The recent update disseminated by Apple to iOS 14.2 has left some iPhone users with a major problem. Following the update, we have seen a number of complaints posted on the Apple Developer Forum and on Reddit discussing how the update has negatively impacted the battery on their handset. And the problem goes beyond the reduction in battery life that some users are experiencing. Besides rapid battery drain, some are seeing a 50% drop in battery life after just 30 minutes of use.
For example, someone with the handle of gj79 wrote the following on the Apple Developer Forum: “My SE2020 has been getting worse battery time with each version of 14. Overnight when I was sleeping it would only lose 1-2% of battery over 8 hours. Last couple of weeks it loses 5% over 5-6 hours. Another weird thing is when I go to charge it now the phone gets warm at times. It also charges fast almost as if it was a fast charger. This is with the standard 5w charger that came with it. This started with 14.2.”
Some of the models involved are experiencing high readings of battery life before the figure drops suddenly, and restarting some of the affected iPhones will bring on a sudden surge in battery percentage. The problems appear confined to older iPhone models such as the iPhone XS, iPhone 7, iPhone 6s, and the first-generation iPhone SE. Besides the aforementioned iPhones listed, the 2018 iPad Pro running iPadOS 14.2 has also been impacted. There is no reason to believe that the recently released iOS 14.2.1 came with a fix for the bug that is consuming all of that power out of these phones. But there is hope that the extermination of this bug will take place with the launch of iOS 14.3 and iPadOS 14.3. Both have had their third public and developer betas released.
We hate to even bring this up, but according to one Reddit member, “I just recently restored through iTunes and setup as new. 4 days and I still haven’t experienced the issue yet. Still keeping an eye out.” No one wants to have go through a factory reset so hopefully the next version of iOS and iPadOS will come with the necessary code that kills the battery draining bug dead.
If you have yet to update your iPhone or iPad to iOS 14.2 or iPadOS 14.2 respectively, you might want to wait until Apple announces a fix before installing these builds on your phone or tablet.
