iOS 7.1 - Battery Drain (merged)

[joshisaboss]

11 month old iPhone 5 7.1

Just wifi web browsing and played Impossible Road for about 2 minutes.

 

[Max(IT)]

Well, I have checked my battery with iBackupbot and the results are:

Cycle count: 377
Design capacity: 1430
FullChargeCapacity: 1275
Status: success

So I guess this shows that my battery isn't faulty?
377 cycles sounds like a lot in 7 months!
Mind you, with my dreadful battery life that explains the number of charges :-(

Your battery is at about 90% of original designed capacity, and after 377 cycles is a very good value.

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A further update...
After discovering that my battery is indeed ok, I have done a fresh installation of iOS7.1 and set it up as a new phone. I haven't downloaded any apps, set up any email accounts, or indeed loaded anything whatsoever onto the phone. All I have done is adjusted the settings to how I usually have them for battery saving purposes, and I have been browsing the internet for the last 2 hours to see what kind of battery life a phone with no apps or data loaded onto it will get. This for me is to rule out once and for all the 'conflicting' or 'compromised' apps possibility behind my battery drain. As no email accounts are loaded up either, no photos, nothing whatsoever, it must surely tell me what the problem is?

Not so :-(
My battery has possibly lasted an extra 10 minutes or so over the two hours of web browsing (my usual usage pattern). This amount is extremely negligible.
So it's not the battery, it isn't the apps, my phone isn't overheating, the location icon isn't on, the spinning wheel isn't on, there are no obvious hardware faults and yet my iPhone 5 still has dreadful battery life.
I'm truly stumped.

The only remaining suspect is the signal strength : how strong is in the area where you live and work ?

Btw how many hours of usage clan you achieve with your iPhone ?

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It's lasted me the whole day since 9am. Could probably get another 45 mins - an hour out of it.

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Update: day done

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Is it an iPhone 5 ?
A good result.

 

[sunking101]

Your battery is at about 90% of original designed capacity, and after 377 cycles is a very good value.

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The only remaining suspect is the signal strength : how strong is in the area where you live and work ?

Btw how many hours of usage clan you achieve with your iPhone ?

I can sometime manage 6 hours depending on usage patterns, but it is normally between 4 and 5 hours.
As for signal strength, I have always had 1 or 2 bars at home and work, yet this was the same with iOS6 too and it didn't seem to affect my battery life whilst web browsing etc.

Is 377 cycles after 7 months excessive? Didn't I read somewhere that over 500 and the battery performance plummets?

 

[sumsingwong]

Screen shots of when I went to bed and when I woke up. I have location services, WiFi and Bluetooth enabled. I did receive push notifications and emails throughout the night. This is pretty much what I was getting on my iPhone 5.

 

[dannyyankou]

Is it an iPhone 5 ?
A good result.

iPhone 5s. Big upgrade over the 4s I had last week 🙂

 

[Max(IT)]

I can sometime manage 6 hours depending on usage patterns, but it is normally between 4 and 5 hours.
As for signal strength, I have always had 1 or 2 bars at home and work, yet this was the same with iOS6 too and it didn't seem to affect my battery life whilst web browsing etc.

Is 377 cycles after 7 months excessive? Didn't I read somewhere that over 500 and the battery performance plummets?

1 or 2 bars only ? I think that is the culprit, mate 🙁

iOS 7 on the iPhone 5 seems to be much more "aggressive" in that aspect, and with a poor network it drains the battery much faster than iOS 6 did.
I realized that on my iPhone 5, that reached 7 hrs in my hometown (very good signal) while it had problems to reach 5 hrs in the town where I work (1/2 bars with frequent switch between 3G and edge).

377 cycles are a lot: I used to have 270 in 10 months.

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iPhone 5s. Big upgrade over the 4s I had last week 🙂

I can have 8 hrs on mine 😀

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Screen shots of when I went to bed and when I woke up. I have location services, WiFi and Bluetooth enabled. I did receive push notifications and emails throughout the night. This is pretty much what I was getting on my iPhone 5.

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I have almost all services on , but I'm losing no more than 1-2% overnight.
You lost 10%, is way too much in my opinion.

 

[Hawkeye411]

My battery is draining much faster. It's definitely not in my head. It has always lasted me all day and, since the update, it's dying mid afternoon to early evening. I reset all the settings yesterday. I will see today if that fixed it or not. <cue the haters!>

Resetting all settings without deleting the content seems to have fixed the battery issue for me. Thanks goodness!!!

 

[sumsingwong]

I have almost all services on , but I'm losing no more than 1-2% overnight.

You lost 10%, is way too much in my opinion.

I guess it also depends on how much push notifications and emails you get. I have 3 push email accounts and many of apps that I receive push notifications from. I will turn push notifications off, email accounts to manual fetch, location services off and try again to see if I see a big difference.

 

[Armen]

Yahoo 🙄

The same source that considers Kim Kardashian news.

My battery on 7.1 is now officially better than iOS 6. So thanks anyway yahoo for your "informative" reporting.

 

[Altis]

Does anyone know if Facebook app stays active in the background past 10 minutes for whatever reason? I feel like if I don't close it out (swipe up from the multi-task window) it just eats my battery 🙁

The Facebook app will eat your battery. It stays active indefinitely due to some fancy footwork on their part. Best to force kill it each time you're done, regardless of having background app refresh enabled or not.

... Which is strange, because 75% of the time, if I leave the app for 10 seconds and return, it reloads from scratch and looses my place.

Resetting all settings without deleting the content seems to have fixed the battery issue for me. Thanks goodness!!!

Had to do this on 7.0, made a big difference!

I don't think there is something to fix.

Perhaps not in terms of a fresh install working well.... But if we keep saying that a fresh install is crucial, and setting up as new, resetting network settings, etc..... Can we not agree that what Apple needs to fix is the update process?

Most people update how their devices tell them to. Not everyone starts going around the web to find solutions to a basic update, and a great many iOS users have very little knowledge about how any of it works at all. It's still a massive flaw.

This goes strongly against the whole 'technology should just work' sentiment that Apple preaches.

 

[jrbdmb]

Isnt that the complaint with every new update since 2008. According to that logic we should be down to 15 min battery life.

Most are just trolls.

Just like the zealots who claim that every update increases their battery life and makes their iPhone's performance "snappier." 😎

 

[jrbdmb]

I'm sure it's not in your head, but surely it isn't in iOS 7.1 ....

You realize that just because you are not encountering battery issues due to IOS7 does not means those issues don't exist. It just means that for whatever reason you are not hitting them. That seems to be a common response on here - "I'm not having the issue you're having, so you must be doing something wrong." 🙁

I have an iPhone 5 about 18 months old. Ever since upgrading to IOS7 a few months ago the iPhone will occasionally power off at 20% or even 40% battery left. This never happened while running IOS6, not once. I have cleared / restored the phone and it did not resolve the issue. I refuse to accept that the battery just went bad the day I upgraded to IOS7 - something in IOS7 is causing this issue. (Note that I haven't had 7.1 long enough yet to see if it resolves this problem.)

 

[Altis]

I guess it also depends on how much push notifications and emails you get. I have 3 push email accounts and many of apps that I receive push notifications from. I will turn push notifications off, email accounts to manual fetch, location services off and try again to see if I see a big difference.

I believe it doesn't really matter how many notifications you get, it's the push service itself that consumes the battery. Disabling it should help noticeably.

 

[Ashin]

Decided to do a full restore to fix some iCloud bugs I was having... was a work around, but this is a permanent fix.

I'd say, doing an in-place OTA upgrade for a major release is always a recipe for disaster as so many files change.

Battery life seems great now... just 4-5 minutes of phantom usage, which is normal for system processes/push etc.

This is an iPhone 4 too... 4 years old, pretty thrashed battery (don't know the cycles though)

 

[Max(IT)]

I guess it also depends on how much push notifications and emails you get. I have 3 push email accounts and many of apps that I receive push notifications from. I will turn push notifications off, email accounts to manual fetch, location services off and try again to see if I see a big difference.

I have several apps with push notifications too, but I set my three mail accounts to fetch every hour.
I don't like the idea of disable location services to spare some battery juice: I have a smartphone, I paid good money for it, and I want every feature enabled.

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Decided to do a full restore to fix some iCloud bugs I was having... was a work around, but this is a permanent fix.

I'd say, doing an in-place OTA upgrade for a major release is always a recipe for disaster as so many files change.

Battery life seems great now... just 4-5 minutes of phantom usage, which is normal for system processes/push etc.

This is an iPhone 4 too... 4 years old, pretty thrashed battery (don't know the cycles though)

Why don't you try iBackupBot ? It could tell you something about your battery health.

Btw now your usage time seems to be just fine.

 

[jrswizzle]

Here's my usage after a complete drain (almost) - about half is music via headphones and BT to a Bose Soundlink Mini. Rest of the usage is various - imessage, safari, emails, NCAA bracket apps, etc....About half and half wifi/LTE.

Also some other stats - brightness at 50%, location services always on, BT always on, auto-update apps always on, push on for my exchange work email. Also always OTA update and restore from iCloud - even though people say not to. Never had a problem.

Hope this sheds some light for those out there - I'm a heavy user, but I split my time between three main devices (work iPhone 5S, personal iPhone 5C and iPad retina mini). This usage is for my work 5S - I'll post the other two when they are down to 1%.

EDIT: Attached iPhone 5C usage statistics. Same settings as 5S listed above.

 

[Max(IT)]

Perhaps not in terms of a fresh install working well.... But if we keep saying that a fresh install is crucial, and setting up as new, resetting network settings, etc..... Can we not agree that what Apple needs to fix is the update process?

Most people update how their devices tell them to. Not everyone starts going around the web to find solutions to a basic update, and a great many iOS users have very little knowledge about how any of it works at all. It's still a massive flaw.

This goes strongly against the whole 'technology should just work' sentiment that Apple preaches.

Actually I did a fresh install only on major releases (iOS 6 and iOS 7 for instance). Every other update I'm just doing using iTunes or OTA.

Update process could be better ? Sure ...

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You realize that just because you are not encountering battery issues due to IOS7 does not means those issues don't exist. It just means that for whatever reason you are not hitting them. That seems to be a common response on here - "I'm not having the issue you're having, so you must be doing something wrong." 🙁

I have an iPhone 5 about 18 months old. Ever since upgrading to IOS7 a few months ago the iPhone will occasionally power off at 20% or even 40% battery left. This never happened while running IOS6, not once. I have cleared / restored the phone and it did not resolve the issue. I refuse to accept that the battery just went bad the day I upgraded to IOS7 - something in IOS7 is causing this issue. (Note that I haven't had 7.1 long enough yet to see if it resolves this problem.)

Actually it DOES mean exactly that. If I , and many others, have not a problem with my unit, most probably it's not iOS 7.1 that is faulty, but a combination of hardware and/or software on your unit. It could be a bug triggered by a specific combination of software installations, sure, but when you speak about battery I think is an hardware problem.
I'm sure that if you go to an Apple store and report your battery dies at 40%, they will change it immediately (if you are under warranty), and the problem will disappear.
I don't know of a single case of replaced battery that dies at 20-40%.

The battery went bad after iOS 7 installation ? It could be a coincidence, or maybe iOS 7 manages the battery in a slightly different way that could affect defective batteries. But since the issue is not affecting every iPhone 5 out there, it surely isn't a widespread bug.

Do you think 18 months is not a long time for a smartphone ? Right, but people use iPhones very much, and I saw 18 months old batteries with more than 500 cycles, and 500+ are quite a lot for a battery.

 

[C DM]

I have several apps with push notifications too, but I set my three mail accounts to fetch every hour.
I don't like the idea of disable location services to spare some battery juice: I have a smartphone, I paid good money for it, and I want every feature enabled.

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Why don't you try iBackupBot ? It could tell you something about your battery health.

Btw now your usage time seems to be just fine.

Wouldn't not using push for email (unless that's actually what you want) kind of fall int he same line of sacrificing something to spare some battery juice (like disable location services)? Seems like part of having every feature enabled would be having push for email as well.

 

[Retired Cat]

After 2 full days of use following battery calibration, I'm not noticing any difference in battery life between 7.0.6 and 7.1.

 

[Max(IT)]

Wouldn't not using push for email (unless that's actually what you want) kind of fall int he same line of sacrificing something to spare some battery juice (like disable location services)? Seems like part of having every feature enabled would be having push for email as well.

I don't really need to receive my mails as soon as they are sent.
Push notifications affect battery life in a noticeable way, so I think it's a good trade off to have it checked every hour.
In the same way frequent location , popular near me and location base iAds are off in my devices since they are consuming battery juice without being useful to me.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Mine seems a bit worse, and there seems to be something running on my iPhone almost constantly. I have the spinning spikey ball just to the right of the '4G', and it seems to never stop.

I turned off everything that could be running in the background, or so I thought... It seems to go from 9x percent to 3x percent quickly these days and then plummets to under 1x percent in minutes...

Consensus: Any truth to the letting it diediedie and charging it for a day to 'reset' anything to do with the battery??

 

[sunking101]

Mine seems a bit worse, and there seems to be something running on my iPhone almost constantly. I have the spinning spikey ball just to the right of the '4G', and it seems to never stop.

I turned off everything that could be running in the background, or so I thought... It seems to go from 9x percent to 3x percent quickly these days and then plummets to under 1x percent in minutes...

Consensus: Any truth to the letting it diediedie and charging it for a day to 'reset' anything to do with the battery??

You should let the phone die and charge it to 100% at least once a month in order to calibrate your battery meter. This won't give you any longer battery life, but it will make the battery percentage meter drain in a more linear fashion and not have strange jumps.

 

[C DM]

I don't really need to receive my mails as soon as they are sent.
Push notifications affect battery life in a noticeable way, so I think it's a good trade off to have it checked every hour.
In the same way frequent location , popular near me and location base iAds are off in my devices since they are consuming battery juice without being useful to me.

On the other hand a lot of people can certainly find push for mail quite improbably to then and one of the main reasons for them having a smartphone. But as you said a lot of various location and some other settings can often be disabled for most.

 

[Megalobyte]

I too am not under a delusion my battery life took a hit after updating to 7.1, it clearly did.

It's just a fact that updating to 7.1 changed my usage by about an hour a day.

But, 7.1 also mostly cured the frequent safari crashes, and reduced, though didn't eliminate, page refreshing. Overall my 5s is more stable, but for an hour less a charge.

I suppose it's a trade off, but there's no doubt in my mind 7.1 has cost me an hour of usage per day/charge.

Luckily I've been using the excellent Mophie Helium case which gives me an extra 73-4% once my phone dies, and after 7.1, I need it. 🙂 Prior to 7.1, I rarely even used the extra power, now, about every other day.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Actually the spiky spinning ball is to the left of the Bluetooth icon. It's spinning away right now...

What the heck is running?

Background App Refresh is grayed out, but it is off...