iOS 10.1 Battery drain

Led to this thread by an article reporting on this problem. Just want to add another data point that I too am experiencing this problem. I have an iPhone 6+, 2 years old and no issues with power management until installing IOS 10. Now I have the 30% problem, with the phone shutting down and not booting up until it is connected to a power source. Upon restart it shows I actually have somewhere around 37%, though I've seen this happen at various capacities in the 20-40% range.

As by now you already read, some people had success with a reset; others, replacing the battery. A few had a successful iPhone replacement with Apple. The technical reasons as to why this is happening is perhaps way less important than the effect and troubleshooting options.

Seems to be a lot of irrelevant chatter on this thread. Can we please get back on message? Am I right in saying, Apple released an update which has made a lot of people's iPhones unusable? They have not formally responded on this issue? They are letting users try to get a fix themselves?

My 6 has been an a nightmare since ios10 installed. In last few days it's just been turning off at about 80%! Never been this angry with a company. Apparently one unhappy customer tells 20 other potential customers about their bad experience (that was before Twitter!)

Can anyone please tell me if there is a generally agreed way forward on this thread (without me having to read all 80 pages?) I'm about to do a factory reset. Has anyone had success with that?

Summary:

1) IOS 10 drains battery significantly more than IOS 9

2) IOS 10 may be damaging batteries

3) Factory reset does not help if IOS 10 has damaged the battery, new battery required

4) Apple have said nothing but have released diagnostic tools on IOS 10.2 so they can troubleshoot the issue, in other words, they have no idea either

5) A factory reset may have fixed a small number of handsets

Adrian.

"Hi Evagorasc, Belisarius is right in his main argument: Batteries are consumables and degrade according to the way they are used. However, he only focuses on that, he has obviously not felt the realisation of having upgraded to IOS 10 and his battery suddenly drains and goes bang. Like we have, to us it is obvious, IOS 9 = fine, IOS 10 = dead.

The proof is that in an unheard of turn of events, Apple released in depth battery diagnostic tools in 10.2."

Adrian, I am beginning to think that the Sep 2014 launched iPhone 6, and the new thinner larger battery format. As of Nov 2016 and over 500 cycles, they are done. Period. Two long years of heavy usage-as yourself admitted.

So two years into this process, yes Apple released 10.2 diagnostic. But I believe it is to address the complaints of battery issues failures and identify them as they were building up. But I was aware of a small number of people complaining since iOS 7, and yes, iOS 9 with iPhone 6 and 6S.

Unfortunately a technique called Competing Hypotheses eliminates the iOS as a culprit. Your hypothesis that iOS causes it must be universally applicably yet it is not. Hundreds of millions of iPhone users have no issue.

An iPhone 5 whose battery I had replaced, it was about 6 months old and acted with iOS 7, the day off. Apple replaced the battery. the iOS did not kill it- it was justa poor battery. The replacement worked perfect for 2 years after.

It is more like Your battery is defective and hanging in with iOS 9 hanging up. iOS 10 exposes the flaw and it dies in 60 days. Or the battery stress of install and maybe some fast draining apps exposed again an inherent weakaness.

Am I right in saying, Apple released an update which has made a lot of people's iPhones unusable?

Not at all. Over 500 million users of iphones 5 to 6S updated successfully. That was repeated several times by Apple while monitoring iOS 10 deployment. Your particular 6 battery has likely a shelf life of 2+ years, approaching 600 cycles and likely just died as it was supposed to, as a consumable.

Adrian,

1) +1 All iOS, generally, drain more. The Arstechnica article explained it. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/12/explaining-the-battery-life-problems-with-t he-new-macbook-pros/

2) -1 Any usage damages a battery, including Android. It is speculative. And hundreds of millions upgraded successfully. The best yet is iPhone 5 users with better iOS 10 performance than 9- and far older batteries. But they were different batteries than the post 6 generation.

3) +1 No factory reset will ever repair a damaged battery cell. That is known. The MC reduces functionality with each cell error report. But the battery is more likely to just die than any particular process to cause it - except the flashlight.

4) -1 Pure correlation. Battery issues have mounted steadily - in their small 0.0004% or so range, since iPhone 5, and iPhone 6 - larger thinner batteries, more bendable and why the 6S was reinforced. Any diagnostic tool has been overdue for 10 iOSs, in my opinion

5) +1 A factory reset and clean install resolves numerous minor glitches. clean install, new index, new apps install.

Can anyone please tell me if there is a generally agreed way forward on this thread (without me having to read all 80 pages?)

1- Restore phone to factory defaults, do a clean install. If having the luxury, try 24 hrs monitoring

2- Do your image restore. Apps should be installed cleanly.

3- Monitor. If any SSE, your battery is probably defective. Very much normal if it has exceeded several hundred cycles.

4- Get a free battery replacement (Apple Care) or risk free paid for one

4- Get phone replaced. Adrian had success with that.

What are you talking about? Good lord alive. I didn't say it effected everyone. But based on the length of this thread and others it has certainly effected a large number of people. A straw pole of my colleages/friends/family found 3 others out of about 10 or so have had battery issues following upgrading to iOS 10.

Please don't talk nonsense wrt 'consumables'. There is a definite link between IOS 10 and battery drain/damage. My iPhone 6 is 18 months old and the issue started a few months ago at the very moment I upgraded. My phone initially ran really hot then the battery issues really kicked in. It doesn't run hot anymore....in fact it doesn't really run much at all. Fried by Apple!

I have almost verified that whatever the root cause of this, sudden temperature and/or humidity, make it worse.

I had charged the phone up to 100% and when I was out on a very cold day, I saw the remaining percentage go down to 4% in a matter of an hour.

I then verified that it stuck there for another hour and then went off.

Next day, this temperature difference didnt' happen and the device remained in a relatively short temperature range and worked flawlessly.

--

Alex

Better don't feed the troll! (~Belisarius~)

No idea what his motives are to flood this thread with his Apple-friendly gibberish.

There clearly is an issue that he refrains to see.

In our company 81 out of 100 iPhones (6, 6Plus, 6s & 6s Plus) are affected by this issue (as is my private 6S Plus).

My daughters 5 had the issue and I used a factory install to fix it.

I posted a series of Progress Updates. #7 about what I did. Page 81 of 84 so far.

I had the phone up and working well for about a week. Update #8 everything was still working fine. Page 82 of 84

Then last night, I hosed everything by re-installing from a backup. I had noted in a previous post that installing a backup instead of a clean install seemed to not work.

So a phone that has been working fine for a week now & holding charge for longer that 30 hours.... is back to the battery indicator ticking down in chunks and the phone spontaneously shutting itself off at less than 5 minutes.

I guess I need to go back and re-do a Recovery Mode Factory Restore and then not try to put any backup on it again.

I think I got ahead of myself with overconfidence and the wee hours of the morning.

Better don't feed the troll! (~Belisarius~)

No idea what his motives are to flood this thread with his Apple-friendly gibberish.

There clearly is an issue that he refrains to see.

In our company 81 out of 100 iPhones (6, 6Plus, 6s & 6s Plus) are affected by this issue (as is my private 6S Plus).

Ignorance is when someone does not understand technology, critical thinking, scientific methods of analysis, and proceeds with wild anecdotal speculation. It is not Apple friendly, it is merely critical thinking. It being confused with Apple friendliness testifies as to the limitations of your premises. If a single student in a critical thinking or analytical technique class (taught in any govt agency, corporations, think tanks etc) came up with jibrish competing hypotheses and ignored evidence to the contrary (i.e. hundreds of millions working iPhones), umm, we fail him?

Good for you doing a thorough company wide investigation and determined that 81% of your iPhones are affected.

Iphones 6 and 6S have a similar battery cell. What will Your Wisdom do or say should Apple issue a recall, replace your 81 batteries and they then work? Come back here and apologize for poor critical thinking?

if they are fixable, what then? Blame iOS? Nope, you will go hide in real life.

Why did Samsung issue a recall? because the Android OS caused 55 to catch fire? LMAO I will use these example as textbook argumentative fails in all areas of critical logic.

Alex, what are you doing with cold temperature, it is known that cold stops Li Ion reactions inside the cell. In Canada anything below 10F (and we go easily to -30F) we must keep them near our chests. no matter the brand.

it is also terrible to the long term health of your battery. A single cell freeze could kill it... Why the Russian roulette?

It is highly illogical to state that IOS 10 had nothing to do with these battery failures. I don't understand why (~Belisarius~) is constantly stating that these failures are something that was expected from regular battery usage.

Of-course millions of iphone users are perfectly fine with the update, but that isn't reason to believe that EVERYONE is fine. Its impossible that thousands of unlucky owners (including ones on this fourm) reached the tipping point of their lithium ion batteries at the exact same time. Lets not forget this affects iphones 6/plus AND the S series (unsure about iphone 5), phones manufactured and sold with a year gap between them- thus having huge variance in the remaining battery life, and yet both generations of iphones are affected during the same period. Adding to this chain of supposed 'coincidences' is the release of IOS10 which was clearly the point when people's Iphones started experiencing battery problems.

Your input on this is appreciated ~Belisarius~ but it seems to be incredibly subjective and ignores the plethora of points raised by the affected users. Most of the users here are loyal apple customers and really don't even blame Apple for this, we just want them to resolve it.

Restoring the device or recharging the battery from 0% (and other advices suggested here) don't work for most users. Replacing the battery/ device isn't an option for others because we've expired the warranty/ apple care date and aren't ready to simply pay for a new battery because of the possibility of a fix coming with the next IOS update. If this fix isn't possible through an update, then an official acknowledgement from Apple would be appreciated.

-Manzar

Thanks. i'm on phone to apple currently. they say only a 6S problem is know. is this rubbish?

AppleYoda, according to tech references, Apple identified a battery defect in specific batch numbers. No idea if they have a common manufacturer, how many millions etc. So they are replacing those as defective. Each phone Ser number is matched to a battery batch. Symptoms are similar to the current iOS 10 drain forum, including SSEs. The issues may have started once the that batch of 6S approached 300 or so hundred cycles.

Whether or not this will be extended to other batteries, and iPhones 6 that is another topic and within Apples Operations division. Also, if the issue is identified retroactively, or if it already has, but covers, say, 200 million iPhone 6, the numbers then rise to billions of $ warranty cost. I think you understand what this means.

Even within a specific Ser/Batch, not all defective batteries just defect. But they are likely to.