Why is my battery life draining fast on my 6s Plus?

Ziembaa

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So I expected to get around 13 hours at least with my new iPhone. I've had this phone for around 2 weeks now and I only get around 8- 9 hours of usage. I'm disappointed with thebatterylife. What should I do? I mostly watch YouTube videos and listen to music, could this be the problem? What should I do?
 

Rob Phillips

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Welcome to iMore! Watching YouTube videos can eat up battery pretty quickly as your display is on the entire time and you're constantly transferring data. If you're streaming your music it could be causing faster than average battery drain as well. Considering your usage, 8-9 hours isn't bad.
 

Smply_Rckless

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That's pretty good usage. My suggestion would to be, do a restore. Backup everything & do a full restore. I do one every month & everything feels kinda fresh again if that makes sense.
 

dchandler

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Also check your brightness settings and turn off whatever settings your not using such as Bluetooth, wifi, GPS and so forth.
 

Ledsteplin

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Brightness, GPS (location services), and rogue apps that run too much are the main culprits in battery drain. Also videos and intense games.
Bluetooth not so much.
 

flyinion

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Check the stats in settings for the battery. That should tell you pretty quick what's eating it. Look for either the biggest overall app using battery, or the biggest background ones as well.
 

mr_coldharbour

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I was getting about 10-11hrs of usage time and over 60hrs standby time on a single charge. Though I feel like my battery on my 6S Plus 128GB began to drain faster when I performed my first full power-cycle (drained from 100 to 0) about a week ago. I bought my 6S Plus about 3 weeks ago, setup the device as NEW, no restores from backups, no OTA updates (all through iTunes). No animations, no transparency effects, no background app refresh, no location services, no Bluetooth, brightness is manually set and usuall on the darker side, reduce white point is ON, no iCloud activity at all, wifi on only when in use. Lately I've been getting roughly 8.5-9hrs usage and 40-42hrs standby on a single charge.

As I'm writing this post I'm on 62% battery with 3h52mins usage, 28h35mins standby. Is that any good?
 

ipooed

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I had a 6s and got 5-51/2 hours of on screen time, upgraded to the 6s plus and get about 8-9 hours on screen time, I am a very heavy user
 

Ledsteplin

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I was getting about 10-11hrs of usage time and over 60hrs standby time on a single charge. Though I feel like my battery on my 6S Plus 128GB began to drain faster when I performed my first full power-cycle (drained from 100 to 0) about a week ago. I bought my 6S Plus about 3 weeks ago, setup the device as NEW, no restores from backups, no OTA updates (all through iTunes). No animations, no transparency effects, no background app refresh, no location services, no Bluetooth, brightness is manually set and usuall on the darker side, reduce white point is ON, no iCloud activity at all, wifi on only when in use. Lately I've been getting roughly 8.5-9hrs usage and 40-42hrs standby on a single charge.

As I'm writing this post I'm on 62% battery with 3h52mins usage, 28h35mins standby. Is that any good?

There been a misconception about "Background App Refresh". It's actually a good thing. And no, it doesn't eat battery. Here's what happens. Apple implemented Background App Refresh with iOS 7. They didn't do it so your battery wound drain. Just the opposite. You see, apps that run in the background will do so regardless of whether Background App Refresh is on or not. Turning it off for an app does not prevent the app from running in the background. It's necessary for apps to run in the background. Most don't stay there but a very short time. The problem is the few that run there way to long. This results in excessive battery consumption. So, what does Background App Refresh do? It helps the apps running in the background to do so more efficiently. Thus saving battery life. It's amazing how so many have misunderstood this feature. I blame the tech writers who really had no clue.
 

Rob Phillips

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There been a misconception about "Background App Refresh". It's actually a good thing. And no, it doesn't eat battery. Here's what happens. Apple implemented Background App Refresh with iOS 7. They didn't do it so your battery wound drain. Just the opposite. You see, apps that run in the background will do so regardless of whether Background App Refresh is on or not. Turning it off for an app does not prevent the app from running in the background. It's necessary for apps to run in the background. Most don't stay there but a very short time. The problem is the few that run there way to long. This results in excessive battery consumption. So, what does Background App Refresh do? It helps the apps running in the background to do so more efficiently. Thus saving battery life. It's amazing how so many have misunderstood this feature. I blame the tech writers who really had no clue.

Agreed. If I remember correctly 7.1's first beta destroyed battery life and background app refresh, being the new feature, was easy to blame. So it became a big deal over nothing and the public as a whole has never forgotten.
I think they should have named the incident Backgroundapprefreshgate but it never caught on.
 

mr_coldharbour

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There been a misconception about "Background App Refresh". It's actually a good thing. And no, it doesn't eat battery. Here's what happens. Apple implemented Background App Refresh with iOS 7. They didn't do it so your battery wound drain. Just the opposite. You see, apps that run in the background will do so regardless of whether Background App Refresh is on or not. Turning it off for an app does not prevent the app from running in the background. It's necessary for apps to run in the background. Most don't stay there but a very short time. The problem is the few that run there way to long. This results in excessive battery consumption. So, what does Background App Refresh do? It helps the apps running in the background to do so more efficiently. Thus saving battery life. It's amazing how so many have misunderstood this feature. I blame the tech writers who really had no clue.

Thanks for the explanation. Though I have no need for the feature. You still haven't answered my question, are my battery stats that I already mentioned twice earlier any good? Yes or no?
 

Rob Phillips

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Thanks for the explanation. Though I have no need for the feature. You still haven't answered my question, are my battery stats that I already mentioned twice earlier any good? Yes or no?

Could be better, especially with all of the steps you're taking. If you're concerned about how quickly your battery is draining I suggest visiting an Apple Store and having them run a diagnostic or contacting Apple Support.
 
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Ledsteplin

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Thanks for the explanation. Though I have no need for the feature. You still haven't answered my question, are my battery stats that I already mentioned twice earlier any good? Yes or no?

8.5 to 9 hours usage is fine. It's going to vary some from time to time depending on what you do and your settings. Sometimes I get 8.5 hours usage. Other times more. Up to 11 or so. I don't worry about it. I just enjoy my phone. But if you're concerned about the battery, try this test:

Battery test
Write down your usage and standby time, press the sleep/wake button (or lock button, as some call it) to put the device to sleep, and set the device down for five minutes. When you come back, take note of the change in time. If your device is sleeping properly, then the Standby time should have increased by five minutes and your Usage time by <1 minute. If your Usage time rises by more than one minute, you have a drain problem. Something is keeping your device from sleeping properly, significantly shortening the time it will last.
 

mr_coldharbour

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Could be better, especially with all of the steps you're taking. If you're concerned about how quickly your battery is draining I suggest visiting an Apple Store and having them run a diagnostic or contacting Apple Support.

To be fair, it's not like I reach 1% and I'm at 8.5-9hrs usage, I'm usually at 15-20% battery remaining with roughly 8.5-9hrs usage so one might say that I could go another hour before it's completely drained. But I just might take it in for a battery diagnosis.

8.5 to 9 hours usage is fine. It's going to vary some from time to time depending on what you do and your settings. Sometimes I get 8.5 hours usage. Other times more. Up to 11 or so. I don't worry about it. I just enjoy my phone. But if you're concerned about the battery, try this test:

Battery test
Write down your usage and standby time, press the sleep/wake button (or lock button, as some call it) to put the device to sleep, and set the device down for five minutes. When you come back, take note of the change in time. If your device is sleeping properly, then the Standby time should have increased by five minutes and your Usage time by <1 minute. If your Usage time rises by more than one minute, you have a drain problem. Something is keeping your device from sleeping properly, significantly shortening the time it will last.

I know about this test, I just did one to make sure and no draining seems to be taking place. Usage time did not change at all except for standby. Though as I mentioned earlier to DevilishBanker, I'm usually at 15-20% battery remaining with 8.5-9hrs usage and over 40hrs standby, so I could easily go another hour before its drained making my usage theoretically at the 9.5-10hr range. Make sense? In your opinion, what is considered a POOR battery usage time for a 6S Plus? Less than 8hrs? What do you think?
 

Speedygi

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YouTube and other video streaming apps have regularly drained the battery of all my phones though, not just iPhones, so I wouldn't be surprised.
 

Ledsteplin

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I don't do lots of YouTube, that's the OP who does. I do use Safari, Tweebot and Instagram quite a bit though. But no YouTube.

I don't see that you have any battery issues to be concerned about. Just be smart with your settings and what you do. You're fine. Forget your battery and enjoy your phone. If it worries you to look at the % in the status bar, turn it off!
 

Trees

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@flyinion has a good suggestion. Check "Settings\Battery\Battery Usage".

To me this is a huge feature addition to iOS, and the easiest way to tell what app(s) are using the most system resources (Screen, Radio, WiFi, Bluetooth, CPU, GPU, Memory, Disk), and in turn the battery since the battery provides the power that the system resources need to provide the functions that iOS and the apps require.

Before the "Battery Usage" feature was available, it was mostly a guessing game in iOS.
 

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