Solutions for Better Battery Life on Beta 1 - Confirmed for Mult. Devices

App & System Services Core OS Beta iOS

Created Jun ’15

Replies 33

Boosts 0

Views 7.6k

Participants 13

Update: 6/21/2015 - 3:43 AM PST - Added third step that may resolve certain issues stemming from prior iOS backups restoring to iOS 9 Beta 1.

OK we've done our 24 hours of testing and can very safely conclude that all battery life issues accross three different devices included in the test have been entirely resolved and now the devices are not heating up, charging normally, and retaining a normal rate of discharge on standby. In additio, battery use reports within Settings confirm that the Homescreen no longer is consuming a substantial (more than 20%) portion of the average use of total battery power. (devices are normalizing data still, however to ensure none of you suffer this any further here are the necessary changes)

1. Completely disable iCloud Backups on each device running iOS 9 Beta 1 (Use iTunes to Backup and restore devices for now.)

2. Disable iCloud drive (if you enabled it) on each device running Beta 1

3. If you restored a backup from iOS 8.4, 8.3 or earlier after upgrading to 9.0 Beta 1 then you may wish to perform a reinstall of iOS 9.0. Simply do this by using the "update" versus restore function in iTunes. Do not restore any backups. (Assuming you did not reset all data and settings prior to doing the update then all your data will still be there.) - There were some devices in our lab that did behave differently regarding battery use and background operations. This had a positive effect, making all devices in the lab perform equally.

- Please bear in mind that the performance expectations on a 1st beta release should be minimal, however we were seeing iPads drain in a matter of a few hours on stand-by with some iPhone 6 Pluses doing the same while others did not. (Each had a slightly different variation of applications loaded, but all had the same iCloud account attached to them.)

There appears to be a SERIOUS problem with the API handling backups to iCloud or some sort of permissions issue with the data being written to iCloud. This likely went into effect during the update phase that indicated "iCloud data is being updated". (During the first Beta 1 load.)

This has confirmed to entirely resolve the "somewhat unpredictable" and extremely high rate of burn on the battery for this beta on iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and iPadf Air 2. There is no reason to believe other affected devices will respond any differently to these changes, so we encourage other developers to try them asap. Apple should likely address this with the next update, when we can resume use of iCloud as normal during testing.

NOTE: iCloud data used by Third Party applications and other data like Calendar, Contacts and so on, does not appear to be causing any issues with battery usage, nor does there appear to be any data corruption. However do proceed with caution if you are using iCloud for your beta application development.

Boost

Atomic Flip OP

Jun ’15

Hi Batting1k,

I understand your frustration. Even with these changes power management is not fully baked in this 1st beta, however you might want to try one more thing.

1. Completely sign out of iCloud on the device and reboot the phone then attempt to use it normally. (observe battery life)

2. Sign back into icloud and reboot the phone. (observe battery life)

Please understand I am not promising that this will fix your problems but it's a necessary test to exclude possible causes. (My suspicion is much of this is iCloud / Data Sync related.)

MarcWolf OP

Jun ’15

Hi Atomic,

I set Background App refresh to off for everything (to see if that was the issue) no change

I then set Mobile Data to 3g not 4G that had a minimal improving affect to the tune of aprox 10%

I have also put the phone into Airplane mode with WIFI active to close out all mobile comms Still no change

I did a full charge and left the phone sat on my desk for three hours and after hour one I was at 97% So I was hopeful

After Hour two I was down to 83% - still not using the phone on Airplane

After Hour three I was at 52% - again after not using the phone.

As for mail accounts I have the usual iCloud acc, An IMAP account and an Outlook account,

Must admit I havent tried not activating the mail accounts so I may give that a blast.

The strange thing is my iPad though after a full charge it held power really well until it got to 45% then it just bombed out real quick, I was using the same app to word process just seemed to drop to 12% in a matter of 45-50 minuets.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Marc

iPhone 6 128GB
No photo or data sync with iCloud

Stefdar OP

Jun ’15

Definitely not "The Battery Life FIX for Beta 1"

I would suggest you change the title.

Atomic Flip OP

Jun ’15

Stefdar,

It's often challenging to please everyone with any single title for a subject. While I do find these sorts of comments to be distracting from the overall purpose of the discussion, I've changed the title to more accurately represent the state of these solutions.

tweeling OP

Jun ’15

This made no difference for me on an iPhone 6. I disabled iCloud drive, backup and switched off background app refresh for all apps that were using it. Restarted the iPhone and let the phone charge fully overnight. Today there has been a similar amount of drain, phone has been off the charger for 6 hrs with very little use (basically left on the desk in the study) and it's down to 44%. Hoping Beta 2 addresses these issues.

Atomic Flip OP

Jun ’15

Thanks for the feedback tweeling,

There was one step which we performed on some but not all devices. Two devices in our lab had some data corruption relative to installer/uninstaller garbage that wasd persistent in the settings. These devices also appeared to exhibit persistent battery drain. In another thread someone had suggested doing another restore or update to iOS 9.0 Beta 1 without doing a backup restore would resolve certain issues, however it is possible that this additional step is what might be contributing to the generally positive impact we have seen in the lab.

Again, it's not perfect and it will likely be improved in subsequent betas, but in the event that the next beta is delayed this might help get some people through another week with less stress.

Good luck and thanks again for contributing to the discussion.

Atomic Flip OP

Jun ’15

Hi kcft,

Sorry I missed your question on Apple Watch. We have no evidence that there is any apparent need for this. We have two in the lab running Apple Watch OS 2 Beta and neither are exhibiting alarming battery drain. (Though we have noted the persistent bluetooth connection appears to drop and require a reboot of the iPhone in question from time to time.)

MarcWolf OP

Jun ’15

Hi Atomic,

I'm gonna give this a try as the one thing that i havent done yet is set up as a new phone, Ill post the results as soon as I have them

Cheers for your hard work dude

MarcWolf OP

Jun ’15

Alas this to didnt work for me, that said the battery consumption was slightly lower than before. Bring on B2

Atomic Flip OP

Jun ’15

Well you can't win them all. Thanks for trying 🙂

milestone1 OP

Jun ’15

? I have designed a battery that will last for years without recharging and the thing I'm having a problem with is getting ahold of apple to let them know about this. I would like to see what they have to say about a smart watch that will not have a battery go down on the user anytime this decade even if the user is on the phone for the entire time they own the phone. the reason is, I have designed the phone battery so that shutting off the phone will have harm to the battery and leaving the phone on will accually make it live longer. Could you ask around and please give me some feed back with this at rickgooding@outlook.com

HyperNovaSoftware OP

Jun ’15

Have you seen this? http://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/policies/ideas.html

thetryline OP

Jul ’15

Thanks for this. I have noticed that since installing Public Beta 9 that the battery life was degraded immensely. In 8.4 I was getting to the end of a day (7a.m. to 10.30p.m.) with about 30% left and, on some days nearing three hours of call time. Today I lost 20%age points whilst on a 45 min tube journey to work listening to the music app. I tused to go down by a couple of points. Also the device was getting very hot when charging and also during use. I have done as suggested. Charged the phone. Soft reset. It is a lot cooler now and was during the charge. Hopefully I'll be able to report back tomorrow when I've had a day with this this!

thetryline OP

Jul ’15

Just had a 15% drop in battery during a 45 min tube journey whilst listening to Music even in airplane mode. Does anyone know if there is any research on the new Musinc App degrading battery life?

thetryline OP

Jul ’15

Right. I recharged the phone to 100% All well. Phone cool (heatwise). Had turned off Apple Music Streaming. Got 45 mins at 100%. Decided to have a look at Music to see if it would drain the battery. Turned on Apple Music Streaming. WIthin 1 min the phone was heating up and lost 3%age points in a matter of a couple of minutes whilst I was playing around with the settings. Note, not listening to any music! Now recharging phone to 100% and the heat has gone. Is this another API issue Atomic Flip?