iOS 11.4 battery drain

To everyone having battery issues on iOS 11.4.

What has everyone tried?

Have any of you tried a hard reset of your iPhone 6/6S by holding down both the Home and sleep/wake buttons until your iPhone goes to black and restarts with Apple logo, then release the buttons?

How much free data storage space is left on your iPhone?

iDevices need to always maintain, at the very least, between 2-3 GBs, OR GREATER, of free data storage space.

In Settings app, under General settings, Reset panel, at the right bottom of the list, Reset All Settings.

In Settings App, Battery, check to see if any apps/processes are eating up your battery.

In Settings app, General settings panel, turn OFF Background App Refresh for any apps you feel do not need constant data updating/Internet updating in the background when not using the an app OR turn OFF Background App Refresh entirely/globally for the entire device.

Do the same in the Settings app under Notifications.Turn off notifications for apps you do not think you need notifications for and/or edit the different ways you receive notifications to help with performance by not always using all the notification methods together.

In Settings app under Mail, you may want to set a longer fetch time or set your iOS Mail app to only manually fetch your mail ONLY when you launch the iOS Mail app.

In Settings app (NOT from the iOS Control Panel) turn OFF Bluetooth when not using any Bluetooth devices.

Also, in general, if you want a faster IDevice, on all of my iDevices, I turn off most of the iOS motion graphics eye candy, by simply turning ON Reduce Motion in Settings app, General, Accessibilty settings.

Make sure you aren't running 30 -50 OR EVEN MORE background apps in the iOS 11 Control Panel/App Switcher.

If you are, you need to quit the bulk of these background running apps by tap and hold a finger on an app window in the switcher and slide your finger upwards to quit an app. You should be able to use more than one finger to quit more than one app window simultaneously.

Also, make sure you don’t have 20-50 OR A WHOLE LOT MORE of active website tabs running in the web browser.

If you do, greatly reduce the amount of active website tabs your web browser.

Some minority of user have been turning ON and leaving ON iCloud backups continuously backing up on a constant and daily basis.

If you are one of these users, in Settings App, tap your Apple ID, then tap iCloud, then find iCloud backup and turn off iCloud backup and only turn this on to do daily backups either when you are not using your iPhone for a prolonged period of time (like when you are sleeping), then turn iCloud backups OFF when actually using your iPhone.

OR

Only perform your backups on a lesser time schedule.( like twice a week, once a week, once every two weeks, once a month, etc.).

Any large amount of background running apps or active processes that have to constantly go out to the Web to fetch data ALL THE TIME is going to slow down ANY iDevice and also, severely impact battery life.

In addition to all of the possible fixes and solutions presented, another iPhone 6S user, in another single posting in the iPhone support communities, suggested to go into Settings, General, Accessibility, Increase Contrast and turn ON Reduce Transparency.

Your iPhone 6/6S won’t look as pretty, but that user reported that his iPhone 6/6S speed improved considerably.

If none of this, so far, has helped your iPhone 6,/6S,

What about doing a complete backup to iCloud or iTunes on a computer, then do a complete erase and reset as new in the Settings app under General, Reset then restore your backup from iCloud or iTunes?

If still no joy after the erase and restore, hammer Apple with constant feedback about the iPhone 6/6S issues here.

iPhone Feedback

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

This is THE ONLY avenue to get Apple’s DIRECT attention to any and all iPhone 6 issues!

IF no one continues to post regular feedback about iPhone 6/6S issues, Apple will NEVER know there is an issue and will never correct it!

Cognizant Apple employees read ALL feedback generated from all of the various feedback pages and transfers the data to the appropriate Apple personnel , but NO Apple employees will ever respond with any type of direct, individual replies from the feedback you post.

Good Luck to You All!

I upgraded both my iPhone 7 and iPad Air 2 to 11.4 earlier this week. My iPhone 7 was fine, but iPad Air 2 suffered from rapid battery drain as mentioned by many others on this discussion thread. I had read comments that suggested it was a 5 GHz related wi-fi bug. I noted my iPhone was on my 2.4 GHz wi-fi network whereas my iPad was on my 5 GHz network. I moved the iPad onto the 2.4 GHz network and battery consumption returned to how it was prior upgrade, i.e. no more rapid battery drain.

The downside of 2.4 GHz wi-fi networks is they are more prone to radio interference in built up areas from neighbouring wi-fi networks, due to more limited frequency band / channels when compared with 5 GHz. This can give rise to intermittent reception problems, especially during the evening as home Internet usage peaks.

I read elsewhere in the discussion thread that some people resolved the battery drain problem by performing a “network reset”. I did this on my iPad and then rejoined it to my 5 GHz wi-fi network, and no more rapid battery drain issues on the 5 GHz network. I have also performed a network reset on iPhone as a precaution.

For me, it feels like a software bug associated with network configuration, but can worked around by performing a network reset.

Pretty sure this has everything to do with the following: settings —> privacy —> location services —> system services. After I unchecked all of the system services (except find my iPhone), the battery drain stopped completely.

Iphone 6s (BH: 95%) and Ipad Mini 4 (BH:96%)

Both units show since days the same annoying battery drain (60% overnight). Also a clean install with 11.4 on the phone didn't improve the situation. Yesterday I downgraded to 11.3.1 on the iPhone and everything's back to normal again. Overnight (~ 7h) the energy loss was only 1%. I'll keep the Ipad running for 2 more days to verify the behaviour.

I have/had this problem too. I tried all possible solutions to this issue but to no avail. Then I figured I’d try something else and that was to reinstall iOS from the 11.4 IPSW file with iTunes.

As of now I have done this for one of our iPhone’s that has the drainage problem. So far battery seems back to normal approx 5% per hour w/ moderate use.

Search DuckDuckGo: iOS 11.4 IPSW.

OSXDAILY has links to the IPSW files for all devices plus a write up on how to install.

Hope this helps you too.

Here are the results of my tests :

- iOS 11.4 with WiFi off : lost 1% / hour

- iOS 11.4 with WiFi on and a 5Ghz network : lost 12% / hour

- iOS 11.4 with WiFi on and a 2.4Ghz network : lost 1% / hour

In standby mode and no app opened.

I did reinstall iOS from the 11.4 IPSW file with iTunes but it was of no help. Overnight my battery went from 90% to 38% while on standby. Finally today I reverted back to 11.3.1 and everything is back to normal now. It appears to be a bug in the 11.4 that's what causing it.

Hi Phil_anthropist,

I have encountered the same conclusion: 5Ghz wifi has been screwed up in this update for iphone 6/6s. I think the SE devices are actually experiencing a different battery draining problem. Switching my iphone 6s to only a 2.4Ghz wifi takes its battery usage back to normal. My ipad air gen1 never showed a problem. Unfortunately, when I travel and don't have the luxury of forcing 2.4Ghz wifi, I'm not sure what I'll do (or others who have no control over their wifi signal).

Again, two nights in row (this is 4 days after updating, so it's not an "indexing" problem) my iphone 6s was between 80 and 100% charged and I woke up to it dead. Changed the wifi signal to only use 2.4GHz and it's back to normal battery usage.

I have been noticing the same rapid battery drain problems on my iPad Air 2 after 11.4 upgrade, but not my iPhone 7. Following reading your entry, I noted that my iPad was on my 5 GHz wi-fi network whereas my iPhone is on my 2.4 GHz network. I have now swapped my iPad over to 2.4 GHz network and battery performance has significantly improved. Does seem like a wi-fi iOS related software bug, unless they have decided to push more power to the 5 GHz radio to improve reception range.

I posted a reply on a different thread, but for me It appears to have been a network issue since I was having different behavior on different wifi networks both on and off (iPhone 6s and iPad Air2... no issues on iPhone X).

After the usual Restart, Hard Restart, disabling most of the location settings, what ended up solving it for me was resetting my network settings under Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.

Today I was able to experiment with the suggestion that the wi-fi connection to the 5ghz band was causing the issue. I have a dual band home wi-fi router. My priority connection list had the 5g band as my top choice.

Battery drain on my iPhone 6s was about 12% an hour with ~ 10 apps open in the background and the phone in standby (locked - screen off). I changed my connection priority so that my iPhone would connect to the 2.4g band instead. I had the same apps open in the background, phone again in standby. Battery drain was 1-2% an hour.

In this case it is a major bug. I've also played with different WIFI settings, also followed the advices in lots of discussions. At the end of the day even turning Wifi completely off didn't help to get back the pre-ios 11.4 situation. Depending on the setting the iPhone needed after 3 - 5 hour the Power Plug. It's dramatic and it renders the phone useless (in my case a iPhone 6S Plus).

What really helps:

• Downgrade iOS to last version before iOS 11.4
• Upgrade to iOS 12 Beta, if you are willing to accepts the risks of beta software and if you have access to the beta

Both options showed me better results. However, the first option is IMHO the best option for 99,9% of users. But be aware that there might be a data loss, if you have no recent backup of your data.

I'm relatively shure that Apple has a great interest in finding and solving this issue. Otherwise they risk - beside damage of the brand image - also to get sued by angry customers. So I believe we will very soon get an update which fixes the issue.

If you have not yet upgraded to 11.4: Don't do it now! Wait until Apple has fixed the problem.

If you have no option to revert, to use the beta or to avoid the update and you are already a victim of the bug, I really don't see any chance to reliably work around it. My observation is, that the best you can do is to turn off any iCloud sync, reduce the number of mails stored on the device and switch to manual refresh and to avoid Wifi and Bluetooth connections - means: You have little more functionality left than available on a 1st gen iPhone... Okay... A better screen...

😟 That's not cool, Apple...

I posted this earlier above and seems to work for many (myself included). Seems to be a network issue. what solved the issue for me on my devices was resetting my network settings under Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings. then re-add your connections.

There seems to be a bug with wifi in iOS 11.4. I had the battery draining issue on my iPhone 6s and disabling wifi, though not an ideal fix, has resolved the issue. I've had wifi off for several days now and the battery performance is back to normal.

Some people are suggesting that the problem only occurs when connecting to a 5GHz wifi network, whereas with 2.4GHz networks it is fine. I haven't tried that yet myself so can't vouch for it, but it might be worth a try if you can't do without wifi.

I had the same problem with my Iphone 6, drained the battery during the night from 66% to 0%.

I run a 5Ghz Wifi network at home (europe). I changed the connection to my 2.4Ghz network (told the Iphone to forget my 5 network).

Since then the battery is back to my 2 day cycle as it was with 11.3.4.

So there is definately an issue with Wifi in 11.4