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 12, 2018 7:15 AM in response to dkentley

And since the Battery Health is still Beta doesn't it make you wonder how it is monitoring the battery condition and is that in fact the cause of the excessive battery drain?


I turned off WIFI and turn on Low Power Mode this morning. I still had excessive battery drain.


I have to use HotSpot for internet and the WIFI has to be switched on to work. Since 11.4 and now on 11.4.1 the internet speed is also GREATLY reduced. There must be something running in the background causing these problems.

CIA, NSA, KGB, Apple? That was a "joke" I HOPE.


I also noticed that the battery drain is not linear and fully charged isn't draining as fast as when it is below 50%.

Anyone else see that?

Jul 12, 2018 12:28 PM in response to nibor209

such as not using certain WiFi’s, making sure all my apps are always turned off, etc, as a solution rather a bandaid for the problem. Whether they are doing it or not apple should take responsibility and fix this problem in a timely manner instead of letting their customers suffer. I recently went out of the country, came back, and had this problem. My mother who was here in the states with the same phone (iPhone 6s) also had the same drained issue. I talked to Verizon they said it was my phone. So I went to Apple then they said it was my battery and the problem was Verizon’s new cell tower firmware, in all fairness it did need to be replaced, however after it only marginally fixed the problem. My mother who rarely uses her phone couldn’t leave her phone on standby for more then 2 hours without almost completely dying. I couldn’t even be on the phone 10 minutes without it almost completely dieing. Went to Apple the said battery was fine on her phone and said she had to many things running, what?! Ok I’m sorry if news, email, WiFi, Bluetooth, txt, call or too many things running in the background for the battery to handle, however, never had this issue before iOS 11.4. So I did some research I heard some people had better luck on iOS 12 beta. Installed it on my phone again only marginally better. At least now my phone won’t die within 2 hours on standby, but when I’m using it still ***** the life out of my battery just as quick as iOS 11.4 and it doesn’t matter if WiFi is on or not or on 5g or 2.4. At this point Apple is garbage, has been since jobs died, to me the only fix is waiting for the new phones to come out and get the pixel 3. Googles where it’s at now. Apple is not transparent every where you go they point the finger at the other guy with no real answers. I’m not going to waste my time making sure everything is in a particular mode to make sure my battery can last 3 hours ?!?! Screw that goodbye Apple. I’m tired of waiting for the next update to solve the last updates problems, apples just a revolving door of problems.

Jul 12, 2018 4:46 PM in response to Zide99

Goodness so many people having same issue. Im not exactly sure which update I do know it was right after the battery beta both mine and my husbands battery just drains like crazy. Both of our iPhone 6S have to be charged at least two times daily. They turn off and on, reboot, or won't turn on for about a hour or two after turning off on own. Usually both can go 2-3 days before needing a charge. Now my husbands phone won't turn on and its been half a day. Both of our phones aren't even three yrs old yet. This is bringing back bad memories with my iPhone 4's last update before its similiar demise.

Jul 13, 2018 3:34 AM in response to Gogogagetipod

My iPhone 6s charged over night and was at 100% 1 hour and 30 minutes ago. I used Hot Spot and looked at email, etc (3 or 4 Apps max and turned the Apps off after using them). When the charge gets to 80% the Low Power Mode goes off and I didn't turn it back on this morning so it ran at full power.


The battery health is at 87% and was 91% when I loaded 11.4. I have been running 11.4.1 for more than a week.

Everything is turned off that can be turned off.


My battery is now at 18%. That is 54% drain per hour. Time to plug in again.


This is absolutely UNBELIEVABLE and not getting better. What has APPLE done???????? I will need to have to look for another phone. It won't be an Apple.

Jul 13, 2018 4:31 AM in response to 0983542078

Precisely , however such in the case of my IPod it corrected whatever it was draining the battery in standby while WiFi was turned on. I’m now closing on 60 hours standby on my iPod with WiFi on and just now hit 50%. Unfortunately my iPhone 6s Plus isn’t so lucky. My battery life before I installed 11.4 was 100% and now it’s tettering 90% . IMO that’s not a good sign.

Jul 17, 2018 12:12 AM in response to Zide99

I have been facing the same issue, i had got my battery replaced about a year back on the 6s plus model. as soon as i remove the phone from charging the battery drops to 40% in matter of 30 minutes, i dont know what to do, i think apple products are seeing a severe hit lately, with quality of products and iOS going down, other companies offer much better battery and product life. i have about 7 apple devices which i use personally but because of so many issues now i am planning to shift to another product as i can't stay with a product for whom i am constantly worried about charging.

Jul 17, 2018 3:52 AM in response to Ripgrinder

I swear Apple does this deliberately. They're not happy with iPhone X sales so now they slowly kill your older 2nd, 3rd generation phones to force an upgrade. iPhones were great while the mobile companies discounted them. Now, paying full price, over $2k for a couple of phones is not a priority. I do want to say thatmy rapid battery drain issues happened right around when the Battery (b3ta) features were introduced.

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iOS 11.4 battery drain

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