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Battery drain on standby: standby time and usage time identical

A

applyr

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 20, 2015
86
122
I've had an iPhone 7 since launch and as of the past month, I noticed a strange battery drain problem.

Sometimes, the usage and the standby times are exactly the same, meaning that my phone is being used by an app in the background without me knowing or something. This is always solved by restarting the phone but it occurs again after some days randomly (could be a week or less before it happens again).

At first I thought it was a bug of iOS 10.1 but after updating to 10.2.1, it has happened again twice.

After some research online, I've found several other people having similar problems dating back to even iOS 8, so I'm stumped.

Has anyone here ever had this issue? Is it a bug or hardware fault?
 
Something gets stuck somewhere. Could be an app, could be some system service, hard to tell. You might have to try figuring it out by process of elimination of some sort. Or perhaps just doing a reset of settings if not a restore even.
 
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The thing is, there are threads with people claiming the same problem and nothing of the usual remedies (reset settings, restore etc) seemed to have helped.

Is there any way to find out which process is causing the issue?
 
What apps show the highest usage? Try to disable background refresh on them.

If that doesn't help, try to disable rise to wake. I've found that it can mistake a movement as the phone being "Risen".
 
The highest usage comprises of the apps that I'm actually using, so it's not much of a help I'm afraid. :(

I've always had "Rise to Wake" disabled.
 
If it happens every week or so and a restart fixes it I would just make a habit of restarting the phone every 2 or 3 days for now. A good time to do this is just before taking it off charge so you don't lose battery stats shown from the reboot.

Next time there's an update don't update ota do a complete iOS install of it over iTunes, if it's a system process getting stuck it might fix that.

Cheers
 
I had faced this once i had safari played in the background. I paused the song but the phone kept draining battery like hell. I did restart the phone to get rid of the problem.
 
I deleted some apps that I had downloaded the last month, logged out and signed in again on iCloud. Gonna see how it goes and report back.

@itsmilo how often does it happen for you? I don't use the stock weather app so it's already disabled.
 
Go into settings -> privacy and set the location services to while using app. Also see in system services down on the bottom the option show bar. It will show you when location services are requested. I'd also check under battery which app uses most of the battery and maybe put the device into airplane mode over night when 100% charged to see if there's any battery drain then
 
applyr said:
I deleted some apps that I had downloaded the last month, logged out and signed in again on iCloud. Gonna see how it goes and report back.

@itsmilo how often does it happen for you? I don't use the stock weather app so it's already disabled.
Click to expand...

happened a lot on my 7 Plus when i first got it (i set it up as completely new and didnt restore from a backup). a restore only fixed it temporarily.

however its been fine on the 10.3 beta so far
 
So it happened again. At this point and considering that restoring didn't help users experiencing the same problem (see post above), I think I'm gonna wait out until the release of iOS 10.3 hoping this will resolve it.

However, I'm really disappointed with Apple over this. It's unacceptable to have this kind of bugs still present in the OS that runs on your flagship smartphone especially after many revisions of iOS 10 (we're at 10.2.1 already which in particular was more than 1 month in beta). There's no excuse really, and I'm saying this as being an iPhone owner and fanboy since the early days.
 
applyr said:
So it happened again. At this point and considering that restoring didn't help users experiencing the same problem (see post above), I think I'm gonna wait out until the release of iOS 10.3 hoping this will resolve it.

However, I'm really disappointed with Apple over this. It's unacceptable to have this kind of bugs still present in the OS that runs on your flagship smartphone especially after many revisions of iOS 10 (we're at 10.2.1 already which in particular was more than 1 month in beta). There's no excuse really, and I'm saying this as being an iPhone owner and fanboy since the early days.
Click to expand...
Bugs can be weird things and sometimes similar things can be caused by different things and at times by other apps or services doing something too, or at least contributing. That said, what might have not worked for someone, or might have worked for someone, might not necessarily apply to others or all others, so sometimes its worth a try to do something if issues are still being experienced.
 
I'm having exactly the same issue. Have to reset every couple of days. We can only hope Apple will fix this with 10.3
 
C DM said:
Bugs can be weird things and sometimes similar things can be caused by different things and at times by other apps or services doing something too, or at least contributing. That said, what might have not worked for someone, or might have worked for someone, might not necessarily apply to others or all others, so sometimes its worth a try to do something if issues are still being experienced.
Click to expand...

I understand the complexity of all this and how difficult is to identify the root cause of such issues. However, I still think that for a company that takes pride in how their software and hardware work in harmony together and the way they tightly control both of them, is highly disappointing to see that this sort of bugs still exist after so many revisions of iOS.

In my perspective, I shouldn't have had to tinker so much with my phone to fix something that I obviously didn't cause in the first place, even so getting into the trouble of setting up the phone as new.

If I wanted to babysit my smartphone, I would have gone with Android.
 
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applyr said:
I understand the complexity of all this and how difficult is to identify the root cause of such issues. However, I still think that for a company that takes pride in how their software and hardware work in harmony together and the way they tightly control both of them, is highly disappointing to see that this sort of bugs still exist after so many revisions of iOS.

In my perspective, I shouldn't have had to tinker so much with my phone to fix something that I obviously didn't cause in the first place, even so getting into the trouble of setting up the phone as new.

If I wanted to babysit my smartphone, I would have gone with Android.
Click to expand...
There will always be bugs in something as complex as an OS, and given the random nature of something like this that doesn't affect many/most people and which is different even among people that do experience it, many only occasionally here and there often due to some app doing something somewhere and not really the OS, it's really not that unusual for issues of that nature being there for some people for a variety of reasons.
 
I've read you already looked into refresh on Background app. I've got this turned off completely.

Back in the iOS7 to iOS8 days I had this problem with a rogue app which wasn't updated to iOS8 and caused major drain. I couldn't see it though at the time. Nowadays we kind of see that in Battery Usage in Settings though.

Have you looked into:

- Settings app - Privacy - Location, look for apps that are now allowed to permanently use location/GPS in the background. I would try that none of your apps are allowed to this.

- Settings app - Notifications - look for apps that are allowed to send notifications and be strict which ones can.

- Settings app - Contacts - Accounts > Refresh data- turn push off.

- Settings app- Email - It sometimes also helps to remove your email accounts from your phone and re adding them.
 
Firstly, I appreciate all the suggestions and ideas guys, so thanks for that.

@pacorob I tried everything, though I've already had most settings like you suggested. Nothing fixes the problem.

I'm now thinking of updating to 10.3 beta 2 (the final release is what? About a month away still?) to see if it fixes it as some people suggested. I've never been on the beta cycle before so I'm a bit hesitant. Is the beta stable enough for everyday use? Can I get rid of the public profile once the final release is out without having to restore my phone or losing my data?
 
applyr said:
Firstly, I appreciate all the suggestions and ideas guys, so thanks for that.

@pacorob I tried everything, though I've already had most settings like you suggested. Nothing fixes the problem.

I'm now thinking of updating to 10.3 beta 2 (the final release is what? About a month away still?) to see if it fixes it as some people suggested. I've never been on the beta cycle before so I'm a bit hesitant. Is the beta stable enough for everyday use? Can I get rid of the public profile once the final release is out without having to restore my phone or losing my data?
Click to expand...
I've only tested 10.3 on my old spare 5s and to be fair the battery has seen better days, but standby drain seems twice as bad as on 10.2 so far.
 
Have the same issue. Battery life been shocking on iOS 10.2.1, Looses 10% over night and just about lasts 5 hours usage, whereas before hand it was amazing on battery and could last 9-10 hours of usage?
 
Me and my wife are both seeing battery drain on our iPhones. We are both running 10.2.1 and noticed it as soon as we updated. Does Apple even acknowledge this is an issue? It's like every other version now it seems that has battery drain.
 
applyr said:
Firstly, I appreciate all the suggestions and ideas guys, so thanks for that.

@pacorob I tried everything, though I've already had most settings like you suggested. Nothing fixes the problem.

I'm now thinking of updating to 10.3 beta 2 (the final release is what? About a month away still?) to see if it fixes it as some people suggested. I've never been on the beta cycle before so I'm a bit hesitant. Is the beta stable enough for everyday use? Can I get rid of the public profile once the final release is out without having to restore my phone or losing my data?
Click to expand...

I am still having the issue and I am on 10.3 public beta. :(
 
On my 7 (normal, not Plus) i lose about 3-4% overnight(7 hours of sleep) with Wi-Fi turned on..I guess this is normal.
 
This just started happening to me yesterday on my 7+ running 10.2.1. I just took it out of my pocket and realized it's lost 10% with no use and shows 2 hours of use and standby. The only thing I can think of that I did different than what I normally do is use AirDrop last night and leave it on. I just turned it off. No idea if that's the reason though.

Edit: After a hard reset and full charge the issue has been resolved.
 
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make96 said:
On my 7 (normal, not Plus) i lose about 3-4% overnight(7 hours of sleep) with Wi-Fi turned on..I guess this is normal.
Click to expand...
Yeah anything up to around 5% over night is what I would consider the normal drain for iOS. For comparison my 7 loses an average of 2% over night and my Mrs 7 loses an average of 4%, both are set up very similar!
 
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