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Bug IOS Iphone Software Apple

iOS 11 Is Causing Massive Battery Drain Problems (betanews.com) 158

Mark Wilson writes: A study conducted by security research firm Wandera shows that iOS 11 is causing iPhone and iPad batteries to drain faster than ever -- much faster. The difference between iOS 10 and iOS 11 is anything but minor; batteries can drain in half the amount of time following the upgrade. Wandera's report shows how, on average, an iPhone or iPad running iOS 10 takes 240 minutes of usage to drain the battery from 100 percent to zero. With iOS 11 installed, this number plummets to just 96 minutes -- over twice as fast. Users have also complained about the issue.
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iOS 11 Is Causing Massive Battery Drain Problems

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  • by YesIAmAScript ( 886271 ) on Monday September 25, 2017 @11:44AM (#55260173)

    One problem, no one has an iPhone X yet.

    It also says 'We suspect it is also a case of Apple fans wanting to test out all the shiny new features right off the bat.' and then the reporting on this reporting just ignores that and says the update is causing "massive battery drain problems".

    I want to know where they got the data. Do they have a lot of data? A little? What app are they using to monitor users' battery usage? I presume they are using some app of their own as a form of spy?

    • by Gilgaron ( 575091 ) on Monday September 25, 2017 @11:50AM (#55260229)
      You just go to Settings > Battery to see what has been using it up the most. I'm not certain, but I doubt an app could measure how much battery power the others used in iOS the way they have things split out on the security end of things.
      • by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25, 2017 @01:09PM (#55260895)

        We see this EVERY time there is a major release and the problem goes away on it's own.

        Wanna know why?

        When the iOS upgrade happens it swaps out the OS, but leaves userdata more or less intact. After the OS upgrade is good background tasks clean up all the user data, databases, etc (And in a modern smartphone there is a LOT), and bring everything up to the current version

        This takes a lot of time. And power. After every major uprade your phone will get hot just sitting there chugging away at the gigs of photos, videos, music, etc. Happens every time.

        Apple really should tell users about it. Maybe but a notification on the lock screen saying "Post upgrade cleanup in progress you may want to plug in your phone"

        End users are idiots though. Probably cheaper to keep them in the dark and ignore these stories every major release cycle.

        • by Archimonde ( 668883 ) on Monday September 25, 2017 @02:09PM (#55261357)

          Same story every time that part is true. What is also true is that even after a few days the battery drain is still there. And people can't downgrade anymore after first two weeks (of a new SW version release) so they are screwed.

          After that people complain and the usual response is "your battery was dead anyway" (which is false) and/or "buy a new phone, why are you so cheap".

        • by Anonymous Coward

          > When the iOS upgrade happens it swaps out the OS, but leaves userdata more or less intact. After the OS upgrade is good background tasks clean up all the user data, databases, etc (And in a modern smartphone there is a LOT), and bring everything up to the current version

          What does "clean up all the user data" even mean in this context? Why is the user data being touched at all?

        • It's very likely that this is just a one time drain as spotlight re-indexes and the OS re-optimizes all the apps. happens with every new OS release then it goes away.

      • There is an app, it's called Moment. it takes your battery usage (a screenshot of it, due to iOS limitations and such) and can show you how usage compares daily - if you actively take those screen shots.

        Granted this app is for monitoring your usage in the hopes that you can break some bad habits... but it's still useful to see which app is eating the most battery.

    • by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Monday September 25, 2017 @02:27PM (#55261469)

      Not only did they incorrectly blame FaceID in the original article [wandera.com], they even acknowledged the actual cause right at the start, before leaping headfirst into a series of factually incorrect assertions. Right at the start:

      Battery drain is a common iOS problem that usually pops up immediately after a major iOS upgrade release. This is partly due to Spotlight re-indexing and other behind the scenes shuffling.

      I.e. We know exactly what's causing it, and it's a perfectly understandable problem that resolves itself after a few days, but let's author a report using data that we know is in no way representative of actual usage so we can stir up a storm over an "issue" that won't exist in about a week.

      As for the iPhone X stuff that you mentioned they got wrong, here's the relevant quote for anyone interested:

      New functionality in iOS 11 could also be responsible for draining the life out of your phone. Animoji and iPhone X’s FaceID hardware use face-scanning technology relying heavily on the camera which is a notorious battery sucker. The hardware enabling this advanced facial recognition (A11 Bionic GPU) in the iPhone X could be the reason there is such a dramatic difference in battery decay rate.

      They managed to pack a lot of wrong into that one paragraph, namely that:
      A) The iPhone X doesn't launch until November, so we can safely rule the iPhone X out as a factor.

      B) Animoji is an iPhone X feature, so we can safely rule Animoji out as a factor.

      C) FaceID is an iPhone X feature, so we can safely rule FaceID out as a factor.

      D) FaceID does not rely on the "notorious battery sucker" camera (it relies on an IR sensor like the Kinect's), so we can rule the camera out as a factor.

      E) The A11 SoC is not available on any iOS 10 device. Given that Wandera claims to have measured "the same device" draining in different versions of the OS, we can conclude that they didn't measure any A11 devices, so we can safely rule the A11 out as a factor.

      More or less, they said exactly what the actual cause was, then proceeded to lie through their teeth for no reason other than to make a salacious headline that would drive traffic their way.

      • A) The iPhone X doesn't launch until November, so we can safely rule the iPhone X out as a factor.

        B) Animoji is an iPhone X feature, so we can safely rule Animoji out as a factor.

        C) FaceID is an iPhone X feature, so we can safely rule FaceID out as a factor.

        D) FaceID does not rely on the "notorious battery sucker" camera (it relies on an IR sensor like the Kinect's), so we can rule the camera out as a factor.

        E) The A11 SoC is not available on any iOS 10 device. Given that Wandera claims to have measured "the same device" draining in different versions of the OS, we can conclude that they didn't measure any A11 devices, so we can safely rule the A11 out as a factor.

        Actually you can't rule out any of those features as a factor. The absence of hardware does not imply the absence of code supporting that hardware. If anything the absence of that hardware is likely to support edge cases that code wasn't checked against and likely to cause bugs.

        Microsoft did this in the power management of the Surface Pro firmware. The Pro 3 keyboard had some dedicated power management routines that ran on wake. When the Surface Pro 4 keyboard was attached that same firmware didn't handle t

        • Actually you can't rule out any of those features as a factor. The absence of hardware does not imply the absence of code supporting that hardware.

          The code is obviously there, but just as obvious is the fact it could not run.

          The FaceID subsystem literally has zero hardware it can act on. There are no 3D models of faces detected being fed to it. The Secure Enclave holds nothing related to face models. There are no faces to pass into the neural network that determines if the faces match records it doesn't e

          • The code is obviously there, but just as obvious is the fact it could not run.

            Exactly the kind of problem that can result in battery usage issues.

            There is literally nothing that could allow any FaceID code to run for more than a nanosecond.

            So I take it you've seen the code in detail. You know how it checks for the presence, you know what fallback strategies it has? Clearly any delays and timeout are set at 1 nanosecond based on your knowledge. You're full of assumptions on the code, how it operates, and what it does in the presence of missing hardware.

            The MOST COMMON case currently and in testing is/was hardware without that device

            So now you're the code tester are you? The "most common" case? Really? Fuck iOS11 is going to be a disaster if the "most commo

            • Me : just as obvious is the fact it could not run.

              Exactly the kind of problem that can result in battery usage issues.

              Sigh, Slashdot. I am literally surrounded by idiots. It used to be you would mostly have people here who understood how computer programs worked... Oh well.

              If you're that stupid, why bother reading the rest? I shan't. Life it too short for analysing poorly constructed minds.

              I'll let you have the last response so you can drool freely and complete the beclowning.

        • While I agree that bugs related to unreleased features can cause problems, that clearly wasn't what they were talking about here. Unless you stretch their words well past the breaking point, it's pretty clear from the context that they were talking about actual usage of new features and the hardware enabling them. They specifically blame "[t]he hardware [...] in the iPhone X" and "[n]ew functionality in iOS 11", rather than bugs related to supporting either. In fact, nowhere do they even hint at the notion

          • that clearly wasn't what they were talking about here

            It may not have been. I'm not discussing the specific bug, I'm discussing the dangerous idea that code can't be at fault when associated hardware isn't present. That is precisely how you end up in this kind of situation.

            If you had something better to support your conclusion then you should really have opened with that.

            • My conclusion was that they were factually wrong. I proved that in my first post.

              You’re arguing the orthogonal topic that a bug is causing these issues, and you’re welcome to do so, but the fact that the battery issues are already diminishing would seem to discredit your argument while supporting the sole claim I actually agreed with from the bogus research company’s statements: that the cause of the problem is simply maintenance processes running post-update, just like they do after every

      • Yeah, FWIW, my Microsoft Lumia 950xl, which I've had since December 2015, never has shown any "battery sucking" issues from the Face ID implementation. (It is called, Windows Hello, but works roughly the same by scanning my iris and unlocking the phone when recognized.)

        I do plan to wait a bit before upgrading to IOS 11 on my Iphone 7+. Not because 11 is one louder than IOS 10 but because I've learned always to wait for the first patch to be released.
    • by D.McG. ( 3986101 )
      My 2.5 year old son actually triggered the upgrade to 11 on the family iPad, because Apple doesn't provide a way to opt out of upgrades beyond a 24 hour delay, and it popped up, right in front of the video he was watching. So please leave out this bullshit of "Apple fans wanting to test out all the shiny new features". Hell, it's sometimes easy to mistakenly tap on the intrusive dialog as an adult. It can appear while your interacting with the screen and you tap on upgrade instead.
    • One problem, no one has an iPhone X yet.

      How is that a problem? Each OS isn't completely customised to the device. Heck the fact that it is happening on non-iPhone X devices which don't have the hardware to support FaceID could actually be the cause of buggy code chewing up battery.

      I'm not saying it is or it isn't, just that this claim isn't proof one way or the other.

  • Clearly, the root cause of this issue is that cat parasites are taking over.
    • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

      There are no cat parasites, that's fake news spread by catists
    • by tomxor ( 2379126 )
      Needs debu..uhm deparasiting... we don't know where the parasites are: engineers brains, in the phone, in the users brains making (them click on everything like mad).
    • The real problem is that they didn't have Steve QA it! They should have placed the phone on edge on his coffin. If it falls left, fail. Right, means it sucks but will do.

      If the phone flies off the coffin and shatters into a million pieces; sacrifice the dev team, repaint the room in their blood, and hire a new team.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I am having this problem on 6S. I have to charge it twice a day. On hold right now for 6 minutes and battery as gone down 4%!

    AR is fun but it drains the entire battery in about a half hour.

    iPad Mini 4 is only having the trouble relatively mildly.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      My 6 is also losing battery performance.

      Last week I had to replace my battery as after 4 years it was dire, so new battery and working great and lasting 1.5 days, then 3 days ago upgraded to IOS11 and it's now drains in .5 days.

    • by stooo ( 2202012 ) on Monday September 25, 2017 @12:14PM (#55260405) Homepage

      Open it
      Replace battery
      Close it
      Done. It's easy.

    • by Bongo ( 13261 )

      On a 6 I’ve found it varies. Can seem normal for a while then suddenly something starts draining faster. Unfortunately the usage list for last 24 hrs is too coarse to indicate what it is. I watched 4 percent flash by in 15 secs. Then normal. I suspect it is something to do with WiFi and cellular.

      Again, I was standing outside my door and so within WiFi range but weak, and I’d been out taking photos, and just then it seemed to drain 15% presumably just uploading photos.

      Apart from this, it feels sn

  • 1. "Update" OS to use more battery.

    2. Release new hardware with bigger battery.

    3. Profit!

    • by Anonymous Coward

      1. "Update" OS to use more battery.

      2. Release new hardware with bigger battery.

      3. Profit!

      biggest problem: newer devices as of late seldom come with bigger batteries.

  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday September 25, 2017 @11:57AM (#55260273)

    The very first thing I did after installing iOS11, is go through the location permissions and convert all apps that were "allows background location" to only be "while in use".

    There were not really too many apps that were a problem, but that definitely helped at least with Waze.

    Looking at my battery logs, I notice nothing especially different about app usage so I don't really see other changes in battery use...

    The one culprit I would guess at, is that if people are using AR apps that drains a LOT of power very quickly. I imagine people will stop using so many once the novelty wears off though, there are a few that are useful but it's not like you'd be in them every day.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 25, 2017 @12:00PM (#55260293)

    I had a serious battery drain issue with iOS11 on the first day installed it on my 6. Updated in the morning with it plugged into my laptop with a full charge. By 6PM, I was getting a 20% warning, when I usually have more like 65-70%. However, over the next couple of days, battery life went back to something closer to what it was prior to updating, maybe 5% less, but not like it was. Seemed better after I power cycled the phone while trying to sort out an issue with connecting to my bedside dock after the update.

  • Clearly this is user error...
  • This is news? (Score:4, Informative)

    by dysmal ( 3361085 ) on Monday September 25, 2017 @12:09PM (#55260361)

    How is this news? EVERY major iOS update has had this same damn problem with battery life sucking on any older devices.

    Now iOS users get to sit back and wait 6 months for Apple fix (errr... make less bad?) this problem while being badgered into buying a new phone to circumvent this preventable problem.

  • I was synchronizing my iPad in iTunes when I saw there was an update available. After some research into what was new and what problems the early adopters were seeing, I decided to wait. My IOS 10 works just fine and there is no pressing need to upgrade yet, so I think I'm goona wait

  • by technomom ( 444378 ) on Monday September 25, 2017 @12:12PM (#55260385)
    That's only 4 hours of screen on time. There's tons of good phones out there (Moto Z Play for one) that easily get between 8 and 12 hours of SOT with normal use. Why anyone you settle for only 4? And now it's under 2? Magical!
    • by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

      This is wrong on so many levels. Them writing it, you falling for it. This is sad really.

      an iPhone or iPad running iOS 10 takes 240 minutes of usage to drain the battery

      With this simple sentence they will have you believe that an iPhone (any model) and an iPad (any model) have the same autonomy.

      When I read this I see pure garbage. You see news. What a world we are living in!

  • A larger, more complicated OS with more code and more processing time because of it uses more electricity? Whaaaat? I thought phone processors ran on magic and newer was always better.
  • when has an iOS update NOT caused older devices to flake out?

    seems it's a conscious decision on the part of apple to drive sales, but doubling the batting drain is really giving the middle finger to the customer base

    ~600 bucks for 2 hours battery capacity? what a joke.

  • I can't swear on my memory, but it seems this is an issue with every single IOS update.

    A month or so from now a patch will fix things right up.

    Curious how Apple doesn't catch such things ahead of time.

    Or ( dons tin foil head gear )

    They DO know about it, but keep it quiet and release the IOS anyway vs pushing the release date out far enough so they can fix it.

    Kind of how game developers work anymore. ( Which, coincidentally, is why I never buy games until they have been out for six months or longer. Saves a

  • Every. Single. Time. (Score:5, Informative)

    by TheFakeTimCook ( 4641057 ) on Monday September 25, 2017 @12:37PM (#55260617)

    Yes, Every. Single. Time. Each time a new major version of iOS comes out, people forget (or never heard about) the fact that Spotlight Re-Indexes the "Drive" in iOS Devices for the first day or so, and people whine about "Battery Life".

    Yes, sometimes there are some adjustments needed to background-task prioritization; but most of the time it is simply Spotlight. If that is the case, then the drain should settle-down in a couple of days. If it requires Re-nice-ing, then you'll soon see a "point update" that will do so.

    But this happens. Every time. Apple really needs to tell people to expect it; but who wants to give "bad news" about the new shiny; even though it is fully-explainable, temporary, and expected by experiened iOS users?

    • Yep. And they also make improvements on identifying objects and people in your photos. Which means it has to go through the 30 GB of pictures you have on your phone. Since they do this on-device rather than in the cloud, for privacy reasons, this takes processor and battery.

      • Yep. And they also make improvements on identifying objects and people in your photos. Which means it has to go through the 30 GB of pictures you have on your phone. Since they do this on-device rather than in the cloud, for privacy reasons, this takes processor and battery.

        Good point! I forgot about the face-recognition stuff.

        I have never noticed. Does it do the facial recognition on video, too? If so, that be a LOT of "pictures" to categorize!

      • Why does my phone need to identify objects and people on the photographs that I've stored on it? The fact that it's 'invisible' and causes people to be confused about battery drain means people don't even know their phone is doing it.

        Yeah, I expect there's a real good reason why the phone needs to run face recognition on every photograph I have stored on my phone. Righto.

        • Why does my phone need to identify objects and people on the photographs that I've stored on it? The fact that it's 'invisible' and causes people to be confused about battery drain means people don't even know their phone is doing it.

          Yeah, I expect there's a real good reason why the phone needs to run face recognition on every photograph I have stored on my phone. Righto.

          It's only "invisible" to paranoid idiots line you.

          The rest of us watch Apple Keynote addresses and read OS "Feature" Pages, tutorials, TV commercials and other media reports, websites, reviews, etc, where these features are (gasp!) revealed, demonstrated, and openly discussed.

          And BTW, you sick fuck, because Apple DOES respect your privacy, ALL of the face categorization process and data is done ON DEVICE (that's why it slows down your phone, you moron!).

          https://goo.gl/images/ccjsMV [goo.gl]

          https://goo.gl/images/8osD [goo.gl]

          • You didn't explain WHY it is doing it. Why do images on my phone need to be tagged and categorized? If there's metadata in the images, it was put there when the pictures were taken. So. What The Fuck. Why?

            Also, not all of us drool over keynotes and spend our days poring over the marketing shit that Apple spews out.

            And: You use Google? I thought you Apple fetishists were still hating Google.

            Fuck off, by the way, shill.

            • You didn't explain WHY it is doing it. Why do images on my phone need to be tagged and categorized? If there's metadata in the images, it was put there when the pictures were taken. So. What The Fuck. Why?

              Also, not all of us drool over keynotes and spend our days poring over the marketing shit that Apple spews out.

              And: You use Google? I thought you Apple fetishists were still hating Google.

              Fuck off, by the way, shill.

              Fuck off yourself, mindless Hater.

              • When a cult has degenerated to the point where they have to circle the wagons and call anybody who doesn't disagree with them a 'hater' it's time to think about what you might be getting sucked into if you hang around with them.

                Dude 'Fakestevejobs' is far gone, but other people reading this might want to note what a pernicious nasty motherfucker he is and avoid going that way themselves.

    • And can you please explain then why if you do a fresh install of 10.3.3 and 11.0.0 the drain on the latter is still there?

      • And can you please explain then why if you do a fresh install of 10.3.3 and 11.0.0 the drain on the latter is still there?

        I would guess it is because Spotlight still does indexing of App data and other things in the OS.

        • And on the 10.3.3 version it doesn't?

          I hope that at least you get paid for all that shilling.

          • And on the 10.3.3 version it doesn't?

            I hope that at least you get paid for all that shilling.

            Typically, whenever there is a "Major Revision" change in iOS or macOS, you can expect a Re-Indexing. Typically, "point Revisions" don't suffer that.

            And if you look back at when iOS 10.0.0 came out, there was the VERY SAME gnashing-of-teeth. Hence the Title (and substance) of my Post.

            Wish I did get paid; but I don't. So, by definition, it isn't "Shilling". By the way, if I were "Shilling", would I whine about the fact that Apple doesn't warn users to EXPECT the temporary slowdown?

            Don't answer that. I know y

  • I don't know about battery, but with iOS11 Safari seems snappier.
  • Whenever I upgrade to a new version of iOS I always spend extra time looking around to discover and use its new features. I wonder how much of this report's battery-drain difference can be attributed to that?
  • Well maybe not *every* time but this is nothing new. I remember multiple major iPhone OS updates in the past that caused battery drain that had to be fixed in a point release. Surprising they didn't catch it in testing, but who knows what weird combos of apps or weird file corruption people have.

    BTW, why is it that clearing your history and cache is a common solution to browser problems? If a web browser is behaving poorly with bad data files, isn't it a but that it doesn't just realise the data is bad a

  • If the phone was used per recommendation and held at the proper angle, (23.5 + latitude) degrees off vertical the battery drain is same as before.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    In no small part, this is because iOS 11 turned on every goddamned thing in the system.

    All of that cloud shit, and wallet shit, and all of the network stuff I'd turned off was re-enabled when I updated. Within minutes of the update I went through and touched every setting, removing piles of crap I don't use and don't want, but which Apple decided I clearly couldn't live without.

    The amount of crap which was suddenly enabled was mind-boggling.

    This is my work phone, so I'm stuck with it ... but damn if they d

  • iPhone 6S+, although I'm noticing about 10-15 % increased battery discharge, but then, I switch it on and off every few minutes. Thus, so far, so good.
  • ... a side effect of 'airplane mode' not actually turning WiFi/Bluetooth off [slashdot.org]?

    • (mod parent insightful)

      You are correct, see my later post, But it's not just wi-fi and bluetooth, it's also other changes.

  • 1. Default iOS 11 behavior is to turn ON your wi-fi and your bluetooth even if you think you turned them off using the pop up controller (which shows up when cell is "off" or "locked") 1 hr after. The only way to turn them off for more than an hour is to turn them off with the Settings app. This drains your battery fast, especially if driving.

    2. Default iOS 11 behavior for podcasts was reset to check every HOUR instead of every six HOURS. So your podcasts will poll the Net, turning on wi-fi and bluetooth. I

  • I started noticing a huge drain on my iPhone about 4 or 5 days before I upgraded to IOS 11. I checked the battery status prior to upgrading and Facebook was sucking a lot of my CPU cycles. IOS 11 did not change that at all.

  • I have all the (user configurable) privacy invading shit turned off, and my battery life on iOS 11 has been better so far than on 10.

  • So they say that 'an iPhone or iPad' normally drains in 240 minutes or in 96 minutes in iOS 11.

    This is already a weird place to start. I go for almost 12 hours on a charge for my iPad, and that's mixed usage, including games that use the GPU. (5th Gen iPad)

    Oh, that's also on iOS 11. I haven't had battery drain problems since beta 3 or 4.

    My iPhone 6 (1 year old; my original was replaced by Apple) doesn't really have any noticeable battery drain issues either. It lasts about 8 hours on a charge, with mixed us

  • I guess they've run out of good features to copy and now are copying the bad ones...
  • Same problem with Android Oreo 8.0 public beta. It may have been due to a Bluetooth bug. Seems fixed in 8.0 final though.
  • I upgraded a 6, Mini 2 and a 7+. The 6 and Mini 2 had noticeable performance issues after the upgrade. The 7+ seemed fine. I changed the 6 to Battery Saver mode and turned off background updates on the Mini 2 and the battery life is decent again. I will give Apple some time to fix it but I may revert back to 10.3.3 if there isn't a fix.
  • It looks like a drain if you watch percentages drop precipitously. But in my experience, the the *apparent" drop slows as the percentage drops, to the extent that it runs on 1% for quite awhile. And the time it takes to go to zero doesn't seem greatly increased. In other words, if I gauge by time, it doesn't look much worse.

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