iPhone 14 Pro battery draining fast after iOS 18.3.2 update

MAJOR UPDATE to the comment of mine on the 24th. As you could see I had already done a range of different troubleshooting tips and I’m happy to say the biggest thing that helped - updating all apps. This was the last thing I did before updating to the latest 18.4.1 IOS.

I deleted all old apps off the phone, and then updated the over 100 odd that I had remaining on here. I charged phone fully and already it was lasting a lot longer than normal. THEN I upgraded to the latest IOS.. because well that’s what I’ll keep getting asked 🙄 so I did. But happy to report it was actually going to the App Store and selecting to update all apps. Took ages. But after that it seemed to help. I even went to the battery usage page and showed the trend the last 10 days and one day I got 12 hours usage on 100% battery which was way better than what I was getting before. Right now it’s 8pm and my battery is at 20% not bad since I’ve been using the phone since 5am. So I feel like it’s relatively back to normal BUT I will say, my battery health is now 100%. It was 80%. If it was still the old battery it’s likely it would have been improved but not the same as before the update.

The result? The IOS update itself is the significant culprit here causing initial degradation. This was eased with some app updates which is great. But considering it was fine before and not after shows that Apple is still not considering battery life impacts on its OS updates.

I really hope this helps people who have been in my situation. I was annoyed finding an infinite circle of people having these issues and no real help. So I wanted to document everything I’ve done, in the hopes that it helps someone. My phone is a lot better though it wouldn’t have been perfect before the battery replacement if I had have left it. I’ll still be updating to new phone soon since I’ve had this phone 2.5 years.

I actually thought this community was also an official way to contact apple support as tech team would have been monitoring the boards. I guess I was wrong.

I will upgrade the software now.

So then so far I have done:

• Turned off/on the product multiple times
• Optimised Background App Refresh with only 3 apps utilising that is required
• Deleted most off the apps off the phone, regardless if they are using background services or not. Only retained most used
• Streamlined Location Services and System Services
• Replaced Phone battery from previous 80% health to now 100% health
• Updated all apps to avoid over utilisation due to redundant/outdated API calls which could pose an issue
• Monitoring daily usage via battery settings to see if anything abnormal specifically with apps; so far none
• TO DO NOW: Upgrade to latest 18.4.1

Next: Wait a week and turn off and on phone again. Will report back.

I’ll be surprised if it fixes, especially since it’s not a major version and was only reported a 1 minor version ago and Apple would not have had time to address and fix. But once again I’ll do it just to prove that always updating doesn’t mean it = fix, it just serves as a baseline “rule out any issues” check. Same with all technology.

You’ve clearly never worked In helpdesk support. The whole line of upgrade and wait is pointless when there’s an upgrade so frequently. A month or so ago I HAD upgraded to the latest. THIS was the result. Why would I upgrade again when there are reports on here of older devices being affected even more?

People who have the latest iPhone should not even be comparing. Never have I had issues with an OS on the latest version of an iPhone, and that iPhone has been good for at least a year. Maybe you should look into detail of the 14 PM because there’s a hella lot of reports of people having issues with it. Maybe you think it’s just fine. Maybe the phone isn’t used as much as average. You can’t compare apples to oranges. When I have a certain average usage each day and then it drops after update that means something.

I have 100% battery health, and no abnormal app usage. Coming from a helpdesk and software background this is due to how the OS is operating.

I’m more than happy to update the OS when the release notes say there is battery fixes. But there hasn’t been.

Checking battery usage, if 100% of the battery has been used in 6 hours, with reports of the latest being worse, why would I run that risk of updating and having it worse when I could be in a situation where I’m out and I need the battery? Which did actually happen in the recent earthquake my battery was so low I couldn’t keep in contact with my family and I had to try and work via a friend. This is the reality of these situations. I need to be able to have my phone available to contact people

@ badger That’s true. I mean I was already going to buy the new 17 as I don’t mind trading up every 3 years. But this is a few months short and everything was rosy until I updated the software. Thats why I feel that software updates are really to blame for this.

but see my second comment here in this thread I’ll post major update