14 DAY TRIAL // It isn’t immediately clear whether or not Apple messed up again with iOS 7.1.1, but more and more users seem to be having battery life problems with the new firmware. While some have been having these issues since iOS 7.1 (deployed in February), others started noticing a severe drop in battery life following the newest firmware release, iOS 7.1.1.
Is it Apple’s fault or is it yours?
Normally I prefer to refrain from jumping on the “batterygate” bandwagon every time Apple releases a new firmware version, but this time around I’ve experienced the issue first-hand.
My non-jailbroken iPhone 5 GSM (16GB) test unit never had any power drain issues until iOS 7.1.1 arrived, so I started digging around for solutions. One potential fix (that worked wonders in my case) was to tweak the automatic timezone setting. Basically, all you have to do is switch it off.
In addition to this, you can do the sensible thing and kill some apps, including logging out of social networks and switching off Location Services if you’re not using this perk all the time.
But, according to one developer, there’s so much more you can do. KS Mobile offers a free app called Battery Doctor – Must-have Battery Management App, which admittedly looks like a jack of all trades but comes with some pretty useful stuff to manage your battery life.
It offers dozens of features (some that shouldn’t even be in there going by Apple’s rules and regulations), including a handy list of apps installed on your device with a battery drain meter in front of them.
According to Battery Doctor, Pocket, Star Walk, Facebook, Chrome, and Camera + are putting a strain on my phone. Tapping them will yield a small description of what the level actually means. For example, a level 5 battery drain (i.e. Pocket) is labeled as “excessive.” For level 4 apps it says “this application consumes a lot of power.”
Killing off these particular apps made it clear that these services were indeed CPU/radio hogs that caused the phone to work overtime and drain its battery. While all this is common sense these days, it helps to have a tool that reminds you what’s going on with your phone. Plus, not everyone knows that Pocket, for example, is a major power-sucking vampire.
Here are some of the most popular apps that suck a lot of power, so you know how to manage them: Pocket, Star Walk, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, YouTube, Dropbox, Yahoo Messenger, BlackBerry Messenger, Viber, Nimbuzz, and Google Search.
Maybe we should blame both Apple and the developers
Considering that these apps have been around for quite some time, it’s pretty unfair to blame it all on Apple. After all, they (mostly) worked fine until iOS 7.1/7.1.1 arrived. Then again, who is responsible for making these apps and iOS get along: Apple or the developers?
Maybe both Apple and the sellers of these apps should work more closely to ensure that the iPhone/iPad processor doesn’t work overtime. I’d be extremely happy not having to tweak another setting in iOS 8 just to save battery life.