How to Fix Bad iPhone 11 Battery Life

How to Fix Bad iPhone 11 Battery Life is a post by Adam Mills from Gotta Be Mobile.

Some iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max users have noticed severe battery drain. Battery life issues can be tricky to fix, but there are some things to try before downgrading your phone’s software or getting in touch with Apple customer support.

As we push deeper into the year we’re still getting a ton of feedback from iPhone 11 users. A lot of the feedback has been great and many people are enjoying the performance they’re getting out of the company’s former flagship models. That said, we’re also hearing about issues iPhone 11 users are facing.

We’ve seen complaints about a variety of issues ranging from scratched screens to Wi-Fi issues to problems with first-party apps. We’ve also seen some complaints about abnormal battery loss.

Battery life issues are extremely common, particularly after Apple releases new iOS software, so these complaints don’t come as much of a surprise.

Some of these issues might be hardware related, but most are probably related to the iOS software that powers these phones.

If you’re seeing horrible battery drain your first instinct might be to get in contact with Apple customer service. That’s an option, but you should try fixing the issue on your own before contacting Apple.

In this guide we’ll take you through some fixes that might help you fix bad iPhone 11 battery life. These are fixes that have worked for us over the years and they might help you solve your battery issues in minutes.

Restart Your Phone

If you start noticing weird battery drain try restarting your iPhone. Power it down, wait for a minute, and then power it back on. This typically works wonders, especially if your device hasn’t been powered down in awhile.

Update Your Phone

If you’re running old iOS software, try updating your phone to the latest version of iOS 15.

Apple typically doesn’t call out battery life fixes in its software update change logs, but installing new software could help stabilize your iPhone 11’s performance.

Before you install a new version of iOS 15 on your phone, make sure you read reviews and dig into feedback about its overall performance.

Check Your Apps

Often times it’s a rogue app causing the battery drain. Apps, particularly third-party applications, will sometimes act up after Apple releases new iOS firmware.

Fortunately checking on an app’s performance is extremely easy on the iPhone 11 and you should be able to single out the culprit in a matter of minutes. Here’s what you need to do:

First, go to the Settings app.
Tap on Battery.
Check Battery Usage.

In this menu you can see the apps eating up your iPhone 11’s battery life and when they’re doing so. If you use an app a lot, it will obviously put a strain on your device’s battery. However, if it’s draining a ton of battery or an app you rarely use is sucking up a lot of power, you’ll want to investigate further.

If you notice an issue, try updating the application to the latest version. App developers are rolling out iPhone 11/iOS 14 support updates and these updates could work wonders.

If updating doesn’t work, try deleting (permanently or temporarily) the app and see if things return to normal. If the issue persists, get in contact with the developer.

Reset All Settings

If your apps aren’t the root of the issue, try resetting all of your settings. This will restore your settings to their factory defaults (so make sure you have your Wi-Fi passwords handy), but it could iron out your battery life issues. It has worked for us in the past.

Here’s how to reset your iPhone’s settings:

Go to Settings.
Tap General.
Tap Reset.
Tap Reset All Settings.
Enter your passcode if you have one enabled.

Use Screen Time

Your iPhone 11 comes with an extremely useful Screen Time feature that could help you conserve battery life while eliminating bad habits.

Screen Time provides you with a set of controls that can help keep your addictive behavior in check. If you aren’t on your phone using your apps, you won’t be chewing through its battery life.

The feature lets you set limits on how long you can use a particular app on a given day. If you approach the threshold, it’ll warn you.

You can also set alerts for kids and link them to a ScreenTime Allowance. This allows you to set limits on games, but keep important apps available to use.

Use Low Power Mode

Your iPhone 11 also has a Low Power Mode feature that will help you conserve battery life by temporarily shutting off background activity (Hey Siri, automatic downloads, and mail fetch).

You can flip Low Power Mode on and off whenever you want. Your iPhone will also prompt you to turn it on whenever it reaches 20% battery.

We recommend adding Low Power Mode to Control Center (Control Center is the menu that pops up when you swipe up from the top right of the screen) for easy access. Here’s how you do that:

Head into the Settings app.
Tap Control Center.
Tap Customize Controls.
Tap the green plus sign next to Low Power Mode.

The next time you open up Control Center on your device you’ll see a battery icon and you can tap it to enable or disable Low Power Mode.

If you’d rather turn Low Power Mode on via your Settings you can do that too. Here’s how to do it:

Go to the Settings app.
Tap on Battery.
Tap on Low Power Mode.
Toggle it On.

Turn On Optimized Battery Charging

The iPhone 11’s software includes a feature called “Optimized Battery Charging” which will help reduce battery aging.

This feature learns from your daily charging routine and waits to finish charging your iPhone 11/iPhone 11 Pro/iPhone 11 Pro Max to 100% until you need to use it. This will prevent your battery from sitting at maximum capacity and could extend the overall life of your device’s battery.

To turn it on:

Head into your Settings.
Tap General.
Tap Battery.
Tap Battery Health and toggle Optimized Battery Charging on.

Disable Widgets

If you don’t use widgets on your iPhone 11, try disabling them. Disabling them could help your phone conserve power. Here’s how to disable widgets on an iPhone 11:

Swipe to the right while you’re on your home screen.
Scroll all the way to bottom of the next screen and tap Edit.

On this screen you’ll see a list of your apps and services. These are your widgets. To deactivate a widget you need to hit the minus sign in the top left corner while the widgets are wiggling. This happens after you tap Edit. You can also long press on a widget and delete it that way.

We recommend disabling the widgets you never use. If you still notice weird battery drain after turning those off, return to this screen and go through them one-by-one or disable them all.

Turn Off Raise to Wake

The iPhone 11’s Raise to Wake feature can be handy, but turning it off could help you conserve battery.

If you don’t need your device’s screen to automatically turn on whenever you pickup it up:

Go into the Settings app.
Tap Display & Brightness.
Turn the Raise to Wake function off.

Disable Vibrations

If your device vibrates every time you get a message or phone call, and you don’t want or need it to, try turning vibrations off. When they’re off, your device isn’t working and that means it’s conserving power.

To turn off your iPhone’s vibrations:

Go to your Settings.
Tap Sounds.
Toggle Vibrate on Ring and Vibrate on Silent off.

You also need to go into each individual Sound and Vibration and make sure Vibration (which is located at the top of the screen) is set to “None”.

Stop Background Refresh

The iPhone 11’s Background App Refresh feature refreshes apps in the background in order to show you the latest data when you open them. It can be useful, but it can also suck up battery life. If you don’t need it working in the background, try turning it off.

To disable Background App Refresh you’ll need to:

Go into Settings.
Tap General.
Tap Background App Refresh.
Turn it off for any applications you don’t use.

You can also turn it completely off if you don’t want to go through your apps one at a time.

Turn Off Fitness Tracking

Your phone has a co-processor that tracks your steps and other movements. If you use your phone for fitness-related activities, you should keep this feature on. If you don’t, try turning it off because it could help you conserve battery.

To do this

Head into your Settings app.
Tap on Privacy.
Select Motion & Fitness and toggle the Fitness Tracking function off.

You also might want to toggle off apps listed below Fitness Tracking in the menu.

Turn Off Assistive Touch

If you’re currently using Assistive Touch on your device, it might be one of the reasons your battery is draining quickly.

If you don’t want or need Assistive Touch active on your phone, try turning it off:

Go into Settings.
Tap General.
Tap Accessibility.
Tap AssistiveTouch.
Toggle it to Off.

Downgrade Your iPhone 11

If you can’t fix the issue yourself, can’t wait for the next iOS update, and want to avoid getting in touch with Apple customer service, you can try downgrading back to a previous version of iOS.

If you were getting good battery life on an older version of iOS, downgrading might help. If you don’t know how to downgrade an iPhone, take a look at our walkthrough.

Restore as New

You also might try restoring your device from a backup from your computer or via iCloud.

If you’re feeling really ambitious, you can try restoring the device as new. You can do this via Finder, iTunes or iCloud.

Buy a Battery Case or Battery Bank

You also might want to think about investing in a battery case or battery bank.

If you don’t know where to look, check out our list of the best iPhone 11 cases. It’s a good starting point for those who don’t follow the accessory market.

If you don’t want to use a bulky battery case with your iPhone, you might want to buy a battery bank. They can come in handy in emergencies where your phone is rapidly losing battery life.

If you’re unfamiliar, battery banks are small, portable power sources that can charge your iPhone multiple times. For instance, the RAVPower battery pack can provide six full iPhone charges before you need to charge it.

There are a lot of options available to you, but the RAVPower, Mophie’s powerstation and the Anker PowerCore Slim are a few of our favorite options.

4 Reasons Not to Install iOS 15.3 & 11 Reasons You Should

Install iOS 15.3 for Better Security

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If security is important to you, you'll want to think about installing Apple's iOS 15.3 update right away.

Apple says iOS 15.3 has 10 new security patches on board. If you're interested in the details, you can read more about the patches right here.

If you missed iOS 15.2.1, you'll get its security patch with your upgrade. You can learn more about the change over on Apple's website.

If you missed Apple's iOS 15.2 update, you'll get its 30+ security patches with your upgrade. You can read all about them over on the company's security site.

iOS 15.2 also included some important upgrades to privacy. The software brought the company's App Privacy Report to Settings. This lets you see how often your apps have accessed your location, photos, camera, microphone, contacts and more during the last seven days. You can also see their network activity.

In addition, iOS 15.2 brought Apple's communication safety features for kids. You'll find these features in the Messages app, in Siri, in Spotlight, and in Search.

If you missed iOS 15.1, iOS 15.3 will bring its security patches to your iPhone. You can read more about them on Apple's website.

If you missed iOS 15.0.2 you'll also get its security patch with your upgrade. You can learn more about it right here.

iOS 15.0 also brought numerous security patches to your iPhone. If you'll be moving up from iOS 14 and you're interested in the exact nature of these improvements, you can read about them over on Apple's security website.

Apple's updated its website with new information about iOS 15's batch of security patches. The company now says the software patched up an issue that could have exposed a user's private Apple ID information and in-app search history. It also says iOS 15 patched up an issue that allowed apps to override Privacy preferences.

If you skipped iOS 14.8 or any older versions of iOS, you'll get the security patches from those updates with your iOS 15.3 update as well.

In addition to those patches, iOS 15 comes with some security and privacy upgrades including improvements to Siri. Requests made to Siri are now processed on the device itself using Neural Engine. This makes it more secure.

If you're an Apple Card user, you'll now get a security code that changes regularly to use when you make online transactions.

Apple's also included a built-in authenticator that's similar to Google Authenticator. This will let you generate verification codes for enhanced sign-in security under your Passwords.

There's also a Mail feature that hides your IP address. The company will add a new App Privacy report feature in the next version of iOS 15 that will tell you when an app has accessed sensitive information.