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iOS 11 Is Causing Massive Battery Drain Problems (betanews.com)
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.
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.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My understanding is that the phone has to reindex everything almost to a MacOS upgrade. That kills the battery for a day or three until it's done,then things start to normalize.
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!
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.