Last week I had the chance to spend a wad of time with my newiPhone 4S , as I trust upon it for email , internet browsing , and Twitter . It was not a completely satisfactory experience . And it was n’t because it sucked down the barrage fire like its life depended on it ( which , of track , it did ) . Over the course of an hr when the phone was supposedly slug its complaint would drop 20 per centum and the thing turn tail hot .
If your iPhone is likewise office hungry and you ’re take care forward to a hefty denouement at the last of this missive , I may let down . While the phone is now behaving itself thanks to some spying , resetting , and fiddling , there stay a number of suspects . My hope is that not only can I describe how I went about troubleshooting the problem , but call upon others who have experience poor battery performance to comment here so that we may be better able to pinpoint common way out . My story snuff it like this :
I was on the road when I received my iPhone . see that I would be , I plan ahead by setting up an iCloud account stark with synchronise mail , contacts , calendar , admonisher , bookmarker , and notes before I leave for my trip . I also packed my MacBook Pro with this data point and made sure that Photo Stream was dynamic in iPhoto as well as on my iOS devices .
System Activity Monitor
When I received the earpiece I set it up so that it would utilise all the goodies — Siri , location service , notifications , iCloud , reminders , and the various sync services for my several email invoice . The next day I learn the earphone to the beach to test the camera , try it over the local 3 G web , and sit in the air pocket of my discarded shorts while I explored the area ’s subaqueous purlieu .
After a farseeing jaunt I return to shore and pulled out the sound . It was noticeably hot . It had been in the shadowiness and the remote temperature was perhaps 80 ° so this was not estrus from without but rather within . I woke the phone and notice that its battery care had dropped 10 point . I held it and watched as its battery percentage display dropped a period every couple of minutes . I ’ve never had an iPhone do that before .
I returned to my digs and the telephone remained hot . I tweeted about it a few time to see what was up and received several replies from followers who claimed their iPhone 4S was likewise take out exponent at an alarming rate . Several theories were offered — Siri , location , iCloud , Find My ally — but there was no consensus on what the issue might be . A pair of the great unwashed suggested that a restore would fix the problem so I give it a go and went to bed .
System Activity Monitor
In the dawn the phone seemed to well comport itself , but it was using a Wi - Fi connection rather than 3G. When I return to the arenaceous prospect of the crime later that Clarence Day , the telephone acted up again . Could it be something to do with 3 GiB ? Unsure .
I flew home the next day , got off the plane , and in the 30 minutes I used the phone to retard email and Twitter , the battery set down 10 points and the phone was warm . Again , a 3 G connection . More Twitter faultfinding brought more theory but no answers .
It was time to get serious . And the first two pace to doing that was to dig into the data point provided by the headphone . I tapped my way to preferences > General > About > Diagnostic & Usage > Diagnostic & Usage Data . When you tap this last entry you ’re taken to a Data page where you see a serial of entries . These are logarithm files that detail untoward issues your equipment has had . Mine was full of CrashReport ledger entry . I scan through them and — as far as I could tell from all the gibberish in these reports — there was a job synchronise my iCloud contacts .
I then downloaded Recession Apps ’ 99 - centSystem Activity Monitor . ( observe that this app has crashed a time or two itself . ) This is a utility similar to the Mac ’s Activity Monitor that detail the processes your iOS twist is using as well as indicates , in real time , how hard the CPU is being pushed . ( No , the frequently - commend and worthwhile iStat app does n’t do this . ) When I found System Activity Monitor and tapped the Processes button at the bottom of the screen I found the central processor graphical record jumping into the 60 - percent chain every few second . This activity was reflected in two entries competing for the top spot — dataaccessd and CrashReport . The iPhone appear to be in a crashing loop — where dataaccessd essay to do something , blew up , tried again , ball up up , and on and on . And this was kill the battery .
base on the information I now had , I switch over off tangency sync in iCloud . I returned to System Activity Monitor and everything settled down . The iPhone was n’t wholly inactive , nor should it have been . But the substance abuser mainframe share was now running under 3 - percent most of the time .
In the hope that I could confirm the issue ( and the mesmerism fromDaring Fireball’sJohn Gruber that a tainted tangency could be part of the problem ) , I journey to options > General > Reset > Erase All Contents and preferences . This wiped the phone .
On restart I chose to go down it up as a Modern earphone rather than commit a backing from my Mac or iCloud . I also made certain that it did n’t sync any data with iCloud until I was ready . When the sentence came , I switch on tangency syncing within the iCloud screen and fired up System Activity Monitor . There was a lot of body process for the first several minutes as the iPhone grabbed my contacts from the cloud , but then it settled down . There was no crashing loop apparent . I then proceeded to swop on calendar syncing and checked System Activity Monitor . Again , no problem . And so it went , throw on one iCloud syncing selection , condition System Activity Monitor , and travel to the next one . At the end , everything was hunky dinghy .
Another account perhaps ? I configured a Gmail account using Exchange rather than the usual Gmail pick . No job . A regular Gmail score . Nope . Yet another Gmail account used by my ISP ? Nuh uh . Maybe this long - torpid Yahoo account . No . A stock soda water account statement ? Nix .
Huh .
Which is where I largely leave it to you . What I know is this : The compounding of crash reports supply by the iPhone and System Activity Monitor helped me determine that I had an number with link sync that caused my iPhone to drain with alarming rapidness . But wiping the phone and synchronize via iCloud solved the problem . Yet it did so the 2nd time rather than the first . Why ? I have n’t a cue .
