iOS 4.3 users report subpar battery performance

iOS 4.3 brought enhanced AirPlay, a speedier Safari, iTunes Home Sharing, and more to iOS device users, but it appears that iOS 4.3 has brought another thing, a seemingly negative one: subpar battery life. A number of readers have written in to less us know that since upgrading to iOS 4.3 their battery life has been “drastically” worse. One report to us claims random battery life drops in 15-20% increments.

Installed iOS 4.3 on my iPhone 4 and also have it on my iPad 2 and I am noticing drastic battery loss. Sometimes will even randomly drop 15-20%.

This battery life bug in iOS 4.3 could come as a natural bug in the operating system, or could be related to some of the new features present in the latest system upgrade. It is possible that the faster rendering in iOS Safari uses more processing power, furthermore battery life. Another possibility could be the new Ping push notification feature, which runs in the background.

A number of users are reporting in Apple’s official support discussion forums that their devices are, too, experiencing battery life that is subpar to their experience in earlier versions of iOS:

MartinMRK:

After having updated to iOS 4.3 my 3GS battery seems to be draining awfully fast, it can hardly hold 1 day whereas 1,5 to 2,5 days was my norm before!

Frarev:

I have the same problem with my iPhone 3GS : for instance, yesterday, iPhone, in the pocket, doing nothing : 6:30 PM : 57% battery left.
8:30PM, I want to make a call, battery left 17 % !!!!

PatHMV:

I’m having the same problem. Drastically reduced battery life after upgrading to 4.3. I’ve tried rebooting, hasn’t helped.

Waldo Nell1:

After installing iOS 4.3 on my iPhone 4, my phone has dropped 20% battery usage in 20 minutes, doing nothing. It also does not auto lock anymore, it is set to 1 minute. I tried to reset the phone and no change. The phone is warm, indicating some process is running constantly. I have made no change before the upgrade. Before the upgrade everything was working fine, after the iOS 4.3 upgrade the battery is draining REALLY fast and it does not auto lock.

Alx2000:

Same issue here , updated to iOS 4.3 last night, 100% at 8am, and down to 20% about 10 hours later, only sent 2 sms and 10 mins online nothing else ….. Drain drain drain

Djprb:

my phone used to last almost 2 days with one charge.
Now it doesn’t last 1 day without charging…
Iphone 4 32 gb IOS 4.3

Kbachelder:

Much, much faster drain of the battery over the past two days since I installed 4.3.

Some users figure this issue is the result of multiple applications running in the background, however, this report seems to challenge that:

Killed all instances of applications, still drained 4% in 15 minutes with the display off.

I have personally noticed battery life issues myself in both an iPhone 4 and an iPad 2 – more so on the iPad 2, though. What about you? Let us know in this poll and the comments.