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All Devices Battery drain across devices

chris4565

chris4565

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 22, 2018
1,068
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Hi guys,

I recently noticed that my iPhone X suffers from severe battery drain issues (details here). In short: I lose 40-50% overnight.

I then decided to check the battery life on my 10.5 iPad Pro. Normally I always turn it off during the night but I left it on yesterday to do the battery test. The result: I lost 24% in 14 hours. That’s why I decided to create this new thread.

I read assumptions that specific iCloud accounts can cause a drain but also reports of people who then created a new one without anything getting better.

Any idea what could be going on? And by the way for the time frames where the battery drains occurred no specific app shows up in the battery stats.

Thanks in advance and best wishes
Chris

p.s. I’m on iOS/iPadOS 13.5.1.

EDIT: The battery health (according to the battery settings) is at 97% on my iPhone X so that shouldn't be the culprit. I also tried restarting both devices and I also re-launched all apps in the app switcher on my iPhone X. DND would't help in my case because I don't get a ton of notifications so the battery drain is not related to the screen being on for long times.

EDIT 2: My iPhone X is an Apple replacement device by the way. One more thing: I can't say for sure when this issue started since I normally turn my devices off during the night. But I recently started to see the iPhone X draining rather fast during the day so I decided to do some night tests.
 
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Try to disable iCloud for a while, to know whether it’s the culprit. Another thing is try to reset all setting. I also experienced higher (not much) battery drain in 13.5.1 but it seems it’s back to normal after few days.
 
Thanks for the suggestion. I now logged out of iCloud on my iPad Pro and cleared all apps out of the app switcher. It's at 67% now. I'm coming back to it in 12 hours and see how it did. I will post an update then. If that helped I'm going to log back in and see how it does then.

If the battery drain is solved then, I'm going to try the same with my iPhone X.
 
Okay, the next lines are full of iOS weirdness.
As I said I signed out of iCloud on my iPad Pro. This seems to have solved the drain. But: Not only on my iPad but also the iPhone. That's really interesting. Then I thought to myself: Why not sign out of iCloud everywhere and back in because that can't hurt. Then, when signing back in on my iPhone, I got the message that my iCloud account and iMessage accounts are different (they are definitely NOT). Turned iMessage sync on anyways (which surprisingly worked), went to the Messages app and got a message that something wasn't working and then I could click on "Repair account". What the heck? I then signed out if iMessage, clicked on "Use Apple ID for iMessage" and then again got the message that the accounts don't match. Are you serious? o_O Did this again (no message this time) but the names from the contacts are missing. Now I'm just waiting for the Photos sync to finish and then I'm going to sign out and back into iCloud again... Maybe it works this time.
 
After updating to 13.5.1, I now have random battery drain similar to Chris4565 on my iPhone XS, iPad Pro 11, and 12.9.
First it was Barron's app, then CNN app, Weather Channel, etc. All the same pattern when I checked battery activity by app...1-5 minutes on screen and 15-20+ hours background. I have Siri "learn from this app" and "background app refresh" disabled for all apps on all my devices, yet still random apps run in the background and kill my battery.
This is only since I installed 13.5.1.
Called Apple and had the pleasure of a 45 minute hold and a totally incompetent customer service agent.
I'll try logging out of iCloud as mentioned above, but that solution makes no sense to me...any other thoughts on this?
Thanks...
 
Interesting. In your case there's an app that can be found in the battery stats that's causing the drain. In my case the battery stats show nothing unfortunately.

By the way, I'm now testing battery life on my iPad Pro but as said above I think it's solved (EDIT: so far at least when I'm logged out of iCloud). Gonna check overnight just to be sure. On my iPhone X I'm already logged back in and I'm going to do the battery check the night after that (can't do it today because iOS now uploads my entire library again <-- worst thing about logging out of iCloud because this takes foreeeeever). Then I'm gonna log back in on my iPad. Let's see how this turns out.

Ken1222 said:
I'll try logging out of iCloud as mentioned above, but that solution makes no sense to me...
Click to expand...
I guess the thing is that a certain syncing process could potentially be stuck and by logging out of iCloud and back in that could get resolved. I've also heard of reports that certain iCloud accounts will always drain the battery but afaik these have just been assumptions because I've also read one report of such a person and this person then created a new account and there the issues persisted.
 
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Update: When I'm logged out of iCloud on my iPad Pro the battery drain is completely gone: Lost 3% in 11 hours. On my iPhone X I logged back in (need iCloud there) and let's see how it does during the night. Also curious what the iPad's battery will do once logged back in.

Update 2: Battery drain on iPhone also solved: Lost 5% in almost 4 hours. Not amazing, but far better than before. Now I logged back in on my iPad, let's see.
 
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Thanks for reporting your experience, I am going to try this for a week. I noticed that when signed out of iCloud my devices don't such huge drain overnight.
 
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Fingers crossed that it works for you 🤞

One more update from me (after logging back in on all devices):
  • Battery drain on iPad Pro solved (lost 1% in over 8 h)
  • Battery drain on iPhone came back (lost 39% in about 7.5 h)
 
chris4565 said:
Fingers crossed that it works for you 🤞

One more update from me (after logging back in on all devices):
  • Battery drain on iPad Pro solved (lost 1% in over 8 h)
  • Battery drain on iPhone came back (lost 39% in about 7.5 h)
Click to expand...

Wow, that is very annoying, I have an iPhone X same as you.
 
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Ken1222 said:
After updating to 13.5.1, I now have random battery drain similar to Chris4565 on my iPhone XS, iPad Pro 11, and 12.9.
First it was Barron's app, then CNN app, Weather Channel, etc. All the same pattern when I checked battery activity by app...1-5 minutes on screen and 15-20+ hours background. I have Siri "learn from this app" and "background app refresh" disabled for all apps on all my devices, yet still random apps run in the background and kill my battery.
This is only since I installed 13.5.1.
Called Apple and had the pleasure of a 45 minute hold and a totally incompetent customer service agent.
I'll try logging out of iCloud as mentioned above, but that solution makes no sense to me...any other thoughts on this?
Thanks...
Click to expand...
I have found two apps doing this on my devices. I suspect rogue advertisements.
 
My iPhone 11 Pro Max started getting a battery drain and got super hot doing my normal routine after the upgrade.
Turning off "Optimized Battery Charging" in Battery Health solved it for me. It no longer gets hot, and battery life is back to normal. Still logged into iCloud too.
 
fivenotrump said:
I have found two apps doing this on my devices. I suspect rogue advertisements.
Click to expand...
I do too. I had this happen with Fox News and the Weather Channel. Reinstalled the apps several times. Was getting like 45 hours of usage or more in the background and bad battery life. Uninstalled them and back to normal. Noticed a lot more ads in the new versions. I had this on my iPad mini 5 and my iPhone 11 Pro. I have another app or 2 with increased background activity but not like these.
 
very interesting topic... Here the same issues from Belgium.
Problems are started in the "light" version since the update to 13.4, heavy since 13.5.

With my Xs Max with 'normal' usage, a batterycharge lasts easely 2 days, sometimes 3. On my iPad Pro 2017 12,9" I could work 8 hours without recharge.
After the update to 13.4 the iPhone lasts easely 1 day, sometimes 2. Working on the iPad is max 5/6 h.

With the update to 13.5, random apps keeps running in the background and drains the battery. Both on the iPad as well as the iPhone.
I did the upgrade to 13.5.1, no solution. I did a restore using DFU mode, no solution.
Contacted Apple. Try this, try that,... no solution.

Seems to be a software issue started from 13.4. Hopefully there will be a quick solution, because I don't think we, users, could solve this :(
 
Strange. When I go into the battery settings and check the night time slots when it drained the battery there’s not a single app listed and the screen on time is 0. It just looks like this:

3027D1AC-B23A-4BDC-97A5-E3BA4A8DCC5E.jpeg
 
I also experience a huge battery drain on my Xs max after updating to iOS 13.5.1 .. I did a clean install using iTunes and i’m still having a huge battery drain during standby about 10% of drain from 12 am to 10 am (around 9-10 hours).
108D7DB0-B90B-4B64-B584-E53F362441B7.jpeg
 
No one has posted in almost a week, but I just wanted to add that earlier this week my iPhone 11 Pro Max had very irregular battery drain for almost 24 hours before I finally decided to just restart the phone (which seems to have solved the issue).

I did perform an iOS update recently, I just don't remember the day...

When I got up the morning of 6/16, my iPhone was at 1%. That NEVER happens. Usually 70-90%. I checked the battery stats before I restarted and saw the graph was a very steep downward slope with nothing really showing during the period what was the cause.

Today, I get a text from AT&T saying I've used 16GB of data (1 week into my cycle) which is about 16x what I normally use in a week. I checked my usage at ATT.com and saw for almost 24 hours between 6/15 - 6/16 that my iPhone constantly consumed 16GB. Every entry in the log (about 15 minute intervals) showed 135MB. Constantly.

Oddly, my iPhone cellular usage only shows 9.8GB for the period, which is actually many months since I have not reset the period for quite a while.

So my iPhone battery was tanking for 24 hours, AT&T says my iPhone was eating data, but my iPhone didn't see that data was being used.

Anyone else with massive battery drain seeing abnormally large amounts of data being used? (you have to check your providers records as the iPhone is not recording the usage).
 
There's obviously a major bug. I found a Smoking Gun. iOS is clearly very very confused.

I have an app named Bloomberg. I only use the free features, I don't have a subscription. This app just killed my phone overnight.

But, it doesn't even appear in the list of apps for Background App Refresh!!!

Here are three screenshots which show the app missing from the refresh screen and also show how the app killed my phone overnight. The last two photos are almost the same, the difference is percent vs hours and minutes.

IMG_1197.PNGIMG_1198.PNGIMG_1199.PNG
 
Phantom Gremlin said:
There's obviously a major bug. I found a Smoking Gun. iOS is clearly very very confused.

I have an app named Bloomberg. I only use the free features, I don't have a subscription. This app just killed my phone overnight.

But, it doesn't even appear in the list of apps for Background App Refresh!!!

Here are three screenshots which show the app missing from the refresh screen and also show how the app killed my phone overnight. The last two photos are almost the same, the difference is percent vs hours and minutes.

View attachment 925512View attachment 925513View attachment 925514
Click to expand...
Background app refresh is just one aspect of background functionality offered by iOS. Apps can still perform actions in the background unrelated to it. That said, those abilities should be limited to shorter periods of time aside from a few scenarios where location services or media playback is involved and can be used for longer background usage. If an app is never launched or is closed after use then it shouldn't be able to use background services, otherwise it can make use of them.
 
Some apps do random things in the background such as battery draining and data consumption. If you do a forced close of all those apps, there's a big chance the battery & data consumption is over.

Here in Belgium, I run 4 affected apps: HLN, iCulture, Buienradar & Ebay Kleinanzeigen.
The people of the Dutch iCulture have discovered the problem in their app and explained everything in the concerning update in the app store.
In the official Apple support forum is a member who checked this out with another affected app he uses. He said his app has a completely other behavior, but also drains his battery in the background... The solution iCulture used isn't possible for his app.

I just can watch my own iPhone/iPad use... I use an iPhone for +2 years for now. Those 4 apps were always installed and never gave problems.

Looking around on several forums, lots of people are reporting the same issue as here and as in my experience.
Its just a very annoying bug in iOS 13.5. Because so many apps are affected, I don't think an app update solves the problem. Apple should solve this bug.

21 days since the release of 13.5.1? I don't understand why they wait so long to provide an update. I hope they even will update it. Never seen this with Apple :-(
 
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