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Apple acknowledges issue causing battery percentage indicator not to update on iPhone 6s & 6s Plus

Screen Shot 2016-01-16 at 4.38.12 PM

After a plethora of complaints, Apple this week has posted a new support document acknowledging an issue with the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus that causes the battery percentage indicator in the status bar not to update as the battery itself drains. This means that the battery percentage icon could display that you have much more battery life left than you actually do.

In the support document, Apple addresses the issue and assures iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus users that it is working on a fix. Weirdly, the company says the issue is caused by time zone changes, whether done manually or automatically while traveling (via MacRumors).

If you change the time on your iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus manually or change time zones when traveling, you might notice that the battery percentage doesn’t update. Learn what to do.

As far as fixes go, Apple says that restarting your device should temporarily cure the problem, as should going into Settings > General > Date & Time and ensuring that “Set Automatically” is enabled. Obviously, the issue here is that you may not realize the battery percentage number hasn’t changed for awhile, so it would be hard to know that you need to reboot or check your Date & Time settings.

Nevertheless, Apple says it is aware of the issue and is investigating the cause and a solution.

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Comments

  1. Josh Chace - 8 years ago

    My phone has been doing this for months now. I’ll open it up, it will be at 20-30%, and then a second later it’s shutting down and giving me the “plug in” screen. I took it to the Apple Store and they said “That’s just how the battery works after the cycles you’ve used. Meanwhile my iPhone 4 that my son uses still works fine and displays accurate battery details.

    Might have to go back to the store.

    • jacosta45 - 8 years ago

      Mine has been doing that for a couple of months now! I’m happy Apple acknowledged the issue and will bake this fix into 9.3

      • jacosta45 - 8 years ago

        Or sooner lol

    • louiethelug72 - 8 years ago

      Yeah Josh , My 5S has been doing that for a year now… I thought it might have been the new aftermarket MFI lightening cable I bought but to no avail it did the same after i used my original lightening cable. It really blows when you think you have 15-20% battery left and it shutdown on ya……

    • ollie (@ollieoioioi) - 8 years ago

      I have exactly the same issue. Battery says it flat when theres 20% left. Home button + Power button reboots it to find that it has 20-30% battery still before it then switches off again in the same loop.

      Firstly the battery does have 20-30% battery because I haven’t had enough hours of use out of it.
      Secondly if you plug it in and get it to reboot it tricks it into lasting down to 10% before it all starts the loop again so the charge is there.

      Mines currently with O2 for repair and they have rung me to tell me they can’t find a fault. I told them there is a fault and if I have to take it in again I expect a replacement phone when Ive paid £600 for a top of the range phone. There are lots of cheaper options. Its not acceptable.

      Even more ridiculous is O2 are going down the path that Ive wrecked my battery not using “official apple chargers” or an iPad charger instead of iPhone charger. Well they can think again. Ive had 4 iPhones and the other 3 didn’t haven’t this issue so its a load of rubbish.

      Apple are going right down the pan. I doubt I will get another iPhone after this one.

  2. cameroncovington - 8 years ago

    I haven’t had any of these problems. (thankfully!)

    • Robert Wilson - 8 years ago

      I wonder how many of these problems are caused by setups using a backup. On my 6s I set up as new and did not use my backup and not a single problem but on my other device that is an upgrade I’m having all kinds of glitches. When 9.3 comes out I’m going to restore my iPad as new and not use the backup to test.

      I think some junk is being carried from older iOS on upgrade or set up from backup and it is screwing with it.

      • editingsofa - 8 years ago

        It’s not in the backup, typically it’s a firmware issue. Like the issues stated above. I used to think old backups caused these types of issues, but a far smarter engineer than me told me it was not the case. Google a DFU iPhone restore and save a trip to the Genius Bar.

        Most of the time you can just DFU firmware/software problems away. Then just restore from an iTunes backup. ICloud takes too long and no one likes typing in all their passwords lol.

    • Scott Snider - 8 years ago

      I have not had any problems with my 6+S, but remember people if you want a perfect computer/iPhone freeze your self for another 100 years and maybe by then all computers will be perfect other wise there will be bugs and we just have to wait for the great people at Apple to figure it out and fix it as they always do.

      • Jason Gainey - 8 years ago

        I totally agree with you Scott…but there is an implied ideal that with Apples “tick-tock” style of introducing new handsets-improved handsets, that the “tock” (improved) model phone would likely not suffer the same fate as a “tick” (completely new design/handset). It’s for this reason alone that since this method was adopted by Apple I’ve only every upgraded my handsets on the “tock” years.

  3. Charlypollo - 8 years ago

    Mmmm funny this is released today. Just yesterday, my iphone 6 (not S, just 6) was around 27% of battery, and it suddenly shut off, indicating me to connect it. Are they sure this is only for the S models?

  4. bedrone - 8 years ago

    Hahaha bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs and more bugs.
    Apple, do you really want me to entrust my life with your electric vehicle? You’ve gotta be kidding me right?

    • editingsofa - 8 years ago

      Ya because there has never been any software/firmware problems in the cars we have today…

  5. applegetridofsimandjack - 8 years ago

    If your iPhone battery icon doesn’t drop 10% after 20 seconds of use, you know something’s wrong with the battery indicator…

  6. AeronPeryton - 8 years ago

    Hmm, not having this issue with my 6S. I regularly ride the battery down to 1% when I’m out all day long.

  7. pdoobs - 8 years ago

    I have a 6s and I’ve noticed this and what I can only describe as the opposite of this happening recently. Yesterday I charged my phone to 48% pulled it off the charger checked it about a minute later and it said 54% and then when I checked about 10 minutes later it was magically 60%. It had somehow charged an addition 12% in my pocket. Also I’ve seen it drain to about 18% and then hit a rapid drain as described in the article recently.

  8. Never had this problem. Mine is always correct and never has died other than after 1% but I don’t see a reason to change time? Automatic is the way to go anyway

  9. Kunal Mali - 8 years ago

    I feel this is a scam by Apple. Apple knows about defects in processors made by Samsung and to disguise its battery draining capability Apple is using this software bug.

  10. mytawalbeh - 8 years ago

    No issues.
    iPhone 6S Plus

  11. Jubin Sonane - 8 years ago

    i have the same problem, does not update when charging or discharging.

  12. Abedoss - 8 years ago

    Sometimes My 5s does this indicator issue but in a versa way, the last time it happened it was on charger and the indicator was showing 98% for a long time and when I unpluged it the indicator turned 100%.

  13. Steven Moore (@Stniuk) - 8 years ago

    My daughter had this issue on her 6s. After reading some posts on Apple discussions some people were adjusting their clocks in order to gain lives on candy crush, as was she. She stopped doing it and the problem disappeared.

  14. William D - 8 years ago

    Apple replaced my Iphone 6s a few days ago as It kept going off and battery appearing to misbehave. I am guessing it was because of this. So sick of it switching off. Their battery diagnostics insisted it was all working normally.

  15. Steve32 - 8 years ago

    Has anyone been experiencing iPhone 6(+) shutting down on colder days even with 30% charge left on battery?

  16. spiralynth - 8 years ago

    My 6s does not have this issue.

    However, my 3+ year old iPhone 5 (on 9.1 and which I mostly use as a dedicated remote for Sonos and other things) has been doing this for almost a year. It often goes from 18% to 1% to instant shutdown. Date/time has always been on “set to automatic” and it’s frequently restarted. Not a real a big issue for me, but odd that it suddenly started doing this out of nowhere.

  17. Pro SuperTech - 8 years ago

    This issue is happening on my iPhone 5s with iOS 9.2.1.

  18. Frankie Tommy DeVito - 8 years ago

    Not sure what the heck happened or if this is a whole other issue. I had to replace my iphone 6 Plus battery last Friday, since then the % of battery life has been erratic – especially yesterday when it showed 100% ALL DAY (which is obviously unusual) When I got home, I went to reply to a text – suddenly the phone rebooted, the home screen came up to show 16% battery life. I charged it…it did reboot multiple times.. I finally got it to a whopping 18% and nothing higher… But no more rebooting? Before the new battery replacement issue last week, I NEVER had an issue with rebooting and messed up %. on any iPhone. Only the first time I had to get a battery replaced. So I’m stumped and abit peeved right now! I have to get to Apple at some point today – just hoping I have a working phone until then, right now this phone seems to be a unstable mess.

    • Oliver Lebert - 8 years ago

      I had this issue on my 5S for the first time a few days ago. Is there still not a fix yet? This is really weird since you don’t know how much battery is actually left.

  19. Jason Gainey - 8 years ago

    First of all I’m glad I’m not the only one with the issue. Secondly I think Apple engineers/sleuths are on the right track. But not entirely. I admit that I may have an addiction to a game on my phone (no it’s not Candy Crush, Angry Birds etc.) but it’s still has me occasionally addicted but only because I learned how to exploit a loophole. This particular game has lives that replenish after a specific amount of time has passed. So when I run out, I turn off the “auto” time setting and manually advance my device’s time by two hours. I then go back to the game for it to register the “elapsed” time and credit me with 6 more lives. I then go back and turn the “auto” time setting back on. Sometimes I’ll do this a few times a day. Other days I won’t do it at all. The battery percentage failures have not followed any pattern that I could tell but I will pay closer attention if/when it happens.

  20. Josiah Ribeiro - 8 years ago

    I have the new iPad Pro and the battery status in the top right corner displays inaccurate information. Other apps say that my battery percentage is at 98% when the status bar indicates that it’s 100%. At times my battery only charges to 97% at most as indicated by the status bar. What should I do?

  21. Marco Aurelio Moutton - 8 years ago

    I have the same issue here. 6s shuts down at 20/30% and ask me to plug in to charge. I’m running ios 9.3.5 and still no fix for that. The phone is 6mo old. It can’t be the battery. idk what to do since apple don’t know what it is and how to fixit. All I know is my apple care is running out of coverage and I’ll have to pay for something in the end

  22. Donna Slater Frank - 7 years ago

    So today i noticed that charging all night only gave me 56%….weird I thought. I kept my eye on it as I plugged it in and seems that it wont charge. AT ALL. So I backed up to icloud and plugged into the computer. I decided to do a reboot while plugged into the computer and suddenly when it rebooted it charged and went to 90% just like that. Its a new phone for crying out loud! I think I may try Samsung next time. Just to be SURE.

  23. Karen Smith - 7 years ago

    Sorry I don’t have a solution for you, but I have the same problem with my iPhone 4s. It will sometimes- but not always- shut itself off if it thinks the battery power is between 6-28%, but when plugged into a charger reads anywhere between 32%-58% within 5 minutes. It has always done this in the 2.5 years I’ve owned it, but is getting much worse. I’m still running iOS 7.1.2, as the phone has stupidly little memory (6GB) so there isn’t room to update to the newer system – which by all reports ISN’T faster – unless I remove ALL my apps and photos. Which would make it kinda useless, not being able to do online banking, Facebook or either of the 2 games on it, therefore making it a Dumb Phone. I suspect it being a form of Planned Obsolescence, but since the newer iPhones all seem to have the same issue, I’m inclined to abandon my previously staunch support of Apple products and buy a competitor’s instead.

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Avatar for Chance Miller Chance Miller

Chance is an editor for the entire 9to5 network and covers the latest Apple news for 9to5Mac.

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