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iPhone SE (2020) Any other SE 2nd gen users have poor standy battery drain?

H

humpbacktwale

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 20, 2019
204
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I have just upgraded from a 6s to a brand new SE 2nd gen, and frankly my first impressions of the battery life are awful. Now over lockdown I have been using my phone less and less. These days, its really only some whatsapp or signal. I am talking less than 20 mins of screen time a day. Currently my phone is 3 days old, was charged to 100% on Monday, and after just over 48 hours is on less than 60%. Contrast that with my previous phone, which drained by about 15% in 24 hours, and it was 5 years old. This new one is 1% every hour, hour and a half, with barely any usage at all.

Has anyone else experienced a similar drain?
 
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There's hundreds of threads of "battery drain" on every model of iPhone ever made over the last 10 years.
 
I'll preface this by saying I am a very, very light user, generally. My SE is on standby all day.
I often have so much battery life left on my SE at the end of the day I don't even put it on charge.
I get two days use out of it and could probably stretch it to a third.
There have been days where I use it quite a bit and it lasts me just the day, though.
S
 
I have an SE 1st gen with a < 1 year old battery at 85% battery life. I usually have to charge the phone at least once during the day if not multiple times. A 1-hour call on WhatsApp can easily drain 30+% of battery. Signal was pretty bad too, but I have stopped using that because I found it very unreliable with delivering messages, but not as bad as AT&T.
 
dj1891 said:
I had this same issue with my SE, and not only that when using it with screen on I could watch the battery drop about 1% every 1-2 mins. I tried everything to fix, in the end sold it and got an XR, to much hassle monitoring battery life constantly.
Click to expand...
Good move.
Let's face it, one shouldn't expect much from a smartphone in 2021 with just 1821mAh battery, no matter how "efficient" the company claimed it is. Things like email fetching, constant notifications from apps, etc eats up battery. The SE would have great battery life if the usage is very light. In comparison, even a Nokia dumb phone already has 1500mAh battery.

The XR is just $100 more with a much better battery life. It's the best choice for the "cheapest" iPhone for actual smartphone usage.
 
ian87w said:
Good move.
Let's face it, one shouldn't expect much from a smartphone in 2021 with just 1821mAh battery, no matter how "efficient" the company claimed it is. Things like email fetching, constant notifications from apps, etc eats up battery. The SE would have great battery life if the usage is very light. In comparison, even a Nokia dumb phone already has 1500mAh battery.

The XR is just $100 more with a much better battery life. It's the best choice for the "cheapest" iPhone for actual smartphone usage.
Click to expand...
Its probably the perfect phone for those over 70 who use it maybe for the odd phone call, a small bit of social media, for anyone else its a bad purchase.
 
ian87w said:
Good move.
Let's face it, one shouldn't expect much from a smartphone in 2021 with just 1821mAh battery, no matter how "efficient" the company claimed it is. Things like email fetching, constant notifications from apps, etc eats up battery. The SE would have great battery life if the usage is very light. In comparison, even a Nokia dumb phone already has 1500mAh battery.

The XR is just $100 more with a much better battery life. It's the best choice for the "cheapest" iPhone for actual smartphone usage.
Click to expand...
What I find confusing is why it drains quicker than a 5 year old 6s which, according to wikipedia, has a smaller battery.
 
humpbacktwale said:
What I find confusing is why it drains quicker than a 5 year old 6s which, according to wikipedia, has a smaller battery.
Click to expand...
iPhone SE is known for poor battery life, but it is possible that there’s something wrong. I would check the battery health, calibrate the battery by charging it to 100%, draining it all the way, then charging to 100% again, and if that doesn’t improve it maybe restore it using Apple Configurator 2 and set it up as a new device. That could help in the case that you always restore your phone from a backup and there’s something wrong with your iOS volume.

(Charging a lithium ion battery from 0-100 or even just to or near 100% is bad for it but it doesn’t calibrate and one time won’t really matter.)
 
Phone is 4 days old, battery health is 100%. I didn't restore this from a backup. I wonder if it is just because the battery of an SE gen 2 is only slightly larger than the 6s one, but it has a faster processor and more RAM, which would naturally use more power?
 
humpbacktwale said:
Phone is 4 days old, battery health is 100%. I didn't restore this from a backup. I wonder if it is just because the battery of an SE gen 2 is only slightly larger than the 6s one, but it has a faster processor and more RAM, which would naturally use more power?
Click to expand...
Potentially. It could be that this version of iOS is messing with your battery life for some reason, but I think the mostly likely explanation is that nothing is wrong with your phone and that your battery life is normal for the SE.

If you really want to get to the bottom of it, I would test your battery life using as close as possible the method used in this video, and see if it’s significantly off the SE he tested.

If it turns out that there’s no significant difference between yours and his, I would just return it and buy a very long battery life iPhone like a refurbished iPhone 11 Pro.
 
I mean its not so much that the battery life bothers me. I am just surprised that their wasn't a massive improvement over the 6s. But it is also possible that my 6s wasn't giving me accurate readings after 5 years, and was actually much lower than it indicated.
 
Sounds Strange to me, although the battery is the weak point of the SE2020. The reviews I have seen on it, if i recall corectly, stated that it has above excellent standby time due to the low power A13 chip. However, using it for power hungry application was not recommended if one cared about battery life, as the same powerfull-when-used A13 chip is not made for small batteries as found in the SE2020. Have you tired to reinstall the phone To see if it fixes the issue.
 
When new, the battery life impressed me. Now, not so much. Maybe it's the hotter weather - certainly the phone often feels quite hot when it never did before. When I had a VPN running on it, the battery just drained away so I got rid of that.

I have a wireless charging stand on my desk and I pop the phone on that when I'm sitting down, just to give it a top up.

A few weeks ago, the battery drain on my original iPhone SE just went bonkers. Didn't last more than a couple of hours. I hardly ever do anything with that phone, but I can't take it off charge for too long, so it's no good taking it out and about with me.

I don't know if something has changed, but I don't see the iPhone SE2 lasting me the 3-4 years I wanted it to last.
 
Well the question is what defines excellent standby? I'm fairly sure my old phones battery indicator, or ability to detect what the battery level was, wasn't working properly. It would get stuck on the same percentage after using it for a bit, or drop a large amount all at once.

So it may be that I am overestimating what it should be. Is 1% every hour, hour and a half considered good or bad?
 
humpbacktwale said:
Is 1% every hour, hour and a half considered good or bad?
Click to expand...
That's what I've been seeing overnight. Can live with it.

Will agree with @MhaelK re: newer processor probably not the issue as processors have been successively more power friendly: smaller die, big/little architecture.

If anything, guessing just a bunch of little things adding up to a 1% an hour. The occasional app waking up and checking for data updates, posting a notification (read: widgets, email, weather, etc). The device announcing itself or looking for wifi, Bluetooth. If have a Watch, talking to that. I'm in a real weak cell zone, so that will try to reconnect from time to time.
 
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I have my SE2 for a week now and the first few days the standby battery drain was insane, especially over night. But it cleared up and now I only lose around 4-6% (7-8h sleep).
 
Considering an SE 2 for my daily work horse phone. How is the battery life as compare to iPhone 7? Previously owned the 7 with my usage i charge 2 times a day.
 
incredibless8980 said:
Considering an SE 2 for my daily work horse phone. How is the battery life as compare to iPhone 7? Previously owned the 7 with my usage i charge 2 times a day.
Click to expand...
According to Apple's comparison tool, it's the same. However, you might see some benefit due to brand new battery.
www.apple.com

iPhone - Compare Models

Compare features and technical specifications for iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone SE, and many more.
www.apple.com
For the comparisons to be fair they have to be rated using the same OS, but I don't think that's the case.
 
My SE2 is 1 year old now and still holding nice on the battery. battery drain is nothing to write home about. Gets about 4 hours SOT. With my battery case I get at least 8-9 hours if needed. So I'm happy with my SE2.
 
Frankras said:
My SE2 is 1 year old now and still holding nice on the battery. battery drain is nothing to write home about. Gets about 4 hours SOT. With my battery case I get at least 8-9 hours if needed. So I'm happy with my SE2.
Click to expand...
What battery case do you use? I'm interested in one of these, but not sure which to get and which to avoid.
 
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