Here’s How to Fix Bad iPhone 6s Battery Life

iPhone 6s users continue to complain about severe battery drain and today we want to show you how to fix bad battery life should you encounter on your device.

The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus are still very capable smartphones and they’re solid alternatives to the iPhone XS, iPhone X and iPhone 8.

While many people love their iPhone 6s, some users continue to feel underwhelmed by the device’s battery life.

iOS 12 destroyed my battery life on my iPhone 6s. Anyone else had this problem? Went from my phone lasting 2 days to instantly dying in about 5 or 6 hours

— 🦄Cosmic🦄 (@TMTIceman) September 26, 2018

Fortunately there are some ways to get bad iPhone 6s battery life fixed without having to perform a factory reset or take a trip to an Apple Store.

How to Fix Bad iPhone 6s Battery Life

We want to help you fix your battery life issues and ensure that you’ll be ready if the problems suddenly return in the future.

Apple’s got more iOS 12 updates on the way and iOS updates can be the root cause of some battery life issues. That’s why we recommend memorizing some of these fixes so you’re prepared for all of Apple’s future iPhone 6s iOS updates.

The iPhone 6s’ operating system allows you to search for specific settings at the top of the Settings screen. If you can’t find something, you can search for it there.

Wait Two Days

If you just installed a new iOS update, give it a couple of days before drastically altering your settings or habits. Battery life sometimes takes a day or two to settle in immediately after a new update is installed. Keep that in mind for future iPhone 6s updates.

Use Low Power Mode

If you haven’t started using it already, you’ll want to start using the Low Power Mode that Apple debuted with iOS 9.

Low Power Mode will allow you to stretch out your last 10-20% of iPhone 6s battery life without killing your core services. Best of all, it accomplishes this with one press of a button. Toggle it on, and you’ll save yourself in critical situations.

If you’re at the 10-20% mark, you should get a prompt that asks you if you want to turn it on. You can also turn it on in your iPhone 6s’ settings if you need it before that. In order to turn it on:

• Go to Settings.
• Tap Battery.
• Toggle Low Power Mode on.

We recommend putting Low Power Mode into Control Center for easy access. Control Center is the menu you see when you swipe up from the bottom of the display.

To do that, go to Settings, tap Control Center, tap Customize Controls and tap the green plus sign next to Low Power Mode.

Stop Closing Your Apps

You might think closing your apps will help conserve battery life on your iPhone 6s, but Apple says closing apps in your multitasking screen doesn’t help.

Use Airplane Mode in Bad Service Areas

If you’re in a bad service area, your iPhone 6s/iPhone 6s Plus is going to work extra hard to find a signal. This can kill your battery.

To offset this, you can do a few things. You can flip off cellular data or you can kill all of your connections using Airplane Mode.

To toggle Cellular Data off, you’ll want to go to Settings > Cellular > and toggle it off at the top there. If that doesn’t work, try using Airplane Mode. You can toggle it off at the top of the Settings screen.

Monitor Your Apps

It’s easy to blame Apple and iOS for your battery life troubles but sometimes it’s a rogue app (or apps) causing the drain.

If you’re noticing abnormal drain, you’re going to want to look into your app usage. If you use an app a lot, it’ll obviously drain a lot of battery. If you’re confident it’s not the constant use that’s killing the iPhone’s battery, you’ll want to dig in.

We recommend getting familiar with the iPhone 6s’ battery usage tool. It’s located in Settings > Battery. It’ll show up under the Battery Usage header.

This tool shows you which apps are eating the most battery. You can check the last 24 hours and you can check to see what they’re doing over an extended period of time.

If something doesn’t seem right, you’ll want to take a few more steps. First, you can try downloading the latest bug fix update if you haven’t already. If that doesn’t work, try reinstalling the app or apps causing problems.

If that doesn’t help, you’ll want to get in contact with the developer. Or, worst case scenario, uninstall it and find an alternative.

Delete Facebook

A piece from The Guardian asserts that the Facebook app is the cause of many iPhone battery life issues. Uninstalling it apparently delivered huge gains to performance so deleting is worth a try if you’re not attached to it.

Limit Background App Refresh

If you have background refresh turned on, apps will download information in the background so that new info is shown when you fire them back up. It’s useful but downloads can eat up battery in the background. This is why we recommend limiting it to the apps you use the most or killing it completely.

To get a grip on this feature:

• Head into Settings.
• Tap General.
• Tap Background App Refresh.
• Turn it off for the apps you don’t use or the apps causing problems.

It’s also possible to turn it off completely but you may not want to do that.

Shut Off Location Services

Location Services (GPS) can absolutely wreck havoc on battery life. If you’ve ever used Google Maps or Waze for an extended period of time then you already should know that.

To get a handle on what should use Location Services and when, head into Settings > Privacy. You can turn Location Services off completely with a toggle off, but we recommend going through your apps to determine what should be using what when.

You might not want some apps using Location Services in the background and you can limit that with a simple tap.

Turn Off Push

Like Location Services and Background Refresh, the iPhone 6s’ push feature for notifications, email, calendar, and more can suck up battery life. You’ll want to manage it.

To look at your Push Notification settings, go into Settings > Notifications. There, you can shut off notifications for all of your apps or apps that you don’t use on your iPhone.

You might also want to think about settings Mail, Contacts and Calendar to Fetch instead of Push. To do that, go into Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and turn off Push.

Stop Using Dynamic Wallpaper

Animated wallpapers often look amazing, but they could cost you a few precious battery percentage points. If you want to save your battery stick to using static backgrounds.

Manage Your Retina Display

Your iPhone’s screen can eat up battery if it’s not managed correctly. The iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus come with sensors that power the auto-brightness feature.

The auto brightness feature can be useful but it sometimes fails to work properly. If you think you can easily manage the brightness of your iPhone 6s Retina Display yourself, try adjusting it manually. It could help save you some battery.

iOS makes this extremely easy. All you have to do is pull up from the bottom of the screen to enter Control Center. From there, just use the screen toggle to adjust your screen brightness. Turn it down when you don’t need the screen to be bright.

Restart the iPhone 6s

If you haven’t turned your iPhone 6s off for awhile, try restarting it. This simple fix has worked for us in the past.

Reset Network Settings

If that doesn’t work, try resetting your device’s Network Settings. This will cause the iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus to forget Wi-Fi passwords to make sure you have those handy.

To do that:

• Head into Settings.
• Tap General.
• Tap Reset Network Settings.

Reset All Settings

If you’ve tired all of these little fixes and nothing’s worked, it’s time to take some drastic measures to fix your bad iPhone 6s battery life.

The first step to take is to reset all of your settings on your iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus. To get this done:

• Go to Settings.
• Tap General.
• Tap Reset.
• Tap Reset All Settings.
• Enter your passcode when the prompt tell you to.

This could take a few minutes and it will force your device to forget your connections (and passwords) but it might fix your battery issues. It will not delete any files.

Downgrade

If that doesn’t work, you could try downgrading to the previous versions of iOS if the downgrade is available and it was working fine on your iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus.

 

The downgrade process can be a bit tricky the first time but after you do it once you should be set.

Restore from a Backup

If none of these aforementioned fixes work, you can try restoring from a backup or wiping your iPhone 6s/iPhone 6s Plus completely starting from scratch.

1. Plug in and backup to the computer or to iCloud.
2. Turn off Find My iPhone. To do that, go to Settings, tap your name at the top, tap iCloud, scroll down to Find my iPhone and toggle it Off.
3. In iTunes, click Restore.
4. Follow the prompts and the iPhone will reinstall the software from scratch.
5. When it completes click Restore from Backup to put your information back on the iPhone or choose to set up as a new iPhone.

You should only do this if nothing else works.

Take Your iPhone 6s In

If you don’t want to restore or perform a factory reset, you can also make an appointment to go see an Apple Genius at the Apple Store. (Or another store but we recommend Apple itself.)

Geniuses will be able to run some diagnostics on your phone and they could help you figure out the problem. We once took in an iPhone 5s and discovered a bloated battery was responsible for the battery drain.

If you’re under warranty, and you will be for a year from your purchase date, you might be able to get another iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus for free.

You can find a list of your local Apple Stores right here.