab, with batteries removed. There were above references to testing literature and what it means, the difference between resistance and frequency testing.It is now academic science that only frequency testing only reveals health. Frequency test need 10-15 minutes- and anyone can do it in a lab but takes special devices, and it is time consuming. There is a new 30 second test- http://www.cadex.com/en/technology/our-technologies/quicksort And if you move up the auto scale, diagnostics can be build it into it but the e-car battery costs so much more. the volume of batteries, millions made per day (mobiles only) makes it impracticable to test them at the factory one by one even with 10 000 testing machines running in parallel. Any basic test can say "hey I can power up and hold 100%" but does not say that it can work well- hence the recent recall. These are industrial facts on Li Ion limitations. And this is why you get this: http://www.ibtimes.com/toshiba-battery-recall-2017-expanded-list-laptops-affecte d-how-get-replacement-2470199

Speculating how the OS affects drain is not as productive as the more needed solution. But have been reading for years on the occasional battery issue, Android or iOS.

Have always great service from Apple, through Apple Care. My batteries last up to 2 years (except my iPhone 5 and iOS 7 fail) but you have to take in context that my job does not permit batteries at work. If I take them and leave them in steel boxes, they would always drain in hours due to the shielding. Leaving them mostly at home and using them evenings and weekends, my cycle rate is far below that of the average user, maybe 1.25 cycles per day. Also by not using high drain apps, I rarely get them to heat up.

"As far a whether my non OEM battery was reset when installed, I don't know." Meant iOS reset. At Genius Bars they do it all, diagnostics, wipe, new battery, iOS reset; the new installation marries the new battery, maybe even firmware. Just putting the battery in on a preexisting image with poor calibration does not do it. You would know if they had to restore your image. These minor details are why i tend to side with Apple stores vs unauthorized centers.

As stated previously, Apple says my battery is fine. While the battery is being "fine", they have screenshots of it at 15% and then at 50% less than one minute later. If it is good as they say, then it is an OS problem. If not, then they have an inability to diagnose the issue. Either way, I don't have a lot of faith in their ability to solve/fix it.

Because they claim the battery is fine, that means Genius bar is not an option. That is one of the reasons (explained prior) that I went with non oem. If I have problem then I'll restore again, though it seems like overkill since it was just restored less than a week ago (given that was with the old battery).

I don't see how the comments on the article in the link you sent have any bearing on the conversation here.

If I say exactly what you wrote, or relay what worked for you to another user, as we did for the last few whom resolved the issue, the reply would not make the cut. Our of strikes. Will provide another reply once it is out, in time.

In the article people discussed their iPhone 5 and having a warranty shelf life expectation (these before iOS 10); the duration similar to those here saying they just came out warranty and the bug is affecting them. I stand by Apple Care as a great tool to have that second year coverage.

Lumpy. The battery is probably fine, for a different OS. Like you I had zero battery issues until the day I upgraded the OS to 10. Then I had the exact same problems. The solution shouldn't be to have to replace the battery. Even if that actually "fixes the problem". And who knows? Will the OS start killing new batteries? I think it's too soon to tell. This could turn into one huge problem for Apple. Perhaps a class action lawsuit. As for me it, a new battery solved my battery problems caused by the OS. How long it lasts remains to be seen.

No idea, be it that some of your sentences may be outside the iOS drain issue. If I wrote similarly to what you wrote, my post would have been deleted with the ref reply I sent you as an example. You may notice a change in my replies.