Iphone excessive battery drain when using the internet.

My SE battery drains rapidly and gets hot when using the internet. By using the internet I mean mostly basic forums without ads and weather checks. I seldom watch videos on my phone. Never Facebook or tik tok. I have disabled or reduced everything I can think of. Location services mostly off. Background refresh is off. Screen dimmed down to where I don’t like it. Auto lock is on and shuts off the screen after a few seconds. I have shut off the phone and restarted. I also switched from Safari to Chrome. It happens whether using Wi-Fi or cellular data. It is difficult for me to say when it started but I don’t think more than a couple of months ago. Phone is less than a year old. Battery health is 86% and I do not use optimized charging (got tired of picking up a phone to leave that wasn’t ready to go). Any ideas out there as to what has changed. Losing a percent or more of battery every minute is not acceptable when I know it can do better without getting hot.

iPhone SE

Posted on Feb 17, 2025 8:06 AM

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Feb 17, 2025 8:09 AM in response to JeffJ1984

The measure of battery health deterioration/drainage is subjective and can vary depending on individual usage patterns. There is no universal standard to determine whether the battery health deterioration/drainage is normal or abnormal because it heavily relies on how the battery is used and maintained.



Protect & Prolong the Life of your iPhone's Battery:

  1. About the battery usage on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch ...
  2. Batteries - Maximising Performance - Apple (IN)
  3. iPhone Battery and Performance



Try to monitor Battery usage by iPhone Activity as shown below


What is shown under battery usage? Checking that would give you an indication of the usage behavior.

  1. Background Activity
  2. Notifications
  3. Connected to Charger
  4. Or any Other


See the pic below (iPhone 12 Pro iOS 17.3.1)


"Show Activity" feature will show you more info see the pic below




Try some of these options too.

To prolong the life of your iPhone battery, you can follow these tips and best practices:


To prolong the life of your iPhone battery, you can follow these tips and best practices:

  1. Optimize Battery Charging: Enable the "Optimized Battery Charging" feature on your iPhone. It helps reduce the wear on the battery by slowing down the battery aging process. You can find this option in Settings > Battery > Battery Health. About Optimized Battery Charging on your iPhone - Apple Support (IN)
  2. Avoid Extreme Temperatures: Extreme temperatures, both hot and cold, can negatively impact your battery life. Avoid exposing your iPhone to excessive heat or cold, such as leaving it in direct sunlight or in a freezing car.If your iPhone or iPad gets too hot or too cold – Apple Support (UK)
  3. Use Original Chargers and Cables: Always use Apple's original chargers and cables or certified third-party accessories. Low-quality chargers or cables can damage the battery and reduce its lifespan. Identify counterfeit or uncertified Lightning connector accessories - Apple Support (IN)
  4. Avoid Draining the Battery to Zero: Charge it whenever the charge becomes lower than 20%. The rest is up to you when to charge. how long to charge, how often to charge, which adapter to use starting from 5W to 140W USB-C Power Adapter etc.
  5. Optimize Display Settings: Adjust your display settings to optimize battery life. Lower the screen brightness, enable auto-brightness, and use shorter screen timeout durations. Adjust the display and text size on iPhone - Apple Support (IN)
  6. Minimize Background App Refresh: Limit the number of apps allowed to refresh in the background. Go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh and disable it for apps that don't require real-time updates. Switch apps on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support (IN)
  7. Disable Push Email: Push email notifications can drain your battery quickly. Instead, set your email accounts to fetch data manually or at longer intervals. You can change this setting in Settings > Mail > Accounts > Fetch New Data.


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Feb 17, 2025 9:41 AM in response to SravanKrA

Did most of those things as stated in my original post. Even if my battery is weaker than it should be, the phone should not be getting hot just because I access the internet for ten minutes. I know it is internet related because the battery usage told me Safari was the culprit and it became Chrome after I switched. Not many things more aggravating than picking up your phone to head to work for the day and only have it charged to 80% after being plugged in all night so optimized charging is really not my thing. Even so, that would only affect charge capacity and not the actual discharge rate. Low capacity is not the same as high discharge rate.


As far as chargers, Apple quit including them years ago. From experience I know a slow charge is better than a fast charge but I have no way of knowing what I want for a charger at the store other than it needs to fit my cord.

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Mar 5, 2025 8:07 AM in response to JeffJ1984

I did some more experimenting. I thought I had disabled everything possible but I missed the VPN. After disabling the VPN the rate of battery drain decreased and the phone no longer gets hot while surfing the internet. It still drains faster than I would like but I went from more than 1% of battery per minute down to around 1% of battery every 3 minutes. This is still more than what is used when I surf satellite imagery on Google Maps.


Separate issue but why have a VPN off/on button on the main settings page that does nothing? It comes right back on if you try to switch it off. The VPN must be switched off elsewhere. I guess it is just another marvel of modern engineering.

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Apr 3, 2025 6:09 AM in response to JeffJ1984

Whatever was causing the issue appears to have been resolved with iOS 18.4. I surfed the internet, including watching some videos, for an hour and a half yesterday and the phone neither died nor overheated. I think the battery started at around 60% and I quit around 30% without the phone getting warm. It was quite a surprise given that I had been seeing one percent drain per minute and having a hot phone after ten minutes while using any internet browser.

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Iphone excessive battery drain when using the internet.

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