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IOS Bug Iphone

Is iOS 11.4 Draining Your iPhone's Battery? You're Not Alone (zdnet.com) 148

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
If you've noticed that the battery life on your iPhone is not what it used to be, it's likely that the problem isn't with your iPhone or some setting or app, but a bug in iOS 11.4. From a report: Apple's support forum has been blowing up with complaints from users that battery life has been seriously curtailed since installing iOS 11.4. The problems seems to be reasonably widespread and affects the iPhone line up across the board. I've seen this issue on the iPhones that I use. It seems to be accompanied by the device running unusually hot.
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Is iOS 11.4 Draining Your iPhone's Battery? You're Not Alone More

Is iOS 11.4 Draining Your iPhone's Battery? You're Not Alone

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  • iOS 11.4 is draining my battery (Score:5, Funny)

    by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2018 @12:26PM (#56923822)

    iOS 11.4 is draining my battery... and I don't even have an apple.

  • Apple's support forum has been blowing up with complaints from users that battery life has been seriously curtailed since installing iOS 11.4.

    Not disputing what other people are finding but my wife's phone and mine both are unaffected by this problem so it obviously isn't every phone. I'm curious what the common thread might be. Is it with certain devices or apps or something else?

    • If it's "blowing up their forums" and threatening to "break the Internet", let me be the first one to "clap back" and tell you that the sample size > 1.
    • Either this is a bunch of anti-Apple fanatics polluting forums on a regular basis, or Apple likes to remind everyone that new iPhones are coming very soon in an Apple store near you.
    • Online forums have been shown to make issues appear they're larger than they really are. A small number of vocal folks make issues appear larger than they often are. We're also very bad at recognizing that it may be the same couple people complaining again and again. The post can be 20 pages long but it may be largely due to just a couple people. Even a couple thousand people complaining about the issue is a small number when you look at the tens of millions of iOS 11.4 users out there. This is why we're fa

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by garcia ( 6573 )

      Using older phones which were released with multiple major iOS versions in between (e.g. iPhone 5S).

      Keeping your iPhone running the same major version of software it was released with for its life is the best way to keep these sorts of issues from occurring (yes, this comes with risk, keep yourself protected) while greatly exceeding its planned obsolescence.

  • My wife has had iPhones for the last 8 years or so, and she has always had to keep charging them throughout the day and every time she gets in the car. I don't think she uses it any more than anyone else, she almost never actually makes a phone call, and she doesn't facebook all day (at least I don't think she does).

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 )
      It's probably her "Tinder" app. Ask her about it tonight.

    • Re:Really? Is this something new? (Score:5, Informative)

      by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2018 @12:41PM (#56923972)
      Based on my own experience, iPhones are not born equal. Anyway I'd check the "background app refresh" settings and unset most of them...
    • "backup app refresh" set to true for most apps which would cause that issue - multiple phones means it's one or more apps that your wife is running

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jeremyp ( 130771 )

      Look in settings under "Battery". It will tell you which apps are draining the battery the most.

      If she has to charge the battery "Constantly" either one of her apps is misbehaving or the phone is very old and the battery is shafted.

    • Settings > Battery > she can see what is eating it. With it needing charged that often, though, it probably just needs the battery replaced.

    • We see this same story after every iOS update and it turns out to be the update finishing or something else benign.

  • Again, seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2018 @12:35PM (#56923890)
    This is a minor fix 11.3 => 11.4, and yet that battery drain issue is back from the dead, again? Either Apple has some main dev team problem (which it has in a way), or maybe the new fw (os) install reset some settings, like "backup app refresh" set to true for some apps which would cause that issue.

    • This is a minor fix 11.3 => 11.4, and yet that battery drain issue is back from the dead, again? Either Apple has some main dev team problem (which it has in a way), or maybe the new fw (os) install reset some settings, like "backup app refresh" set to true for some apps which would cause that issue.

      Well we have plenty of proof that they have a hard time porting fixes in the current OS release into the future OS release under development, but that can't be occurring in this case since it was 11.x to 11.x. But they usually have quite a few regressions they have to patch once they release a new major OS version.

  • Who Cares? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by avandesande ( 143899 )
    Can't wealthy people afford to charge their phone?

  • I usually don't have much trouble with iOS upgrades. Maybe a small drain the first day, and fine after that. I have had a big drain with 11.4. I've often gone under 10%, and once the phone even shutdown, compared to the 30-50% I had before.

    • My experience too. I switched from 5Ghz wifi to 2.4 and that seemed to help but didn't completely eliminate battery drain. If I run on cellular data exclusively I don't see the same battery drain problem.

      • That's interesting. July 4, I was sitting on my porch waiting for the fireworks, and futzing around on my phone. It was slow, and I figured I was close enough to my wifi that it was trying to connect, but far enough that it couldn't, so I switched to cellular. I still had it there the next day, and my battery seemed better that day.

      • I switched from 5Ghz wifi to 2.4 and that seemed to help but didn't completely eliminate battery drain.

        Switching to 1.2 GHz should help even more. :-)

  • Upgrade drains battery, no? (Score:5, Informative)

    by pz ( 113803 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2018 @12:39PM (#56923946) Journal

    From what I recall reading on Slashdot, this issue is raised nearly every time there's an upgrade to iOS and the reason is that while the basic upgrade happens right away to ensure usability as quickly as possible, there's a ton of stuff that happens in the background for some time to come. It's the background activity that appears to shorten the battery usability. Once the background activity is done, back to normal, more-or-less.

    Or so I've read. Personally, I don't own an Apple device of any sort so I can neither confirm nor dispute. Don't blame the messenger.

    • It seems an odd way of doing things, but then it is Apple...

      If you switch it off and back on again does it get all that background shit done and out of the way?

      • It isn't odd or uncommon. Microsoft .NET does the same thing. After downloading a new update there's a background job that compiles everything for your device. It can take an hour or 2 - and survives a reboot, continuing where it left off when the reboot occurred.

        When the job is done it disables itself.

        I used to find this statement true of iOS too. After a reboot my battery life was reduced for 1/2 day (or so). Everyone would post that battery life sucked - but a reboot would fix it. Then Apple said

    • Yeah I call it "new phone syndrome". Every time someone gets a phone they complain about battery life because they are installing a bunch of apps and updates, using it more because there are new features, testing the camera, downloading all of their notebooks, offline playlists and photo gallery thumbnails...

      Every new phone I've gotten has terrible battery life for the first week or two as each app definitely has to cache data.

    • So its probably just media fear mongering and FUD. Open article, search replace IOS version number.. post.

  • Enable low power mode... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    and the problem is solved. I only have to charge my almost three year-old iPhone 6S Plus twice a week.

  • Battery Drain (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ... because it turned on by default the GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, and every other power draining feature? Screen brightness to max? Camera on?

    wait, why is the camera on again, Siri?

  • and (shame on me, I know) although I don't have empirical metrics, anecdotally my phone is definitely doing *some*thing because it's getting hot even when the screen is off and I'm not using it... got so bad it started dropping frames in a video the other day.

    installed *.1 this morning, we'll see if this improves things.

  • There’s an easy fix ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ddtmm ( 549094 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2018 @01:27PM (#56924278)
    Couldn’t they just slow the phone down a bit so it doesn’t use as much battery power? This is a no-brainer.
  • and the battery lasts all day. clearly you're doing something wrong. takes tweaking and you can't overload it with every app under the sun all notifying...
    • and someone else said 95% (or more) don't need to be updating in the background when i'm not using them
  • I upgraded to 11.4 a while ago and didn't see any problems. What I usually see is articles saying that battery life is better for some and worse for others. I'd guess that it's App issues.

  • Definite iOS Bug (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KidSock ( 150684 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2018 @10:55PM (#56926580)

    As a developer who has written drivers for DSP and other low level stuff, I can say with great certainty that this is definitely an iOS bug. The problem did not occur at all before the 11.4.0 update. As soon as that update dropped it happens without fail for the past 5 weeks. It's not background apps. I can close all apps, charge to 100%, unplug when I go to bed and in the morning it's 20%. Something is getting stuck in a loop or maybe some chip is getting bad commands. The phone gets physically warm so something is running free.

    No doubt everyone that always used their iPhone a lot is going to jump in an say "me too" when their problem is that they're just using their phone a lot. So naturally that has created enough doubt to muddy the diagnosis. And Apple has not acknowledge the bug so there are a lot of responses regarding how to turn things off to improve battery. But, again, that is NOT the problem. The problem is something is running uncontrolled.

    There are many theories as to the cause. Many have to do with something related to WiFi. The only pattern that I have seen is that if I shutdown and restart, the problem goes away for a while. But as soon as I use the phone for whatever reason, it comes back. It might take 6 hours. It might take a day. But eventually it always comes back and then it's stuck draining battery unless I reboot.

    Note that iOS 11.4.1 was just released yesterday. But the release notes say nothing about battery anything so it remains to be seen if they have fixed it. It is discouraging that they have not acknowledged it. It makes you wonder if they're actually having trouble reproducing it. But that would almost unbelievable since they could just install 11.3 and compare. Of course we can't do that because 11.3 isn't signed anymore so it cannot be installed. Obviously it's not a trivial CPU loop or they would have spotted it quick. Running the CPU in debugging mode probably suppresses it or again they would have spotted it quick.

    I'm starting to have doubts about Apple. Steve Jobs was a prick but maybe that's precisely why he was so successful.

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