iPhone 14 Pro - sudden unexplained battery drain

JoeA3

Hi folks,

I have a new iPhone 14 Pro, bought in September. All was great with it until yesterday, when I noticed my battery had dropped dramatically and I wasn't even using the phone very much, it was idle on my desk most of the time. So last night I tried a soft reset, killed all the apps, and I even uninstalled one app that I thought might be responsible, but today its as bad as ever. The battery had been excellent up until now! I was easily getting a whole day out of it, but this seems really fishy, it is falling several % per hour, even when idle. The phone also feels a little warm in the hand. I'm guessing something is running on the phone that is killing it but I can't figure out what it might be. As I said, I've restarted, reset, etc.

Its running the latest OS, 16.1 and I haven't installed anything new on it anytime recently.

Any suggestions? I'm loathe to do the full reset / re-install :(

Gregor Samsa

Go to Settings -> Battery and take a look at the "Battery usage by app" report, it might tell you if a specific app is causing a drain.

JoeA3

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119828683#Comment_119828683

Yeah did that. Nothing out of the ordinary showing up. Safari is the top one and I haven’t even used safari much.

I also think that the phone seems more sluggish than usual. Opening apps, the animation seems to stutter. Something is definitely off.

https://www.esrgear.com/blog/10-fixes-to-solve-iphone-14-pro-and-pro-max-battery-draining-fast/

Maybe you might be able to troubleshoot from above. I once had an iPhone 6 that used to almost go on fire and crash, faulty battery which they replaced. But very often something else is causing it. Touch wood my own 14 Pro behaves itself!

pleasant Co.

When you say soft reset do you mean the short press "volume up" button, short press "volume down" button and then hold the power (or side button as it's now known) until the phone reboots to the apple logo method?

Have you transferred many files lately, added any new accounts (email accounts that may contain a lot of emails?) or anything that might cause a decent heft of indexing to be done?

I found the last time I suffered a big battery drain issue it was down to the music app pretend syncing to nothing in the background.

JoeA3

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119828844#Comment_119828844

Yep, thats the reset I tried. I actually switched it off about a half hour ago as it really did feel warm in the hand, let it cool down and now I'v just powered it up again. Battery is at 30%... despite being idle most of the day. Not good. I'll see if that shutdown / restart helps matters.

Thats the thing, I can't remember doing anything or changing any settings or installing any new app at all any time recently.

I do have the "always on" display and I've seen people recommended to turn that off, but its been on since I got the phone and this problem only started yesterday. So I don't think thats the issue.

JoeA3

OK, I think I have resolved it! I did the following 2 things:

• switched off the always-on display
• switched off "Background app refresh" - this is a curious one because even though it was "on", the vast majority of the apps had it manually overridden to be off.

Anyway, one or both of those things seems to have done the trick, just not sure which. I might turn on the always-on display again in a day or two as I did like that feature. But not if its costing battery life...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119832238#Comment_119832238

Possibly it was making a fruitless battery-draining “effort” to try & refresh apps. It will be interesting to see what was the straw that broke the camel’s back 🙂

Brtclk_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119832238#Comment_119832238

i had this happen to me today too. i thought if i got a virus ,maybe you clicken on some links before it happened like me?.anyways which of them was draining the battery, app refresh or aod ?

You’ll find it’s the Always On Display that’s the issue with your iPhone, the known greatest drainer of battery. I generally find the 14 Pro to have by far the greatest battery endurance of any iPhone I’ve had.

Brtclk_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120383864#Comment_120383864

like the other guy said it wasnt a problem till this day. i could end the day off with about %16 left with both aod and app refresh on. but for some reason it started to fall incredibly quick.Usually when my school ends its around%60~70 .today tho it was at 40,rapidly falling.i left it upside down too so the aod was off. got any battery depleting viruses maybe? if it did get a vrus like that any way i can check it,like any apps i can look if its virused for free?.

Brtclk_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120384344#Comment_120384344

im not into tech stuff so im not sure

Brtclk_

Its fine now. turns out it was just location services draining the battery.