I’ve been long absent from this thread, but I finally have some new information/insight to offer.
For about a year now I’ve forsaken Reminders on my iPhone SE (2nd gen). As a short recap, Reminders was effectively destroying my phone’s battery (using upwards of 50% of my daily battery use, almost entirely in the background) and taking a week or more to ever sync with iCloud. After 3+ years of this misery, I finally chose to let it sit untouched and, around a month after this it finally performed a full sync with iCloud. (Not an exaggeration!) At that point, I disconnected Reminders on my iPhone from iCloud and began to use it solely on my iPad and Mac Mini, where changes on either would sync near instantaneously, performing normally and as expected. And that’s how things were for me and Reminders for about the past year.
Then the big Photos debacle happened, where once-deleted photos started cropping up on people’s phones with an iOS update. That didn’t actually happen to me, but Apple’s explanation — that corrupted data in Photos could cause photos to
not actually get deleted, and could persist across OS updates and phone upgrades if you transfer data from a previous phone — got me thinking. Was something similar happening with my Reminders data? I had been using Apple’s data transfer system when I upgraded from my iPhone 5 to my iPhone 6s, and then to my current iPhone SE, and I had been using Reminders since that first phone, including during the disastrous (at least for me) upgrade to “new” Reminders with iOS 13, which is when my woes with the app first began.
With this in mind, I finally decided to go through the hassle of doing a factory reset on my iPhone SE without using a data backup. Basically, I wiped/reset the phone and started to populate it with apps as if I was a brand new iPhone user. I had iCloud on my side — virtually everything that you can backup to iCloud I do backup to iCloud, so other than downloading a small handful of 3rd party apps that I actively use, the biggest work I had to do was let the phone sit on wi-fi for a few hours to bring down all the info from iCloud.
This worked.
Since I performed the factory reset 4 days ago, Reminders has been running flawlessly on my iPhone. It syncs with iCloud immediately and now drains my battery at expected values, between 6%-8%, depending on my usage. Other little problems were fixed, too. For instance, location-based reminders would pop for me, but an hour or so after I’d actually arrived at the place at which they were supposed to trigger. No longer — they now trigger as soon as I arrive.
Moreover,
everything runs better. The phone is very noticeably snappier in all respects, downloads things faster, and is working better in all areas.
Worth noting: it wasn’t a storage issue. Before performing the reset, I had just less than half my phone’s storage open and available.
So, was corrupted data the issue? I have no idea, to be honest. But I can say that a factory reset fixed my problem…at least so far.
For anyone who might be considering doing something similar, here’s a quick checklist you might run down before you engage in a reset:
- Create a list of non-Apple apps you need/want to keep. You’ll have to manually download and log-in to these after the reset.
- Take note (or screen shots) of any home screen setups you rely on. You’ll have to rebuild these.
- Save any voicemails that are important to you. These will get erased when you perform the reset.
- Find a way to backup any data you have that isn’t already backed up to iCloud or another cloud service. (Most 3rd party apps store your info on their own servers, but I’d check to be sure in case that info is critical to you.)
- If you use Apple Mail, take note of your Mail settings. You’ll have to reconnect any email addresses in the app.
- Take note of any particular Settings you like that are not the default. Upon reset, all Settings will revert to Apple’s factory standards.
- If you use Favorites in the Phone app, you’ll have to reestablish these.
- Do NOT backup data for Apple apps that are having iCloud troubles — clearing your phone/device of any corrupted data is the whole idea here.
- Make sure you have critical WiFi passwords available to you. Your phone will lose its archive of known WiFi connections upon reset.
- What not to worry about: your phone number. The phone will automatically and immediately detect your SIM card and your phone will continue to operate and receive calls as it always has.
I’m starting to think that a factory reset once every year or two might just be good device hygiene. Back in the 90s I would annually do a full format and OS re-installation of my desktop computer’s hard drive, just to keep everything running in top form. The more things change, the more they stay the same?
Anyway, I hope this information can potentially help someone out there. Goodness knows that Apple’s own technical support is less than worthless for anyone with even the barest modicum of technical proficiency. (When I spoke with a tech on their site, I was told that a factory reset would “definitely not” help my issues.)
