iOS 11.4 battery drain

My iPhone 6 was working perfectly fine until I updated to iOS 11.4 and ever since I did that my battery is draining rapidly even without me using it at all. I used to go a full day without charging it now it may last half a day. I am just wondering if something got turned on with this new update that I have to turn off to save battery life. It is just weird I have not done anything other than update the iOS and now this happening. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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Posted on Jun 1, 2018 6:33 AM

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Posted on Jun 12, 2018 12:13 PM

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!

802 replies

Jul 31, 2018 9:17 AM in response to Zide99

My situation is same after using my iphone 6s for 19 months now. battery discharge is rapid at the rate of 1% per each click when browsing which is pretty bad. tried complete reset yesterday but no luck. now the option left is to replace the battery with new and check IF its the same then go for a better other brand phone. Really iphones are weak in battery back up segment for sure they just doesnt match to the kind of internet usage these days

Aug 4, 2018 5:51 AM in response to sterling r

Having experienced this severe battery drain issue first hand on a 6s that was only a few months old, I can assure you and Apple it is a real problem for some people’s iPhones. I tried Apple Support on the phone, and a trip to the Genius Bar without a fix. Fortunately for me 11.4.1 fixed the issue for mine, but it isn’t doing so for many others as shown by all of the frustrated customers on this forum thread.


Apple should read through this entire forum thread and contact the people that are still living with the problem. Offer to replace their iPhones with one that has been updated to 11.4.1 and tested to be working properly. Take those returned iPhones and distribute them to Apples senior level Support staff, and figure out how to fix this problem. Apple is losing dedicated customers with this unresolved and unacknowledged problem. I’m going to keep a screen shot of my reply in case it is deleted.

Aug 15, 2018 8:00 AM in response to Zide99

I have exactly the same issue, battery drains like nothing i've ever seen. Yes i use apps etc occasionally through the day but only for short periods. I've now taken to bringing a charger to work as it dies halfway through the day. Iphone 6S.


I suspect it's turned on some sort of location services that is constantly updating, this kind of thing constantly drains battery. I've found if i simply turn my mobile data off, it lasts a lot longer, but then what's the point of a data plan if i turn my data off? - Then i won't be getting my emails etc.


It needs investigating and fixing ASAP

Aug 15, 2018 8:42 AM in response to egld

It could be but I doubt it. First of all how could this crop up suddenly and only upon the OS update? In any case it would also take longer to charge the device and heat up the charger due to this short circuit.


In my case the charge remains pretty much topped up until I try to use it. Then the 1 minute use, display blanking, reboot, displaying of 1% battery level and then 3% to 4% less then the last display cycle starts. All the notifications and other things keep going ion the background. I am just going to keep maintining the charge level and generally avoid using it except to check the battery level. This in the hope that Apple will do something to fix the problem without admitting that they royally f***ed up the last update and it will work on my device..

Aug 18, 2018 8:42 AM in response to Zide99

I’ve had this battery drain issue on my iPad ever since updating to version 11.4 and 11.4.1 did NOT fix the issue. The problem gets worse. When the battery gets just below 30%, the iPad now completely shuts itself down and I have to plug it in to AC to recharge. No warning of low battery or nothing, iPad shuts itself off and becomes useless unless plugged into AC.


APPLE, can you listen to your customers, there’s a problem with that iOS version, please allow some way for owners of their devices to revert back to an older iOS if they would like to do this. Consumer complaints should dictate how you handle certain problems, ARE YOU NOT LISTENING OR DO YOU JUST DON’T CARE???

Aug 20, 2018 1:15 PM in response to sven_frankfurt

@sven_frankfurt - Just curious whether that new "high-performance" battery resolved the excessive battery drain. My new phone with iOS 10.3.3 worked fine; it was an (unintended) "upgrade" to iOS 11.4.1 that's *decimated* the battery. It was INSTANTLY.

Like yours, mine loses half its life sitting doing nothing. (BTW, after many tests & tweakings, I've discovered that along with disabling every conceivable option, the only way to somewhat slow -- but not eradicate -- the excessive battery drain is to have the phone on Airplane Mode and Low Battery all day. Make you question why have an iPhone? Sure does!

Oct 2, 2018 1:44 PM in response to Zide99

This is a total disaster. My both devices iPhone SE and iPad 2018 started to malfunction after ios 11.4: battery draining, apps worked randomly. Full resetting, pure installation > some app problems disappeared but not all. Ios 11.4.1 was little better lately but still random problems. Battery draining was not so bad as earlier. But can’t compare to ios 11.3.3, everything worked so well and battery lasted much better.


Everything started from the beginning again with ios 12. It has been about one and a half week in my devices. Battery draining is quite bad and almost every app has random behavior: sometimes app doesn’t open or it freezes.

And it’s fifth month with this s h i t already!! So bad Apple!

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iOS 11.4 battery drain

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