Apple promises fix for iPhone 6s, 6s Plus not displaying accurate battery data

Posted:
in iPhone
In a new support document, Apple has acknowledged a problem in which an iPhone 6s or 6s Plus may not show the right battery percentage as power drains.




Apple is "investigating the cause and a solution," according to the document. The bug is specifically said to manifest when changing time manually, or else shifting timezones while traveling.

As a temporary workaround, the company suggests first rebooting an iPhone, and then making sure date and time are set automatically by going into the General menu in iOS 9's Settings app. If the problem manifests again without changing time or timezones, people are asked to contact Apple's support staff.

iPhone owners have complained about the issue since last September, at which point the company was also promising fixes to individuals. It's not clear why the company has had trouble with a solution, or why it took several months to make a public diagnosis.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 26
    lwiolwio Posts: 110member
    Daughter had this problem on her 6s. After reading some posts on Apple discussions some people found that they were changing the time forward to gain lives on candy crush and after stopping this it went back to normal. She found this also. 
  • Reply 2 of 26
    I wonder why that only affects the 6s/6s+ ?
    I think it means those phones have a different bit of source code for displaying battery power than other models.
  • Reply 3 of 26
    So, has a lawyer filed a class-action lawsuit over this, yet?  If not, I'm shocked!
    lkruppmacky the mackycornchip
  • Reply 4 of 26
    foggyhillfoggyhill Posts: 4,767member
    So, has a lawyer filed a class-action lawsuit over this, yet?  If not, I'm shocked!
    Class action lawsuit because your manually changing the clock continuously to save a few bucks on a game... yeah... surprising.
  • Reply 5 of 26
    I really would like to know the link between TimeZone and Battery Percentage display. 
    netmage
  • Reply 6 of 26
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    foggyhill said:
    So, has a lawyer filed a class-action lawsuit over this, yet?  If not, I'm shocked!
    Class action lawsuit because your manually changing the clock continuously to save a few bucks on a game... yeah... surprising.
    Someone tried to sue Apple because the company didn't do enough to stop him from developing an online porn habit; so yes, I'm surprised that no one had filed a class action. 
  • Reply 7 of 26
    I really would like to know the link between TimeZone and Battery Percentage display. 
    Time travels faster in some places. Los Vegas for example. In several gulf coast states it moves much slower... The Battery Percentage display becomes confused and goes wonky.
    nolamacguyjes42suddenly newtonpscooter63
  • Reply 8 of 26
    bluefire1bluefire1 Posts: 1,302member
    That's good news. Now if Apple can just come up with a solution for why the iPhone 6s is having bluetooth issues with Audi car speakers (intermittent cracking sounds), I'd be thrilled. 
  • Reply 9 of 26
    I have this issue with my iPhone 6, and I ve never changed time or time zone
  • Reply 10 of 26
    Two non-issues that I have noticed on my iPad since updating to iOS 9 are:
    1. The clock gains about a minute a month no matter how I have the "Set Automatically" toggled in Settings.
    2. When charged to 100% the indicator takes far longer to reach 60% than for it to go from 60% to 10%. Sometimes it will stay at 100% for about an hour with the screen on playing a video or web browsing. Once the indicator hits around 60% it starts to drop more rapidly.

    Both are quite minor oddities, but they are something I noticed. I've never installed or played Candy Crush or any King game on it.

    I'm not complaining but I wonder if anyone else here has experienced anything similar.
  • Reply 11 of 26
    I really would like to know the link between TimeZone and Battery Percentage display. 
    Time travels faster in some places. Los Vegas for example. In several gulf coast states it moves much slower... The Battery Percentage display becomes confused and goes wonky.
    Wha? And you know this by using some time displacement device that we don't know anything about? :-P
  • Reply 12 of 26
    boredumbboredumb Posts: 1,418member
    Time travels faster in some places. Los Vegas for example. In several gulf coast states it moves much slower... The Battery Percentage display becomes confused and goes wonky.
    It's just that "time" is a slightly longer word in Spanish, which skews the differential elapsism...
  • Reply 13 of 26
    Time travels faster in some places. Los Vegas for example. In several gulf coast states it moves much slower... The Battery Percentage display becomes confused and goes wonky.
    Wha? And you know this by using some time displacement device that we don't know anything about? :-P
    I've seen local spacial time distortions, before.  Come up a traffic jam and suddenly it clears for no appearant reason.  Seems that a bubble of compressed time formed out of nowhere. :-)
  • Reply 14 of 26
    mike1mike1 Posts: 3,286member
    techlover said:
    Two non-issues that I have noticed on my iPad since updating to iOS 9 are:
    1. The clock gains about a minute a month no matter how I have the "Set Automatically" toggled in Settings.
    2. When charged to 100% the indicator takes far longer to reach 60% than for it to go from 60% to 10%. Sometimes it will stay at 100% for about an hour with the screen on playing a video or web browsing. Once the indicator hits around 60% it starts to drop more rapidly.

    Both are quite minor oddities, but they are something I noticed. I've never installed or played Candy Crush or any King game on it.

    I'm not complaining but I wonder if anyone else here has experienced anything similar.
    #2 is related to the decline of the battery over its life. You can minimize this by not charging your device until it drops to 15 - 20% and always charging it to 100%. Do not do shot bursts of charging.
  • Reply 15 of 26
    cnocbuicnocbui Posts: 3,613member
    mike1 said:
    techlover said:
    Two non-issues that I have noticed on my iPad since updating to iOS 9 are:
    1. The clock gains about a minute a month no matter how I have the "Set Automatically" toggled in Settings.
    2. When charged to 100% the indicator takes far longer to reach 60% than for it to go from 60% to 10%. Sometimes it will stay at 100% for about an hour with the screen on playing a video or web browsing. Once the indicator hits around 60% it starts to drop more rapidly.

    Both are quite minor oddities, but they are something I noticed. I've never installed or played Candy Crush or any King game on it.

    I'm not complaining but I wonder if anyone else here has experienced anything similar.
    #2 is related to the decline of the battery over its life. You can minimize this by not charging your device until it drops to 15 - 20% and always charging it to 100%. Do not do shot bursts of charging.
    Not charging it to 100% would probably be best for battery life, but it's pretty impractical.
  • Reply 16 of 26
    I wonder why that only affects the 6s/6s+ ?
    I think it means those phones have a different bit of source code for displaying battery power than other models.

    Power management is typically handled by a dedicated microcontroller/power management chip. The chip(s) for this in the 6S are different than those in the 6. Based on the part numbers from iFixit teardowns the 6S uses newer versions.
  • Reply 17 of 26
    mike1 said:
    #2 is related to the decline of the battery over its life. You can minimize this by not charging your device until it drops to 15 - 20% and always charging it to 100%. Do not do shot bursts of charging.
    This is actually not true. Lithium ion batteries do better when they aren't discharged and charged fully. A complete cycle is recommended once a month or so to recalibrate the battery percentage and time remaining indicators which could be part of the original posters issue. 

    http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
  • Reply 18 of 26
    I literally was just at the Apple Store for this exact issue last night. They had no idea what I was talking about with the percentage. My iPhone 6 shuts off around 20% power. I kid you not walked by a random person discussing the exact same issue with his wife outside the doors of the store at the mall. He looked like he was from east Europe. I travel frequently from Hawaii to California.

    I'm kinda shocked this article was just posted, and it's an odd coincidence. Perhaps this issue is common among the iPhone 6 also?
  • Reply 19 of 26
    roxsocks said:
    I literally was just at the Apple Store for this exact issue last night. They had no idea what I was talking about with the percentage. My iPhone 6 shuts off around 20% power. I kid you not walked by a random person discussing the exact same issue with his wife outside the doors of the store at the mall. He looked like he was from east Europe. I travel frequently from Hawaii to California.

    I'm kinda shocked this article was just posted, and it's an odd coincidence. Perhaps this issue is common among the iPhone 6 also?
    Is yours a near launch model or a launch model? I suspect there's going to be a replacement program announced soon like with the iPhone 5 batteries. I think Apple got a defective batch of batteries. 
  • Reply 20 of 26
    foggyhillfoggyhill Posts: 4,767member
    mike1 said:
    #2 is related to the decline of the battery over its life. You can minimize this by not charging your device until it drops to 15 - 20% and always charging it to 100%. Do not do shot bursts of charging.
    This is actually not true. Lithium ion batteries do better when they aren't discharged and charged fully. A complete cycle is recommended once a month or so to recalibrate the battery percentage and time remaining indicators which could be part of the original posters issue. 

    http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
    Charging fully is not really a problem if you're not using while it's plugged in at 100% (heat while at 100%, very bad) or don't leave it there for weeks.
    Same with going near zero, if you look at the battery university web site, it is in fact worse to let it discharge low than go high.

    The Ideal is charge when it reaches 30-40% let it charge to 100% (never use for any CPU intensive activity it when it's plugged in at 100%, unplug it is better).

    Slow charge better for battery than quick charge (because again heat is very bad for battery); though quick charge is not as bad when battery is between 25-75% as when it's close to 100%.

    edited January 2016
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