iPhone XR Standy battery drain

[dominikb13]

Hello,

I am getting standby battery drain on my iPhone XR. These days I am not using my phone a lot during the day, but the battery keeps drainig itself. I am attaching screenshot of battery screen. My battery health is 94%. I have tried DFU restore, restore via Finder, setup as new, Airplane Mode, Low Power Mode but still about 15% overnight drain and linear drain during the day. Does it mean that I have to replace the battery or could it be something with hardware or could possibly iOS 15 fix it?

Thanks.

 

[chscag]

How long have you had your iPhone XR? The battery in any iPhone naturally begins to deteriorate over time. Battery health of 94% would be bad if the phone was fairly new but for a phone that's several years old, it's to be expected, especially if the phone is heavily used.

Installing a later version of iOS is not going to help and would probably cause even more battery wear and tear.

Apple will replace the battery in your XR for $69. Be sure to make an appointment first.

 

[dominikb13]

I have bought it in September 2019, but I had older iPhone 7 and know people which have older phones at lower battery health and it does not drain the battery so much.

 

[chscag]

The XR first went on sale in September 2018, so it's difficult to say when your phone was manufactured or how long it was on the shelf before it was sold.

I don't believe the drainage you're experiencing is abnormal. A phone with deteriorating battery health is going to drain faster.

Take your phone to an Apple store and have them check it out and perhaps get the battery changed out at the same time.

 

[reppans]

How many days in row have you had this problem? And has the problem persisted through different iOS version updates?

I don’t update my iOS version every time, so there’s usually a new one outstanding. I have an Aug ‘19 XR with 96% health and still excellent SOT (I manage my batt) and have noticed this problem with my last 3 iOS versions 13.6, 14.2, and 14.6 - but the problem occurs weeks/months after the iOS update. In other words, everything is running great for weeks/months and all of a sudden I get that bad standby drain. Then I just update to the newest iOS, and it goes back to normal.

The exception was the first week or so of 14.2 where I noticed random days of standby drain - I figured was due to ‘re-indexing’ issues (although never noticed it from other updates), and it did stabilize after that. 14.6 ran great for a long time but then took a standby drain nose dive a week ago, however, that happened to coincide with a bad Reddit App revision (2021.28) that was a known battery burner.

I’m on the latest 14.7.1 now, and it’s running great (knock on wood), but with no iOS updates outstanding in the queue, guess I’ll have to live with the standby drain, should it occur again.

 

[dominikb13]

No update helped with drain. I have bought this phone used so I do not know from when it is happening, but it is the same problem every day from iOS 14.4 as I can remember. I suppose that the battery could be older and had sat on shelf as chscag mentioned and that is bad for battery. I will contact service center and run diagnostic or replace battery.

 

[reppans]

For me, it’s definitely a software or hardware glitch as it comes/goes (suddenly). If it’s a bad battery, you should see it getting steadily/gradually worse (as you’ve owned it for 2 years and through iOS 12 & 13).

For now mine seems ‘fixable’ through updates, but it is worrisome as you can’t see any ‘background’ consumption listed below the battery stats, and I’ve seen a number of posts of bad drain and no apparent cause.

But good luck and let us know if Apple has found the cause.

 

[dominikb13]

The thing is that it is a refurbished device and I bought it used so I can not tell if it was bad or no before. Maybe it is really problem with HW, not battery. But coconut shows that device is newer than battery.

Thanks, I will let you know.

 

[dominikb13]

I would like to update this thread as I have my phone back from repair. Authorized service center offered me replacement unit without knowing what is faulty on phone. I suppose they could not find the problem with diagnostic. I told them to replace battery with a new one so I am attaching the battery graph till now with new battery. I think it seems pretty same like with the old one. That must mean that it was not battery fault.

My questions are:
Do I need to wait few days after restoring from iCloud backup?

If it does not help, should I try some type of reset like DFU, via Finder and restore if it helps now or wait for new iOS?

If it does not help, should I charge the phone from 20-100% or keep it in 20-80% to keep it as healthy as possible?

Thanks for advices.

 

[reppans]

You have a lot of apps there for such low SOT - do you force close apps** and turn off background refresh? I see both cellular and wifi antennas running - have you tried the wifi-calling feature? Are bluetooth and GPS antennas turned off when not using? How many antennas are running while overnight/sleeping? Is the motion sensor constantly running (counting steps in health app; or lift-to-wake)? Is the microphone constantly listening (‘Hey-Siri’ feature)? Are you using 2.4 or 5GHz wifi; Etc, etc, etc.

These phones are packed with features by default, and while they should be reasonably power efficient, if there’re any glitches in the hardware or software for ANY of them it’s going to show up in your battery/runtime… and not always on your battery graph**.

Sounds like you’ve really tried everything. What I suggest is to go through all settings and turn-off as many features that you don’t: know, use, or care about. Then charge to 40-50%; turn off all antennas; do a hard reboot**; do not open any apps; and let it sit overnight. This is just to see if you can establish a stable battery overnight (should only lose a few %) with as much as possible shut-down.

If the batt is stable overnight, then I would turn-on features, apps, antennas INCREMENTALLY to zero on the problem. For example, next day only use cellular and phone app, if that looks normal, then add safari the next day, and so on. If cellular/phone performance is bad, than go back to the hard reboot step and try only wifi-calling the next day. Etc, etc.

FWIW, I’m a big fan of undercharging batts for long life (see my 75-25 thread below).

** Sometimes force closing apps does not stop rogue background processing and hard reboots are necessary. THIS was my Reddit drain problem, solved by a hard reboot and Apollo.

Good luck.

 

[now i see it]

My 8 seems to drain pretty quickly when it's doing nothing with a locked screen. Faster than any of my prior phones. It has good battery health too. I did notice that when I turn off wifi and cellular it doesn't drain as fast.

 

[dominikb13]

I only open the apps for some time to check news and immediately force close them. When I am not using the phone I turn off WIFI and BT. I am also not using Siri and lift to wake. I will try this night with 75% charge as I am on charger now, turn off Location Services completely, turn on Airplane mode and try your method. If it does not help, I will wait for next update and keep with the charging habit 20-80 and get used to it till I swap phone...

Thanks for help!

 

[reppans]

Keep in mind that force-closing apps doesn’t always work if the processor is stuck in some rogue loop - the pix I linked above shows my batt still draining overnight with all apps forced-closed. Do a full 3-button, hard-reboot just before letting it sit overnight.

 

[humpbacktwale]

Are you using 2.4 or 5GHz wifi; Etc, etc, etc.

Is one frequency over the other known to make a difference? I know 5 is meant to be faster, but 2.4 has better range.

 

[reppans]

Is one frequency over the other known to make a difference? I know 5 is meant to be faster, but 2.4 has better range.

I’ve read it uses a bit more power straight up, but also due the lesser range/wall-penetration, the phone works harder to maintain signal. Never tested it myself though.