ios 10.2.1 to 10.3 battery drain

IdrisSeabright wrote:

At any given time, there is a certain percentage of people who are having problems with their iPhones. If those problems should happen to arise around the time people did the update, the tendency is to blame the update. It's human nature.

I believe people have battery problems. I believe they have lots of causes. I know, however that the last update patched a possible security exploit which could be quite serious.

And here's one of my biggest criticisms of Apple: iPhones don't (and never have had) very good battery life compared to a number of other brands, most notably Motorola. Motorola has some phones with absolutely amazing battery life. I really think Apple could do better.

I agree with all of this. The causes can be different from person to person, updates can include important security patches, and Apple needs to improve battery life in general.

I had to go through three replacement phones before my iPhone 7s battery problems were finally resolved, so in my case it seems to have been a hardware issue. But it's different for everyone and it takes time to troubleshoot. Apple's diagnostics never revealed any obvious underlying hardware problems with my iPhones, which made the process even more difficult. Apple does not normally just replace a phone until the user has gone through various steps, including setting up the malfunctioning phone as a new phone. They want to eliminate any possible software issues before they replace the hardware, which makes sense, but it can be very time-consuming and inconvenient for the consumer.

You can't just restore your latest backup, because that backup may contain the cause of the problem, so you have to enter all your settings and passwords, and then decide which apps to download and which music and data you want on your phone.

Luckily, there's an Apple Store near me, so that made things a lot easier, but even then, I spent many hours of my own time restoring and setting up various iPhones before I finally got one with a battery that functioned properly.

If your battery isn't working properly, don't give up, but be prepared for a process that can be frustratingly slow.

Aha, so you have gone through many trouble-shooting tricks yourself and with Apple, including battery changes and it was only resolved with the 3rd replacement phone?! That suggests that it WAS the new 10.x iOS in your original phone and the 1st 2 replacement phones that was a problem?

I understand that there could be app and set up issues, but these should never have to be reset after a new iOS or a need to dumb down the smartphone functions. In addition, as I have said, there seem to be many, many users who have gone through all the troubleshooting approaches including replacement batteries, who are still having problems, because they haven't got the phones replaced.

Surely it is not usual to have a battery issue following an update which requires a replacement phone to resolve it!?

The problem with all this, is that its NOT being quantified and everyone seems to be guessing (and yes no doubt we'll have a, "if you count all the phones affected vs phones sold etc etc"). Also what about the websites who have reported the same issue (Forbes etc.) Is this usual as well?

I suppose the best way to quantify this is to ask all the users who have had the battery issue to report on whether they have had it resolved without replacing the phone. Unlikely to happen I know.

Jonathanpxxxx wrote:

Aha, so you have gone through many trouble-shooting tricks yourself and with Apple, including battery changes and it was only resolved with the 3rd replacement phone?! That suggests that it WAS the new 10.x iOS in your original phone and the 1st 2 replacement phones that was a problem?

I understand that there could be app and set up issues, but these should never have to be reset after a new iOS or a need to dumb down the smartphone functions. In addition, as I have said, there seem to be many, many users who have gone through all the troubleshooting approaches including replacement batteries, who are still having problems, because they haven't got the phones replaced.

Surely it is not usual to have a battery issue following an update which requires a replacement phone to resolve it!?

I should have been clearer in my post. The first phone was the one I bought on launch day and was running iOS 10.2 at the time it developed battery problems. During the process of troubleshooting that phone, and before it was replaced, it was updated to iOS 10.2.1.

The replacement phones ran versions of 10.3.x. As I said, it *seems to have been a hardware issue*, but nobody, including Apple, was 100% certain about the cause.

I agree that a consumer should not have to go through the process of setting up a replacement phone as a new phone, but Apple insisted upon it, and I understand why. If the problem was a non-iOS related software or app issue, it would not have served any purpose to port it over from a backup. That wouldn't have solved the problem and would have only made things more difficult for me, too.

One good thing about the fact that Apple's diagnostics showed no problems with the battery was that they did not bother to try just replacing the battery, they replaced the phone itself. That probably saved me some time and additional headaches, though it still took several phones before I got a good one.

I agree with you that none of this is normal, but I did have an iPhone 5s that had major battery and overheating issues, and it also had to be replaced. This was long before iOS 10 and the problem did not occur after an iOS update. So these things happen, sometimes for no apparent reason.

I spent a lot of time online trying to track down any information I could during the time I was having so much trouble, and I read the Forbes article, too. But the fact that my current phone, which now works fine, is running iOS 10.3.3, seems to indicate that the updates are not the problem, at least *in my case*.

So you had an iPhone 7, presumably OK when new, which developed battery issues when running 10.2, which persisted even after updating to 10.2.1. The Apple guys gave up and offered the replacement iPhone 7s running 10.3.x and only the 3rd one was the one with no battery issue. For all the above including your original, they were set up as if new and not from back up?

To me that screams out an iOS incompatibility with some phones, only fixed by replacing them?? As I mentioned ages ago, couldn't this be a batch of chips the manufacturer has used in some iPhones which aren't compatible?

Jonathanpxxxx wrote:

So you had an iPhone 7, presumably OK when new, which developed battery issues when running 10.2, which persisted even after updating to 10.2.1. The Apple guys gave up and offered the replacement iPhone 7s running 10.3.x and only the 3rd one was the one with no battery issue. For all the above including your original, they were set up as if new and not from back up?

To me that screams out an iOS incompatibility with some phones, only fixed by replacing them?? As I mentioned ages ago, couldn't this be a batch of chips the manufacturer has used in some iPhones which aren't compatible?

Yes, the first phone was fine from the day I bought it until it began experiencing sporadic rapid batter drain, probably sometime in December. It happened so infrequently that I thought that some random glitch was to blame and I didn't do anything about it until it became chronic. All the phones except the last one were set up as new. By that time, Apple had determined that it was a hardware issue and not a software issue, so they told me I could restore the last one from a backup, which I did.

I worked with a lot of different tech support people, during phone conversations and in person at the Apple Store. They each had different ideas about the exact nature of the hardware problem, but the logic board/chip was definitely one of the possibilities they mentioned. You're right, there may have been a bad batch, and the same thought entered my mind during the long process of getting things resolved.

Remember, I was getting *replacement* phones (the ones that come in plain brown boxes, not the ones that come in the retail white boxes). Replacement phones can contain components that have been salvaged from phones that have been returned for other issues, but Apple tests them before they ship them out. So it's possible that each of the first replacement phones contained a bad component that passed Apple's tests, but still caused problems after being used for a while.

Also: replacement phones don't have product turnover that's as fast a new retail phones, so it is possible that the replacement phones had all been manufactured earlier in the model year and that they all had a bad logic board or some other bad component to begin with. It's also possible that this defect was corrected in phones that were manufactured later, and that the last replacement phone I got was not affected by the flaw.

This is all speculation, of course, but I tend to agree with your conclusion.

And I have the same problem. My phone is 5S at 6 months. After the update of 10.3, the battery falls terribly fast. I'm sure the problem is not in the camera. I was wearing it in a guarantee - "indistinguishable from a new one". I registered as a tester, I am currently with an Ax. 11.Week it up at 100% in the morning is 75%! Its terrible!

Another way to check the battery usage is explained here:

http://www.zdnet.com/article/does-your-iphone-have-a-battery-drain-problem/

I used screenshots of the battery usage and standby since full charge to show the guy at the Apple store that the battery was draining at the same rate whether it was being used or not. These two numbers should only be the same if you've been using your iPhone continuously since the last full charge. If the phone has not been used continuously, the numbers should *not* be the same and there's a problem.

I have the same problem with iphone 6. after upgrading to ios10.3 battery suddenly drops to 10% from 80% and then the phone switches off as though the battery is completely drained

apple needs to fix this asap. This is becoming an epidemic bug!

UPDATE

Wife ended up having to get a new battery but the phone has been rock solid ever since. Couldn't wait it out unfortunately as she was pretty much uncontactable. Mine is still draining like sieve... Tried out iOS 11 beta to see if the battery issues are addressed. Sadly no luck. I switch it to low power mode all day now but still only get 1-2 hours of usage. None of the other fixes in this thread worked for me - am willing to accept that it could just be that the battery is on the way out as it is an original iPhone 6. Just seems strange that the increased drain coincided with 10.2-3.

I had exactly the same issue ... visited the Apple Store. They ran the diagnostics and said the Battery is "Consumed" since it is about 2 yrs. Like you, I must say, it coincided with the software update to 10.3. I wonder what the update did to the battery? Apple needs to provide a clear answer. I do not buy the argument that the battery is dead - specially when it happened immediately after the update and continued the pattern for the last 2 weeks (i.e., getting from 100% to 10% in 20 minutes!)

MuraliKasi wrote:

I had exactly the same issue ... visited the Apple Store. They ran the diagnostics and said the Battery is "Consumed" since it is about 2 yrs. Like you, I must say, it coincided with the software update to 10.3. I wonder what the update did to the battery? Apple needs to provide a clear answer. I do not buy the argument that the battery is dead - specially when it happened immediately after the update and continued the pattern for the last 2 weeks (i.e., getting from 100% to 10% in 20 minutes!)

Two years sounds about right for the life of the battery. The fact that you keep seeing the same behavior lends additional credence to the diagnosis.

Both of these experiences are interesting new pieces of information. Phone batteries have a limited lifespan and I think we've all probably noticed that they don't hold a charge as long the older they get, but it's usually a gradual process, not overnight. Even when the user follows all the rules about charging, batteries can fail unexpectedly for no apparent reason. So it does make you wonder if there was something about the update process that was enough to put them over the edge.

I have the same the same battery drain issue, and I have narrowed it down to Apple Music. If I don't use the music app, my battery life is normal. As soon as I use the music app, my phone will be dead in 6-7 hours even if it's on standby that while time.

Once I've opened the music app, the only way to stop the drain issue is to completely shutdown the phone and turn on again. It doesn't matter if i close the app, it still drains in the background

I am experiencing a similar issue! Based on my battery usage stats it looks like my Mail is driving the battery drain, but I haven't changed any sync settings.

The fact remains that the battery drains very fast after iOS 10.3 upgrade. It's important for Apple Inc to quickly fix this. No point in trying to evade this issue.