I upgraded my iPhone 5 to iOS 6.1.2 this week, and was disappointed to see a huge drop in battery life.
Previously, I could easily make it through the day without charging but after upgrading I was down to 3-4 hours on standby and my phone was constantly over-heating!
I FIXED IT!
UPDATE: Definitely worked for me. 99% after 1.5 hrs standby. 100% after 1 hrs regular usage!
I had read that a bug in iOS 6.1.1 was causing problems with battery life and that it was related to having a Microsoft Exchange Email on your phone. So I thought, maybe this is a similar bug. Different things seem to be working for different people, but it looks like there’s some sort of (UPDATE: try disabling Push email. See below)
Solution 1 – Re-Install Microsoft Exchange Email
Step 1 – Delete Exchange Email Account
Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and click on your Exchange email account. Make sure you have your emails backed up on the server (login to the email account on your computer) and then click Delete Account.
Step 2 – Reset Phone
Hold down both the Lock and Home buttons until the phone shuts off. Then turn it back on.
Step 3 – Set up Exchange Account
Return to the Mail, Contacts, Calendars page and click Add Account. Enter all your account information and voila! Your battery life should be back up again!
Didn’t work? Try it with all of your Hotmail and Gmail accounts at once.
Still didn’t work? Try the next solution.
Solution 2 – Disable Push Email 
A very popular solution seems to be disabling Push email. Go to Settings > Main, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data. Set Push to OFF. Then click Advanced, and make sure that each email is set to Fetch instead of Push.
Still didn’t work? Try these other solutions.
Other Solutions
Lot’s of other options have cropped up, all related to network activity. Other people online have found these things to be solutions:
- Disable Documents in the Cloud.
- Remove the SIM card, disable all network connections, restart iPhone, insert SIM card (only seems relevant to people outside the US)
- Remove ALL email accounts, restart iPhone, re-install ALL email accounts
- Sign out of Facebook, restart iPhone.
- Do a completely fresh install of iOS (Don’t forget to back up to iTunes or iCloud)
- In iTunes, go to edit>preferences>devices and check “prevent ipods, iphones and ipads from syncing automatically”
- You may need to let your battery die and then recharge before the changes take effect!!
What worked for you?
Other solutions?
Leave a comment below!
Great write-up; tried both the Exchange and Documents in iCloud fix and all seems to be back to normal now.
Glad it helped!
Hi! What will happen if I turned off Documents and data in iCloud? What information will I lose? Hope you can help.
I dont personally use documents in the cloud, but I believe that nothing should be lost as long as all of your documents have been uploaded to the cloud. They should be stored in the cloud for you to re-download, and I don’t see why they would be deleted from your phone anyways.
Can anyone confirm this?
Hi! I tried solution 2 about disabling push for all e-mails and iCloud. Battery stayed the same on the first day, but after charging it overnight, my battery became normal again. Now I am enjoying 2 days of battery life, and my phone does not heat up anymore.
Nothing worked for me
i want to downgrade this stupid update! It really bugged my ipad and iphone!!
I’m sorry to hear that! please let me know if you find a solution so I can share it with other people who might be experiencing the same problem.
Thank you for posting some fixes. I have a 3gs and I don’t have Exchange yet I still have the battery problem after the ios 6.1.2 upgrade: severe battery drain. I can’t go out of the house now without a charger. I wish I had never upgraded and don’t know why Apple would not say “this upgrade is only to fix Microsoft Exchange accounts”
had already tried the reset but that worked for about 12 minutes – the phone seemed to be holding a charge and then it started to drop off fast.
I have now turned off push, and icloud documents, which I never use at all. Will let know if it works. Thanks again.
i tried all the solutions but still extremely drained.. any other option.. it is so annoying.. i have to charge my iphone every 3hours and my iphone is always hot..=(
same here i tried all the methods but no method is working
if u find any help or any method plz tell me..
thanks in advance….
The first solution worked for me. Thanks!!!
hey.. what if i don’t use an exchange account.?
Thanks, deleting the exchange account worked for me. What a relief!
thanks to you man. After first step my ıphone became normal again and enjoying now. many many thanx.
Thanks for the help, but nothing solve my problem. I have an Ipod touch 5g, after upgrade to 6.1.2 the battery drain very fast. If I don´t find a solution nearly, i take the ipod to services and see if can change to another with the warranty.
pd: sorry for my english.
I can’t thank you enough! I’m extremely happy! I bought the verizon iphone 5 last Friday. It was drained from 100% to 60% for an hour, it’s obviously that there’s something wrong. I searched on google for an hour until I found you! now it is still 100% 2 hours and continuing… If you guys ever wondering if a jailbreak would drain your battery, It’s not true. I jailbroke my iphone 5 and tested it. it’s the same without jailbreak. i’m gonna keep my new phone!
You guys have a good evening!
sitting here on 6.1 and wondering about upgrading. I have just done a quick survey of apple discussions and google. my interpreted consensus is that this is a complex problem with many possible causes – hence the multiple solutions above. I think I will wait for 6.1.3 as I do not wish to spend a lot of time reconfiguring, reloading and restoring.
Update – FYI there are mixed feelings about whether 6.1.3 actually fixes this issue. It seems to help for some users and not others.
Big thanks..
it’s a little too soon to notice any major improvements to my battery life.. but disabling push email + icloud documents seems to have sorted the issues i was having with available free memory.
Before: 150mb – 70mb
Now: 320mb – 250mb
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upgraded to 6.1.3 last night and it is holding its charge once again. fopr me it seems to have just been a problem with 6.1.2.
I’m on 6.1.3 and I used the first step, so far so good, I didn’t even bother setting up my exchange account because I just use the gmail app, but yeah the battery life is waaaayyyy better now thank you so much!
I remember you didn’t have to disable or turn stuff off on the iPhone. The good old days, new iPhone, you can’t use it like other smart phones. Apples firmware has crippled a lot of idevices. None of those steps worked..:(
Very kind of you to post these steps. Works for some.
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…nothing has worked. the battery goes away after 3+ hours & heats up still.
not happy with apple at all!
my cellphone ISNT a cellphone anymore, after 3+ hours without any use, the battery is dead & its now only a paperweight.
I’ve been noticing for the past couple of updates especially 6.1.2+ that my battery has been horrible. Removing exchange may be my problem because it kept bugging for a password i forgot for old contacts so lets see if this fixes the problem. I surely hope so. If not, a restore may be in order
I’ve tried everything you’ve suggested for my Iphone 4 to no avail. Just need to check on the remove SIM card. Do you remove SIM card when the phone is still on or do you switch it off first. I’m assuming remove it while phone is still on as the step by step include restart Iphone.
Thanks.
I do agree with all the ideas you’ve presented to your post. They are really convincing and can certainly work. Still, the posts are too quick for starters. Could you please extend them a little from next time? Thank you for the post.