iPhone 4 is running hot and battery draining faster than normal

[Shadrack]

I've noticed all day today that my iPhone 4 has been a little warm (especially right above the "iPhone" labeling on the back). It was down to 50% at lunch and a co-worker suggested that it may be the location service, so I turned that off.

At 4 pm it was at about 20% and I was getting the low battery warning. It was 100% full when I left this morning, and under normal usage I'm around 60-75% full when I go to sleep at night. I can normally go 2 days without charging so I know something is up.

I'm doing a full DFU restore now. Hope this isn't a hardware problem. The device itself is working fine from what I can tell. The heat is evident and the power usage is evident.

I'm hoping its some strange software fluke and a full restore fixes it...

[Glassed Silver]

Surely sounds like heavy battery drain, which causes the heat.

Is that iPhone jailbroken and which iOS version does it run?

In case it's jailbroken, what do you have installed?

Glassed Silver:mac

[Shadrack]

It isn't Jailbroken. iOS 5.0.1 was on it and currently be reinstalled.

The only things I can think of that may be related (or completely coincidental) are:

* I cleaned some pocket lent out of the bottom port with a pocket knife blade yesterday... the connector looks fine, visually, and isn't otherwise having problems.

* Yesterday I was around the border and my phone kept connecting to a Mexico cell tower. And it was like...stuck on that damn tower even when I was quite a ways away and should have been well within range of a state side AT&T tower. I kept my phone off hoping to avoid roaming data charges (I suspect I'll be calling AT&T on that one). It was peculiar all the same. Kept connecting to "movistar". Maybe my phone got hacked by a drug cartel.

[Glassed Silver]

It isn't Jailbroken. iOS 5.0.1 was on it and currently be reinstalled.

The only things I can think of that may be related (or completely coincidental) are:

* I cleaned some pocket lent out of the bottom port with a pocket knife blade yesterday... the connector looks fine, visually, and isn't otherwise having problems.

* Yesterday I was around the border and my phone kept connecting to a Mexico cell tower. And it was like...stuck on that damn tower even when I was quite a ways away and should have been well within range of a state side AT&T tower. I kept my phone off hoping to avoid roaming data charges (I suspect I'll be calling AT&T on that one). It was peculiar all the same. Kept connecting to "movistar". Maybe my phone got hacked by a drug cartel.

LOL, adored the last part! :p

Either way, in future, why not just switch off Roaming? :)

Well, I guess a Restore is your best bet atm, keep us updated! (Y)

Glassed Silver:mac

[Roger H. Veteran]

Usually a restart is enough to cure such issues. It's normally some program not allowing the CPU to sleep that causes the heat which therefore kills the battery. A restart kills that app/service.

[Shadrack]

I've tried multiple restarts and the problem persisted. "killed" the tasks in the task bar as well.

After re-installing the OS and restoring a backup, things seem to be working OK. We shall see.

[Shadrack]

I'm really scratching my head on this one. The device felt cool last night after I had restored the OS and a backup. It seemed OK for most of the morning. Picked it up about an hour ago and it felt warmmer than usual. It still feels warmer than usual and my battery is down to 46%. Comparitively I have a co-worker with an iPhone 4 and his phone is at 97% and feels cold compared to mine.

[Shadrack]

I did a test. In 11 minutes with the problem my batter when dropped 3% (43% to 40%). I turned on "Airplane Mode" on my phone and the device feels much cooler and after about 20 minutes the battery life hasn't dropped at all (still at 40%). Something is going on in the background that is causing this drain. Hmmm...

[Packet1009]

tried cleaning the sim card yet?

[Shadrack]

tried cleaning the sim card yet?

No, I haven't tried that. I will try that, but don't really understand what that will accomplish. The phone connects to AT&T just fine, anyway.

I did another test over lunch. I reset the cell data usage statistics and after about 5 minutes it had used 10MB total (6 down, 4 up). Something on the phone is sucking data. I turned off cell data and WiFi, and the phone cools back down and no dramatic battery life drain was observed. I just went through and disabled every notification service except for Phone and Messaging and have cell data on and WiFi off. I'm going to check in about 10 minutes to see if it is still leaking.

[Packet1009]

tried killing all the running apps in the taskbar?

[Shadrack]

tried killing all the running apps in the taskbar?

Yes. I turned off all the notification services as well except for Phone and Messages. Disabled all the syncing services (Mail, Calendar etc). I'm now deleting apps. I've deleted some apps and it is still using cell data for some reason.

[ESC@PE]

While maybe unlikely, it could be a hardware problem as well. Maybe you can exchange it for a new one at the store?

[Shadrack]

While maybe unlikely, it could be a hardware problem as well. Maybe you can exchange it for a new one at the store?

I'm starting to think that maybe it is hardware related. Unfortunately, the phone is no longer under warranty.

I've now deleted every single non-stock app off the phone. Everything is turned off except cell data. Every iCloud feature. Every sync service.

I'm still observing about 1 KB/sec of cell data usage but the device feels cooler now. I'm going to give it about 30 mins and see what the data usage looks like.

[threetonesun]

Settings > Location Services > System Services

Check that Diagnostics & Usage, Location-Based iAds, and Setting Time Zone are off. I've heard of people having issues with those services checking in way more often than they need to.

[remixedcat]

turn gps off.

[Aletheia]

My friend who has iPhone 4, also had a simlar problem when he updated his iOS to 5.0. He finally figured out that the problem was in MS Exchange. After the upgrade, the Exchange would cause rapid battery drainage. But after resetting MS Exchange (I don't know what he did), the battery consumption went back to normal.

[Shadrack]

My friend who has iPhone 4, also had a simlar problem when he updated his iOS to 5.0. He finally figured out that the problem was in MS Exchange. After the upgrade, the Exchange would cause rapid battery drainage. But after resetting MS Exchange (I don't know what he did), the battery consumption went back to normal.

Thanks for that info! My work's email is an exchange server and I've noticed some weird behavior in the past few days where it once or twice a day a message will pop-up about unable to verify the authenticy of my works server. Our secure connection isn't verisigned or whatever, so we just click through that stuff. Usually I just have to do it once, but it has bugged me at least once a day.

As I went through and deleted everything on my phone I think I found the culpret of the problem (but am not 100% sure). I recently downloaded PC Gamer magazine on my iPad and subscribed to that. The app was loaded onto my phone during a sync with my computer a few nights ago. I found that in the "Store" settings, PC Gamer was set to auto download new content and to use Cell Network. I think this may have been the problem, but I don't understand why it wouldn't just download the latest issue over WiFi and be done with it (what is with the trickle download over WiFi and Cell?).

Anyway, nuked everything not pre-loaded on the OS and I've re-enabled all my sync services. After about an hour the battery life seems fine (hasn't dropped 1%) and the device feels cool. I'm going to slowly add things back on as I need them. I'm going to have to leave my Cell Data turned off until the end of my month period because I'm only on the 200MB plan and this problem has sucked up about 170MB over the past 2 days :( :(.

I'm probably still not out of the woods. I hate having the battery % shown at the top because I find myself just staring at it and thinking about it, but I'll probably leave it there for the next few days... I hope it was just the PC Gamer magazine trying to download the latest edition or something. It would give me some peace of mind that it was a setting or something rather than just a bug somewhere.

[Shadrack]

So today everything has worked just fine. No heat noticed, and it is almost the end of the work day and my phone is at 86% which is back to normal. So at least I'm certain that there isn't any underlying hardware issues.

I'm uncertaint what exactly was the problem, but I'm incline to believe that it had to do with Exchange as Aletheia suggested. Reason being, I had a significant amount of upload data as well as download data shown in the usage under cell data. I thought that maybe it was the PC Gamer magazine trying to download the latest issue, but then it would be all downstream activity and no upstream activity. My upstream and downstream data was about the same, which in my mind is more consistent with a problem talking with something like Exchange.

[Shadrack]

&*^#$(&)*UJG*$@

This is really starting to get irritating. So I've had cell phone data turned off because the problem had sucked up most of my monthly data and now I have about 15MB to work with over the next 9 days or else I'll be charged another $15. I momentarily turned on the Cell Data at lunch to check a website, and I started to notice the same thing happening. My phone began to heat up and the data usage was going wild on the cell data side. Blah. Looks like the problem is not solved yet.

While ONLY connected to WiFi and with the Cell Data turned OFF there doesn't seem to be any problems. Connected to WiFi and with Cell Data turned ON, my phone starts to heat up and the cell data is going crazy. Just sitting here for 3 minutes, my phone uploaded 500KB and downloaded about 700KB through the Cell network even though WiFi is connected and enabled! :cry:

[remixedcat]

I think you did get hacked by a drug cartel.... LOL.

[Astra.Xtreme]

You should just take it into the Apple store and see what they think. Even though it's out of warranty, it's not uncommon that they will give you a replacement at no cost. It's worth a shot instead of being burdened by it. :)

[Shadrack]

I think it is probably worth taking to Apple.

I deleted all of my email accounts and my iCloud account off of my phone. Went to check usage and it seemed to have stopped. I re-enabled all my email accounts and my iCloud account, went to usage (re-set the statistics) and it used about 20KB down and 8KB up and then stopped... I checked it in 5 minutes and it hadn't sent or received any data through the cell network.

I dunno if this actually fixed things or my deleting and re-enabling the accounts was just coincidental to another intermittent problem.

[Glassed Silver]

I think it is probably worth taking to Apple.

I deleted all of my email accounts and my iCloud account off of my phone. Went to check usage and it seemed to have stopped. I re-enabled all my email accounts and my iCloud account, went to usage (re-set the statistics) and it used about 20KB down and 8KB up and then stopped... I checked it in 5 minutes and it hadn't sent or received any data through the cell network.

I dunno if this actually fixed things or my deleting and re-enabling the accounts was just coincidental to another intermittent problem.

Ask the Apple Store to give you something to hand your mobile carrier so you might get some of the data back and not have a month of no mobile data! :)

Glassed Silver:mac

[Shadrack]

It will have to wait until I have an opportunity to travel to the city near by (about an hour) to get to an Apple store. If the symptoms come back again I'll take it to the AT&T store. If anything I can document that i took it there if I have any charges on my bill I need to dispute. I think I have enough data to get me through the rest of the month though.... it will suck :(.

Worst case scenario I can use my old iPhone 3gs until my contract runs out in June.