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6S Plus: battery draining faster than my 6 Plus

eoblaed

eoblaed

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Apr 21, 2010
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As the subject says. Running 9.0.1 as my 6 Plus was before I traded it in.

My usage patterns are quite similar, but I seem to be losing battery almost twice as fast as I did with my 6 Plus. I restored from an iCloud backup and would've expected a greater battery drain as it sucked all that data down (a nearly full 128GB phone). The 'Settings->Battery' listing doesn't show anything I wouldn't expect (ie. no unknown culprits sucking up extra battery).

Anyone else noticing an increase in battery drain?
 
Not really. Only battery drain for me is because I'm using the phone way more, since it's a new toy. I recorded over 10 minutes of 4k video today, LTE at a Football game, social media, browsing, music, pictures and more with over 70% battery life.
 
Yeah, I haven't done hardly anything compared to that, and I'm at 47%.
 
pudcraft said:
Not really. Only battery drain for me is because I'm using the phone way more, since it's a new toy. I recorded over 10 minutes of 4k video today, LTE at a Football game, social media, browsing, music, pictures and more with over 70% battery life.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, do you have the 'Hey Siri' feature enabled?
 
This might be it. Facebook has been steadily creeping up the chart. It's recently started being a bit of a standout (30% which is over twice what 2nd place is). It also got the subtext of 'Background Activity', which I don't recall seeing before.

I just killed the app. I'll see how it fares.
 
eoblaed said:
It also got the subtext of 'Background Activity', which I don't recall seeing before.

I just killed the app. I'll see how it fares.
Click to expand...

You can tap the list to bring up an exact time amount for how long each app has stayed in the foreground and the background. Chances are, Facebook (and Messenger, if you have it installed) have ridiculous background usage stats.
 
The Facebook app is a serious battery drainer (a German developer discovered this a while back, interesting that Facebook hasn't done anything about it). Hopefully killing the app brings improvement.
 
eoblaed said:
As the subject says. Running 9.0.1 as my 6 Plus was before I traded it in.

My usage patterns are quite similar, but I seem to be losing battery almost twice as fast as I did with my 6 Plus. I restored from an iCloud backup and would've expected a greater battery drain as it sucked all that data down (a nearly full 128GB phone). The 'Settings->Battery' listing doesn't show anything I wouldn't expect (ie. no unknown culprits sucking up extra battery).

Anyone else noticing an increase in battery drain?
Click to expand...

I did experienced the same thing from restoring from iTunes backup because I was too lazy to setup the phone as new. So I fixed it by resetting the phone as new and do a fresh install. Now the battery drain issue has gone away. Suggest you do the same.
 
Well you did take a 165mAH hit to the battery from the previous model. Early battery comparison tests put it slightly below last year's models.
 
FB and instagram are huge battery drains for me too. And I have background app refresh turned off for both, as well as location services.

Think I'm going to just use safari to check it instead of the app.
 
Many times the S models are way faster, but the processor drains the battery faster. At least that happened on the 5s for sure compared to the iphone 5. This was borne out by Anandtech's testing: there was a slight regression in battery life.
This time, with a smaller battery, it's highly likely that the battery life in the 6s and 6s+ are truly worse than last year's. Do not be fooled by processor optimizations and all that stuff. The capacity of the battery still trumps all those optimizations for overall general usage patterns.

Overall, I would say to expect a 5-10% decrease vs the 6s. It's the same story with the ipad mini and ipad air. Yes, they all make it to 10 hours on Apple's testing. It's just that in the past they made it to 13 hours. So consumers notice this for sure and think that something is up with the new generation's battery being less.
 
Suckfest 9001 said:
Well you did take a 165mAH hit to the battery from the previous model. Early battery comparison tests put it slightly below last year's models.
Click to expand...

The difference in drain is significant. I've never had to plug in and recharge during the day before; I could usually go well into the next day. Today I dropped below 20% before dinner.

Opus00 said:
I did experienced the same thing from restoring from iTunes backup because I was too lazy to setup the phone as new. So I fixed it by resetting the phone as new and do a fresh install. Now the battery drain issue has gone away. Suggest you do the same.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback. I will do this only if every other option fails.
 
I used the website of Facebook at times because it will show things in order from time rather than the app which shows what Facebook wants. now more than ever because of the high background activity. Here's how mine looks. Note: not a 6s, just iP6.

image.png
 
whats your average usage and standby times?

I don't get the issue people have with facebook.

Past 3 days it has only taken 3% and only 1% today
 
usage times are pretty normal I would think, about 6hrs of usage. can't remember stand by time. just the background activity of facebook is what concerns me. background refresh of that app is off and a lot of others turned off. i'll be using the web page and see how that affects the usage times.
 
Can't compare it to a 6 because I have a 5s before my 6s+ but I did notice that the battery drains as quick as my iphone 5s on the first day I got the 6s+. But the past couple of days have been a different story. It seems to last much much longer. I was listening to a drama podcast almost the whole day yesterday while doing choirs around the house and there was plenty left before I went to bed. I guess it was just the initial day where the power was draining quickly, so far it's been holding very well. It's 2:35pm PST now and I was listening since this morning and I am still at 90%. Normally my 5s will be down to 50ish%
 
Going from the 6+ to the 6s+ I have also noticed a drop in battery life by quite a bit. Ususly right now I would be 78% but I'm at 67%. Normally when I get home I have 25% now I have around 4%. I know the battery is a little smaller, force touch takes a lot. Tomorrow I'm turning of Hay Siri to see if that helps.

Really im not shocked. We have Hay Siri that's always listening and analyzing what it hears is "hey siri" and that it was your voice that said it, when using the screen its constantly measuring pressure now, and the battery is slightly smaller to fit all this new tech in.

I bet if we turned off hey siri and 3d touch it would feel like the 6. In fact, Im going to do that tomorrow. Fresh charge and turn that off and see it its how it used it be. But I bet it will be.
 
Maybe its "newphoneitis". You have a shiny new gadget, and you play with it more and check the status more often?
 
For the Facebook app I have turned off background app refresh for it and allow it to only use location services when in the app (if its on always it is ALWAYS updating your location to it). This helped heavily reduce the battery usage while still being able to use the app vs. the mobile website version of it.
 
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