iMessage causing battery drain on iOS 10

[pally]

Craig Federighi stood on stage during the iOS 10 key note and spoke about that, which in turn sparked all sorts of articles.

https://www.wired.com/2016/06/apples-differential-privacy-collecting-data/

Thank you. I will read this.

 

[rmcnelly]

I checked again with my friend who was showing significant battery drain on his 6S. It was not the Message app. I think his software update got corrupted as the battery was draining really fast unless he put it into battery saver mode. Hope he does a wipe and clean install tonight.

 

[dealmaker]

I have had my 6S Plus for a year.....always had good battery life. iOS has killed that....for the first time Ive had the battery in the red by mid afternoon.........so something in iOS 10 is killing my battery ? Any ideas?

 

[magicrevolver]

This comment makes no sense.

The official version is exactly the same as the GM. 10.0.1, if you were on the GM, there would have been NO update available yesterday when the release went public.

Jason

Sorry I meant to say the last beta rather than GM.

 

[miknos]

My Messages app is consuming a lot too:

Compare that to Telegram which I use way more than 2min.

 

[netnothing]

Same here. iMessages currently at 24 min on screen and 1.3 hrs in the background.

Definitely a change in iOS 10 causing that background usage spike. Also note - I only have 1 conversation in iMessage.

-Kevin

 

[Power Ranger]

Both my wife's & my iPhone 6S Plus' are experiencing battery drain. Mine is from the Messages app, my wife's is from the WeChat app. Very annoying, as this is the first time we've experienced any kind of "issues" after an OS update since the 4S. Hope this gets sorted soon.

 

[mattburley7]

based on previous major releases.. we saw the first .x updates 7 days later.. that means we should see iOS 10.0.2 next tuesday.

 

[trssho]

My phone was warm so I pulled up battery in settings. iMessage used 43% of battery drain, 2.1 hours background. Really annoyed.

 

[Casfin]

My phone was warm so I pulled up battery in settings. iMessage used 43% of battery drain, 2.1 hours background. Really annoyed.

That's ridiculous. Full day of texting on my 6s plus running 9.3.5 and iMessage accounts for like 4% with no background activity mentioned at all.

No chance I go to 10 at this rate.

 

[1madman1]

Wow. On my 5S.

 

[Alrescha]

Now that the gatekeeper is gone, it is Christmas every day for gathering, sifting, and using personal data to target users for the sake of revenue.

It is quite hysterical to read article after article from pundits on how Apple will not be able to compete in AI/computer-assisted technologies because they refuse to collect and store their user's personal data - and then encounter drivel like this in macrumors.

A.

 

[JM]

the iMessage drains battery because they made it to run on the low powered cores of 7, and without those cores it just runs 100% on 6s on down.

(I have only the 5s, and it sucks it down like crazy. Hot phone, too)

 

[Casfin]

the iMessage drains battery because they made it to run on the low powered cores of 7, and without those cores it just runs 100% on 6s on down.

(I have only the 5s, and it sucks it down like crazy. Hot phone, too)

if it was simply hardware related you'd see it across the board. There are people in my office on 10 and they are having no such issues.

 

[nhamp07]

Boooo

 

[JM]

if it was simply hardware related you'd see it across the board. There are people in my office on 10 and they are having no such issues.

I updated to iOS 10 and then restored the phone to factory settings. And turned off all the things that suck battery.

iMessage is draining my battery when I use the drawing doodle stuff. It makes the chip run hot.

Are your office mates on 5s?

 

[miknos]

Came here to say that iMessage is under control now. It doesn't hog battery anymore.

Photos app had to index (scan) pics. Maybe iMessage had to do something similar. Problem solved though.

 

[gigapocket1]

10.0.2 before the end of month

 

[JM]

For those with battery issues with Messages running in the background, do you have background app refresh on?

No background refresh. I cycled my battery. Going to see if that helps

 

[FYou]

Got a new iphone 7+ . was upset about the battery life not being any better until i looked at the battery suckers. messages are at 37% drain. the next biggest power suck was youtube after 2 hours of watching comming in at 13%. Big bug. I did restore from icloud. i did try the draw feature as someone said. i deleted all my messages and will see if it keeps sucking power.

 

[steve62388]

The battery drain is probably the "deep learning" algorithm running in the background, sifting your imessage and email data to figure out how to target you with ads, suggestions, and "behavioral data". If this "deep learning" infringement on my personal privacy cannot be toggled off, I am OUT. Apple has steadily adopted a vision that, I believe, Steve Jobs would have found detestable for good reason. It feels like a company culture governed by ideas that employees under Steve would have wanted for the sake of revenue if they could only have sold Steve on the violations of personal privacy. Now that the gatekeeper is gone, it is Christmas every day for gathering, sifting, and using personal data to target users for the sake of revenue.

He's been dead for five years. You didn't even know the guy. How many more years will it be before you get over it?

 

[MacAlien]

Glad I'm not the only one with Messages hogging the battery. Since the day after iOS 10 was released, I've been seeing 40-50%ish consumption just from this app. Music, too has suddenly started hogging the battery. Quite silly. Apparently 10.1 Beta fixes this issue.

 

[alleggerita]

Absolutely fine on mine. Maybe a hard restart or resetting some settings might help?

 

[Machismo]

I just noticed my phone was warm and battery much lower than it should be at this point in the day.

Over in the battery screen, I see something peculiar. The Messages app shows 1.1 hours of background usage in the last 6 days, but an entire hour of that was just in the last 24 hours. Meanwhile, on-screen usage is about the same day-to-day. The app was used in the foreground for 20 minutes in the last 24 hours and yet drained more battery than 1.5 hours of Safari. That's alarming.

I restarted the phone, and it is now back to a cool temperature. This sort of flaky background draining isn't something you want to see in a core app like Messages.

Is anyone else seeing something like this?

EDIT: To be clear, I've had the GM running since its release last week, so this isn't a case of Messages doing some initial indexing or analysis.

View attachment 651486


View attachment 651484

I had the same issue with iMessage and iOS 10 GM and found it weird since i don't really use iMessage that much and couldn't figure out why iMessage might be running in the backgroud.

For whatever reason, the Health App on my iPhone 6S had iMessage listed as one of its Sources. Turning that off solved the problem.

After iOS 10.0.1 was released, I did a 'clean install' and haven't seen iMessage under Health App Sources again.

 

[Eduardboon]

I encounter a similar thing, have been encountering it for years now; Messages will always be at the top of my battery usage list with Background activity. It only shows 2-5 minutes of background activity though. Disabling iMessage fixes this problem, but sometimes it goes away on its own for a few months before returning again. Guess it's a sync issue. Happens more with a watch paired.

My Usage is also always half of my standby time; so after 12 hours standby my usage is 6 hours. Consistently.