iOS 8 is here for iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches, and iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are available now for everyone, and while they provide more features and functionality than ever before, updating to new software and upgrading to new phones can often have an impact on battery life. Whether it’s from a restore gone bad or new features overloaded for the first time, some people don’t aren’t getting the same charge out of their new iOS install or iPhone purchase as they used. But worry not! Almost all battery life problems are easy to identify and fix. You just need to know what to look for and what to do!
Note: iOS updates or restores can use a lot of power at first. Whether it’s reindexing content, re-dowloading a ton of apps or media, or otherwise getting everything set up and ready, your Wi-Fi might be spinning and your processor might be churning for hours if not a day or two. If iOS is still restoring, you’ll see a bit of text on the Lock screen telling you just that. Give it some time and let it finish. If not, proceed on to the tips!
Whenever you update to a new version of iOS or get an new iPhone, it’s only natural to want to try out all the new features. Maybe it’s Extensibility or Continuity, maybe it’s Touch ID apps or Photos editing, or simply all the new, cool iOS 8 apps, you’ll likely do a lot more on update or upgrade day than you did on any normal day. Yet every time you sling sound bites, interact with notifications, pull down widgets, switch between custom keyboards, or do any one of a hundred other fun new things, the screen will light up, the radios will fire, and the battery will drain.
The point is, it’s almost impossible to realistically assess a change in battery life if you’ve also changed your usage pattern. in other words, if you’re battery feels like it’s only lasting half as long, the first step to fixing it is figuring out if you’re using it twice as much.
So, before you do anything else, note down how much battery life you have left. Then put your device down for 10-20 minutes. When you pick it back up, note down how much battery life you have left again. f there isn’t a big change while in standby, you’re probably okay and your battery life will return to normal when your usage returns to normal (after the novelty wears off). If your device continued to drain, and drain fast, even when you weren’t using it, there’s a problem.
If, in general, your battery life is consistently short and you’re basically just watching the indicator drain down before your eyes, here are some things to try, in order of how easy they are to do.
The single biggest cause of battery life problems with iOS devices occurs when they are restored from backup and not set up as new devices. Whether it’s cruft or corruption, bit rot or simply bad bits, a clean install as a new device — incredible pain in the butt though it may be — is usually the best fix for any battery life issues. This is the nuclear option. You will have to set up absolutely everything again, and you will lose all your saved data like game levels, but in most cases your battery life will be better than ever.
Anything running on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad uses up the battery. So if you’ve tried everything else and it turns out you’re just using your device more than the battery will allow for the length of time you need to use it, you’ll need to make some hard choices. You’ll need to stop using some of the features you don’t really need in order to keep using the ones you do. The more you turn off, the longer your batter will last — but of course the less you’ll be able to do. It’s a balancing act but one that can help you squeeze out a little extra juice when you really need it.
There are some old tricks you can try when you’re in a jam as well, and the new Control Center makes it really easy to do many of these really quickly now!
If you’re really desperate, put your iPhone or iPad in Airplane Mode and save the radios for when you need them. If you’re really desperate, you can also turn your device completely off until you need it (it will still use a tiny amount of power but far, far less than anything else).
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