iPhone 6(S)/Plus 30% battery loss overnight

[hagar]

I never had stellar battery life with any of my iPhones. But this last one takes the cake. It's a refurbished iPhone 6S I got from Apple after issues with the screen of my previous phone.

My phone loses up to 30% battery overnight:
- reset the phone without restoring from backup. I have about 20 apps.
- all apps are force closed
- background app refresh is OFF
- no Location services except for System Services
- Usage time states 2h overnight while I didn't touch it.

I already went to the Apple Store and the diagnostics test didn't reveal anything, so the guy just proposed to always kill apps after using them and keep background refresh, location services as much OFF as possible, blabla.

I assume his tests just check the capacity of the battery and that's fine. It's just that something keeps running in the background I guess. I frequently notice usage time and standby time are equal to each other as well. As I did a fresh install of 11.3 and have few apps, could it be a hardware issue?

Any suggestions?

 

[willmtaylor]

Perhaps reset network settings?

How’s your WiFi signal?

Do you have Bluetooth and/or airdrop on?

Inadvertently leave WiFi hotspot on?

 

[960design]

I never had stellar battery life with any of my iPhones. But this last one takes the cake. It's a refurbished iPhone 6S I got from Apple after issues with the screen of my previous phone.

My phone loses up to 30% battery overnight:
- reset the phone without restoring from backup. I have about 20 apps.
- all apps are force closed
- background app refresh is OFF
- no Location services except for System Services
- Usage time states 2h overnight while I didn't touch it.

I already went to the Apple Store and the diagnostics test didn't reveal anything, so the guy just proposed to always kill apps after using them and keep background refresh, location services as much OFF as possible, blabla.

I assume his tests just check the capacity of the battery and that's fine. It's just that something keeps running in the background I guess. I frequently notice usage time and standby time are equal to each other as well. As I did a fresh install of 11.3 and have few apps, could it be a hardware issue?

Any suggestions?

Settings > Battery > Battery Usage > Last 24 Hours

 

[akash.nu]

Settings > Battery > Battery Usage > Last 24 Hours

View attachment 758632

There you go. You can see the culprit right there. What does that app do?!

Edit - apologies, thought you were the OP.

 

[hagar]

There's nothing relevant in the Battery app. It now happens to show Safari because I did a bit of surfing yesterday. But no apps gone haywire.

Wifi is not quite good. But even if I put the phone in Airplane mode it loses %. I'll check tonight how much.

I removed obvious apps that are bad for battery like FB and Messenger a while ago. Now I just have WhatsApp because I need to have it. And there's a content blocker 1Blocker.

 

[puma1552]

-Force close all apps like you do
-Reset RAM (unlock phone and from home screen, press and hold sleep button until slide to power off appears, then press and hold the home button until you return to the home screen)
-Turn phone completely off and back on

This should kill any background process, should that be the case.

 

[akash.nu]

If a clean reinstall of the OS and setup as new doesn’t fix the issue then it’s down to hardware I’m afraid.

 

[poorcody]

There is a subset of people (myself included) that have terrible battery life with iOS 11 (after stellar life previously). I've been experimenting for months trying to figure out what causes it, but it seems to be something in the OS itself.

 

[Newtons Apple]

Why not plug it in while sleeping?

 

[960design]

There's nothing relevant in the Battery app. It now happens to show Safari because I did a bit of surfing yesterday. But no apps gone haywire.

Wifi is not quite good. But even if I put the phone in Airplane mode it loses %. I'll check tonight how much.

I removed obvious apps that are bad for battery like FB and Messenger a while ago. Now I just have WhatsApp because I need to have it. And there's a content blocker 1Blocker.

I see that safari was eating a bunch of your battery. This could be ads that were written in flash running in the background. When your display goes to sleep this is supposed to stop.

Another thing is a new iOS version could have downloaded in the background at night, or app updates happened at night. Updates are normally pushed during 'low traffic / usage' periods, which is night and when the device is typically plugged in, so no one notices.

 

[TC_GoldRush]

Why not plug it in while sleeping?

That's too hard!

Settings > Battery > Battery Usage > Last 24 Hours

View attachment 758632

What is StrongLifts?

 

[C DM]

I see that safari was eating a bunch of your battery. This could be ads that were written in flash running in the background. When your display goes to sleep this is supposed to stop.

Another thing is a new iOS version could have downloaded in the background at night, or app updates happened at night. Updates are normally pushed during 'low traffic / usage' periods, which is night and when the device is typically plugged in, so no one notices.

Speaking from personal experience, battery usage from something like Safari can simply correlate to it being one of the main and most frequently used apps by the user. But certainly would depend on whether or not that's actually the case there.

As far as automatic updates, while app updates might play a role, as I recall, iOS updates won't download unless the device is not only on WiFi but is also plugged in into a power source, so that likely wouldn't factor in.

 

[JPack]

It's possible you have a hardware problem with the iPhone, especially since it's a refurbished unit.

Some symptoms of a defective power management IC include rapid draining of the battery. The PMIC is often damaged by consumers if they use a poor quality charger, such as cigarette lighter adapters.

 

[hagar]

Safari really has nothing to do with it. It's just coincidence. I have an ad blocker, and force kill every app now. This is what happened overnight (I started at 82% before going to bed).

It just doesn't make any sense. Calendar was active for 1 min in the background but still accounts for 43% of the used battery. Clearly something is wrong there. But it's the first time it's there in that list so doesn't explain everything.

Safari dropped to 3%. And I used WhatsApp on my mac yesterday so that 19% is correct.

[doublepost=1524036352][/doublepost]

Why not plug it in while sleeping?

That's too hard!

I always plug in my phone at night, but because I have horrible battery life during the day where I can't even make it until 15h without it dying, I had to do something. So leaving it unplugged at night proved something keeps running in the background. Even after a full reset of the device.

 

[Newtons Apple]

Only way to know for sure is to back up and reset to factory. Install nothing. If it still is using excessive battery overnight, it would seem to be a hardware problem.

 

[Black05Hemi]

Why not plug it in while sleeping?

Something is draining his battery abnormally. Plugging it in is only masking the problem, not fixing it.

 

[Newtons Apple]

Something is draining his battery abnormally. Plugging it in is only masking the problem, not fixing it.

That is why I made post #15.

Guess you did not get down that far.....

 

[tops2]

@hagar: I bought a new iPhone 8 a week ago and also updated to iOS 11.3. I did setup my phone from my iPhone 6 Plus backup.

But one day I charged the iPhone 8 to 100% then unplugged the phone before going to sleep. Like you, I forced close all apps and eventually tried hard rebooting the phone. In the morning it was down to ~90%. My phone like yours showed some usage but I'm not sure where it's from. The battery usage screen didn't really help either. Eventually I've narrowed down its possibly related to cell reception (for my case) since I live in a place that doesn't get good cell reception. The phone shows fluctuating between 3G and the lower speed all the time. So one night, I tried turning on airplane mode to force disabling cellular. But then I turned on wifi so wifi calling was still working (I confirmed by using our internet phone to call my iPhone 8). Then the battery stopped draining overnight with no use.

I did try restoring the iPhone 8 a few times and tried all the disabling background refresh/privacy/deleting a lot of apps. I also did the "reset all setting" (but keep all media and apps) too. I noticed if I'm out away from my home and I don't use the phone, the battery seems to not drain. Then thought maybe it's related to cell reception so I tried durning off cellular to test.


So at least in my case, I was guessing something about the cellular reception (and maybe iOS 11.3) may be the culprit. I don't remember my iPhone 6 Plus having this problem (but it's on iOS 10.3.3) and/or the larger battery..

I know my battery draining isn't as bad as yours. But if you're curious and feel like you have nothing to lose, maybe try disabling cellular so see if it's the problem your facing. At worst, you can rule out another possibility..

Fwiw, my iPhone 8 battery life seems fine when actually using the phone. But I straight up upgraded to iOS 11.3 so I don't have any comparative experience against older iOS 11.x versions. But honestly when I get home, I still use my iPhone 6 Plus much more for the larger screen. I do love the size of the smaller iPhone 8 in the pockets when I'm out.

 

[ibuyufo]

I would expect this type of usage on an Android phone. I've seen it happen to my galaxy s6 edge. I got an iPhone 8 plus and I'm coming from a note 8, but I've never seen this type of battery usage on the iPhone. I leave it unplugged overnight and when I wake up it's still 100%.