Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
5s battery drain 5 hour wifi 10 minute usage. I assume new ios for large battery.
 
Yesterday I had no issues with battery on my X.
I started out today with 100% of battery at 7 am and by 2 pm battery was down to 52% and that’s with 1,5h safari browsing and 20 min Instagram. All through wifi.
Battery stats are showing that Instagram was at almost 4 h in background usage which I find odd since I have background app refresh completely disabled for all apps. Nothing else out of the ordinary in usage stats.

So I’m not ruling anything out yet, but thought I share my experience so far after almost 2 full days on IOS 12.
 
Do the following:

- Reset the device to factory settings.

- Don't restore from iCloud or a backup stored in your computer.

- Update the device with iOS 12.

- Download all apps from your Apple ID account and reconfigure everything. From scratch.

If I am not mistaken I read multiple times this is the best way to do any update... and make sure these battery issues are from the iOS version, not the device.

P.S. reasons why a clean install is better:
https://medium.com/@imkenny/how-to-fix-your-battery-life-after-updating-to-ios-11-8196ce0c95dc

A bit of an overkill for most people! This would take some serious hours reconfiguring your device. I ran iOS 12 public betas since its 4th variant on both iPhone 7 and iPad Air 2, no battery issues. As many others have mentioned, if iOS 12 was installed over iOS 11 it needs to do a lot of behind the scenes work, which gets worse if people use iCloud photos, etc.

If really forced to, I would back up via iTunes and restore iPhone from this backup.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: joeblow7777
It’s evening now and its already 20% and I’ve barely used it today other than texting. I’ve also been at work, I shouldn’t be down to more than 49%.

Same here. Normally by 2pm my iPhone 7 is still around 86% but today it's 65% - battery stats say 35% has been used by messaging. I've exchanged two photos with iMessage today on WiFi. That's it.

Not impressed so far...
 
  • Like
Reactions: TinaBelcher
Screen time. I an hour of which was music. :/
But that's not really based on time from last recharge in iOS 12 it seems. And music mostly wouldn't really be reflected in screen time, unless you were actually watching something or doing something on the phone at the same time.
 
A bit of an overkill for most people! This would take some serious hours reconfiguring your device. I ran iOS 12 public betas since its 4th variant on both iPhone 7 and iPad Air 2, no battery issues. As many others have mentioned, if iOS 12 was installed over iOS 11 it needs to do a lot of behind the scenes work, which gets worse if people use iCloud photos, etc.

If really forced to, I would back up via iTunes and restore iPhone with this backup.
As far as I know this is the only sure way to update iOS and get rid of possible battery issues. So if you really want to make sure your device is running 100% with this new iOS you'll need to do a clean install.

I wouldn't trust updates done in the usual way, without reseting to factory settings and ignoring iCloud backups. It may be a hassle to reconfigure everything, but in the end you'll know (and quickly) how good the battery is with this new iOS.
 
As far as I know this is the only sure way to update iOS and get rid of possible battery issues. So if you really want to make sure your device is running 100% with this new iOS you'll need to do a clean install.

I wouldn't trust updates done in the usual way, without reseting to factory settings and ignoring iCloud backups. It may be a hassle to reconfigure everything, but in the end you'll know (and quickly) how good the battery is with this new iOS.

Sure, your call, but I do not know many people willing to sacrifice a lot of time reconfiguring their Apple devices (there might be a few too!). Think of what Apple staff in the store would do:
1) You bring your iPhone to them;
2) They update it to the latest iOS available and back it up (iCloud or iTunes);
3) You get a new iPhone;
4) They update the newly bought iPhone to the latest iOS version and put everything back from the backup made in step 2.

Bingo, you are out of the Apple Store reasonably fast, but even then they might ask you to come pick it up later, depending on how busy they are and how much stuff is on the device to back up.

Back in the days I used to do full clean Windows and OS X installations, but have always been restoring my iOS devices from backups, which worked great so far.
 
As far as I know this is the only sure way to update iOS and get rid of possible battery issues. So if you really want to make sure your device is running 100% with this new iOS you'll need to do a clean install.

I wouldn't trust updates done in the usual way, without reseting to factory settings and ignoring iCloud backups. It may be a hassle to reconfigure everything, but in the end you'll know (and quickly) how good the battery is with this new iOS.
ok. i will try to reset all and download full via itunes and report the status iphone 5S. I had a few android 5,6,7,8 but i don't like big phone. I do prefer 5S.
 
Back in the days I used to do full clean Windows and OS X installations, but have always been restoring my iOS devices from backups, which worked great so far.
I didn't say it wouldn't work the usual way. It might work just fine and eventually you'll discover your battery doesn't last as before. Could this improve if you did a clean install? Perhaps, perhaps not. What I am not going to do is to take any chance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/15/technology/personaltech/new-iphones-slow-tech-myth.html

"The technical process of upgrading from an old operating system to a new one — migrating your files, apps and settings along the way — is extremely complicated. So when you install a brand-new operating system on an older device, problems may occur that make everything from opening the camera to browsing the web feel sluggish.

“It’s like changing the plumbing of the house without changing anything else,” said Scott Berkun, an author and a former manager for Microsoft who oversaw engineers that worked on Windows operating systems and web browsers
.

Start Fresh

Tech companies make it simple to upgrade to a new operating system by pressing an “update” button, which seamlessly migrates all your apps and data over. While that’s convenient, it isn’t the best way to ensure that things will continue running smoothly.

A better practice is backing up all your data and purging everything from the device before installing the new operating system. This “clean install” works more reliably because the engineers developing operating systems were able to test this condition more easily, Mr. Raiz said.

Let’s say, for example, you have an iPhone 6 with 100 apps installed, four email accounts and 2,000 photos. It is more likely that a quality-assurance engineer tested installing a new operating system on a blank iPhone 6, rather than an iPhone 6 with the same setup as yours.

So if you want to minimize the chances of something going awry, resist the easy update path and opt for a clean install. For smartphones, I recommend backing up your data to your computer. For computers, you could back up your data to an online service or a portable drive. After the operating system installation is complete, you can then safely restore your data and apps to the device from the backup
."
 
So if you want to minimize the chances of something going awry, resist the easy update path and opt for a clean install. For smartphones, I recommend backing up your data to your computer. For computers, you could back up your data to an online service or a portable drive. After the operating system installation is complete, you can then safely restore your data and apps to the device from the backup."

And that’s exactly what I was suggesting in my earlier post: back up - restore your iOS device via iTunes - get your stuff/settings back from that back-up. You were suggesting a “clean” install without restoring from any back-up, which, imho, is a really cumbersome process where you need to go through a lot of toggles, re-logins, etc.
 
  • Like
Reactions: someoneoutthere
On my 5S, it's much worse. My iPhone 6S is performing about the same as it was with iOS 11. My iPhone X is also averaging about the same as it was before the update.
 
Not sure what's going on with the SE. The phone died with 5% remaining and went very sluggish just prior to this. The phone would reboot however but would instantly die again. No flashing empty battery logo. Plugged it into the mains and wouldn’t charge on the first attempt, just booted and died but worked on the second attempt.
 
Last edited:
I am experiencing extreme battery suck on 2 iPhones and 3 iPads. It all started with iOS12 on Monday. My Watch S3 does not seem to experience this going to WatchOS5.

I have an Xs Max on the way. I will wait and see what it does before making any changes on existing devices.
 
Updated yesterday. iPad is pretty good. iPhone, not so much. I’ll give it a few days before wigging out.
 
Waiting for the .1 update hoping iOS quits beating up my non removable battery. As usual. Sigh.
 
I reset all on my iphone 5s. Now leave it on wifi open start now. Now we will see how long it will survive 3rd attempt 0 battery and charge again. And this is new battery.

** A bit something weird, when connecting to imac it said updating something in 2 minute time.
 
Would someone tell me how to read the new battery section of IOS please. No way to know now how long you have used your phone since LAST charge.
 
What does Battery say is using battery? Before I'd do a fresh install first I'd wait a couple of days - indexing for spotlight etc. takes a while. I'd also force kill all the apps and restart the phone and then see what happens. I suspect that some apps don't take well to updates.
Hope you folks with this problem find solutions - don't have on my iPhone X or iPad
 
And that’s exactly what I was suggesting in my earlier post: back up - restore your iOS device via iTunes - get your stuff/settings back from that back-up. You were suggesting a “clean” install without restoring from any back-up, which, imho, is a really cumbersome process where you need to go through a lot of toggles, re-logins, etc.
I already did what I suggested earlier. What I was trying to say is that you need to do a backup (in iCloud) and then restore to factory settings (your device), erasing ANYTHING that it has.

After that I used iTunes to update iOS in my iPAD, before this step I downloaded the IPSW based on my device:
http://osxdaily.com/2010/11/23/how-to-use-ipsw-files/

Next thing I ignored when the iPAD asked "do you wish to restore from an iCloud backup" and used "set my device as NEW".

Then I just logged into my Apple ID, and downloaded every single app again (manually, of course). The apps that used iCloud for settings such as Notability and GoodNotes were able to restore my notes (once I logged with my Apple ID, and the previous backup was verified). nPlayer didn't restore anything, but I took screenshots from the settings I was using.

Safari is displaying all my bookmars, but unfortunately Firefox isn't.

Now I can really tell in this IPP 10.5 (256 GB, wifi+cel) how the battery will perform.
 
My SE is doing the same. 100% battery health.

Thanks for the reply, good to know it's not just me going crazy :) It's only got weirder. This morning my phone was at 13% and on airplane mode. I took off airplane mode and it died, spinning icon and then restarted. Never seen that before...it's telling me about battery and peak performance. Wishing I had stayed on 10 but I tested it on my iphone 6 and that has had no issues so thought it was ok to update. My battery health is 90%....that's enough to cause it to restart for battery issues ??? Bizarre
 
I did a DFU install of the public release of iOS 12 from the GM and my phone (X) feels smoother and battery life is a tiny bit better. Could be (and most likely is) placebo, but overall, I'm happy. Maybe you could backup and try that? If not, just wait a few days for it to do its thing.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.