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iOS 11 draining the battery while unit is idle/sleeping

M

Mac32

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Original poster
Nov 20, 2010
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I have an iPhone 6s and an iPad Pro 10.5, and both lost a considerable amount of battery life before having to recharge. I notice in particular that the battery is constantly being drained while the unit is sleeping/not being used. iOS 10 was MUCH better in this regard. It's really a crime that Apple tricked us into upgrading into this worthless iOS 11, which brought no real improvement in day-to-day use - only worse battery life, with no way to "downgrade" back to iOS 10.

Anyone figured out a way to fix the battery draining in iOS 11?
Thanks.
 
Have you checked to see what app or system process are draining the battery in settings? My 6s and Air2 don’t exhibit what your describing at all.
 
No, can't say I find any app that shows any suspicious behaviour in battery settings.
 
Mac32 said:
I have an iPhone 6s and an iPad Pro 10.5, and both lost a considerable amount of battery life before having to recharge. I notice in particular that the battery is constantly being drained while the unit is sleeping/not being used. iOS 10 was MUCH better in this regard. It's really a crime that Apple tricked us into upgrading into this worthless iOS 11, which brought no real improvement in day-to-day use - only worse battery life, with no way to "downgrade" back to iOS 10.

Anyone figured out a way to fix the battery draining in iOS 11?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Since "good" and "bad" and "a considerable amount" are hopelessly subjective when referring to battery life, you need to define your conditions, measure the battery discharge rate and then express it in some meaningful terms before you have a hope of comparing to anyone else's battery discharge rate.

For example, I'm currently on 11.2.5 beta 1 and with nothing syncing in the background, no push notifications enabled, BT on but not connected and with a strong WiFi and cell signal, I see between 0.3% and 0.5% per hour discharge overnight. All versions of 11.x I have used have been similar to that I consider that very good and on a par with the best I ever got on Android 7 or 8 under similar conditions.

Paul
 
What apps are you running? Is background refresh on? How many tabs do you have open in Safari. When resting/sleeping does your phone have a good wifi connection?
 
I hear what you are saying, but nothing has changed since iOS 10 with my usage - unless Apple made new default settings. Also, this happens on two different units, which speaks to a pattern.
It's obviously difficult to give an exact number of minutes in battery life reduction, when I can't downgrade back to iOS 10 for comparison. Needless to say, it's a big difference - both the iPhone and iPad Pro have to be charged more frequently than before.

I'll try disable push notifications, and see if that helps. Thanks.
 
As another comparison, when my SE was new and before I disabled some background stuff it would discharge about 1%/hour overnight. I don't think I ever saw a standby drain higher than that. And of course it got a lot better after I carefully configured it. This was on an earlier 11.x version, but I have not found a significant difference in standby drain from one release to the next.

The point would seem to be that the experience you describe is a bit extreme and not typical of the OS itself. That would point to one or more apps as the culprit and not the OS. But until we start comparing similar setups and meaningful units of battery discharge, no real conclusions can be drawn other than "it seems worse to me". If you just want to register a complaint, that is fine. But if the goal is to actually find out what (if anything) is wrong and fix it, more data is needed.

Not an iOS expert here.... I'm a recent immigrant from the Android world. But I am a retired engineer and the best way to solve a problem is to define it, quantify it and then start to logic through where the numbers lead you. I realize that's not easy with a device like a phone where no two are configured alike.

Paul
 
Mac32 said:
No, can't say I find any app that shows any suspicious behaviour in battery settings.
Click to expand...

You could, just for giggles, try closing ALL your apps and just see if that makes a difference...if it does then work through them until you find a culprit(s).

I remember in iOS 9/10 days occasionally Facebook would run away and discharge the battery and make the phone hot...but I haven't seen that for months, and my 6S has been just fine on 11, as has my Mini2. Paul makes a good point that no two phones are likely configured the same with the same app combination so likely the relatively small number of users with problems have some common/unique aspect causing the drain.
 
It's ios 11. I get the same guzzling battery drain (i7) without a single 3rd party app installed. They're sticking
it to the legacy folks.
 
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Plumber007 said:
It's ios 11. I get the same guzzling battery drain (i7) without a single 3rd party app installed. They're sticking
it to the legacy folks.
Click to expand...
I'm curious how bad is your battery drain. After a night of standby (let's say 8 hours), what battery percentage did your phone lose?
 
I installed 11.2.1 yesterday via iTunes (full update 2.5gb), and so far it seems the battery usage is closer to what I had with iOS 10. I'll give an update in a couple of days, if it turns out otherwise.
 
uwdaveh said:
I'm curious how bad is your battery drain. After a night of standby (let's say 8 hours), what battery percentage did your phone lose?
Click to expand...

Well when I got back to adding apps I was at 64 hrs standby, 1:32:00 for usage, which seems lot for for clicking in and out just to check for missed call or messages, and 76% battery remaining. No app data was displayed in battery usage field.
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simonsi said:
Did you never have any additional apps installed or did you remove them to test? I'm intrigued as I've never heard of anyone without any additional apps installed on an iPhone...
Click to expand...
I did an .ipsw the sunday after 11.2 release and got sidetracked.
 
Not saying you should have to do this but I'd try: full battery charge, force quitting all apps, restarting phone and then let it sit and see if same drain. To me this would be interesting test. If no severe battery drain then I's run a couple of apps and again see.
Fortunately I don't have this problem - very fortunate
 
iOS 11 is known for big battery issues. I also have the battery drained when the phone is in stand by and all apps closed. today at 4pm the phone was at 71%, didnt touch or get a notification once and at 7pm it was at 64%, iPhone 6s Plus.

I also have problem with big battery drain when I actually use the phone. I know every year people said this, but this year release is really the worst release I saw in a very long time. Everyone I know have battery issues immediately after they updated to iOS 11.
 
I have experienced the standby battery drain for iOS 11 on my iPad Pro 9.7". I have experienced drain of up to 15%-20% battery per day of standby against a previous experience of 1%-3% per day on iOS 10. More recently, that has stabilised to 3%-4% without any specific change to settings. The only change I have made was to install the iOS 11.2.1 update.
 
IOS 11.2.1 user here as well. Previously had 10 hours of usage and around 40 of standby on 11.2, now 7 hours and 20 hours and the battery is dead. I am going to do a downgrade to 11.2, hope i see the past results.
device: iP7+
 
Mac32 said:
I have an iPhone 6s and an iPad Pro 10.5, and both lost a considerable amount of battery life before having to recharge. I notice in particular that the battery is constantly being drained while the unit is sleeping/not being used. iOS 10 was MUCH better in this regard. It's really a crime that Apple tricked us into upgrading into this worthless iOS 11, which brought no real improvement in day-to-day use - only worse battery life, with no way to "downgrade" back to iOS 10.

Anyone figured out a way to fix the battery draining in iOS 11?
Thanks.
Click to expand...


No drain for me. ipad Air 2 with all updates to 11 and it's still getting around 1 hour per 10%.
With regard to sleeping, no drain. Will go to bed with it at 100%, and when my alarm goes off in morning it's still at 100%.
 
Happening to my iPhone X aswell, lost 50% under 10 hours, also said the same percent under Usage/idle under iOS 11.2.1
 
The iPhone battery is still draining quicker during usage. I listen to music in my car via bluetooth. Before, I could play music, audio books etc. for a decent number hours via my iPhone. Now, after 2-3 hours (roughly speaking) the battery is near empty. This is definitely a problem with iOS 11, shoddy programming QC or whatever. I really wish I'd stayed with iOS 10.

Well, lesson learned. Apple simply can't be trusted anymore with their iOS upgrades. I'll never upgrade an iOS again, unless I've seen plenty of evidence to the contrary. Most of the additions are fairly useless anyway, it's mostly about small visual changes and adding bloatware. Siri is still crap btw.
 
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