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How to Fix Bad iPhone 7 Battery Life

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iPhone 7 battery life problems continue to popup and today we want to show you how to fix them.

The iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are excellent devices, but they’re far from perfect. We continue to hear about a variety of problems plaguing the two flagships as we push into 2020.

The current list of problems includes broken Wi-Fi, issues with various first and third-party apps, busted Bluetooth, and abnormal battery drain.

iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus battery life will vary from person to person but if you’re sure your device is draining faster than normal, you’ll want to take action.

While your first instinct might be to head down to a local Apple Store for diagnostic tests, you might be able to fix your bad iPhone 7 battery life from home.

There are a number of potential fixes out there and today we want to run down some tips and fixes that’ve worked well for us, and others in the past.

Restart Your iPhone 7

A simple restart could improve your phone’s battery life.

If you haven’t turned your iPhone 7 off for awhile, try restarting it. This fix has worked for us and others in the past and it’ll only take a minute or so.

Wait A Few Days

If you just opened your iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus or if you recently installed a new iOS update and start to notice weird battery drain, don’t be alarmed. This is normal and it could take a couple of days for your device to settle in.

If your iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus is still exhibiting abnormal battery drain after two days it’s time to dig a little bit further.

Use Low Power Mode

Your iPhone 7 comes equipped with a a feature called Low Power Mode and it will allow you to stretch out the last 10-20% of your iPhone 7’s battery life without killing off core services. If you’re experiencing abnormal drain or if you simply want to save some battery life, start using this feature.

If your iPhone dips into the 10-20% battery mark, you should get a prompt that asks you if you want to turn it on.

You can also manually turn it on in your iPhone 7’s settings if you think you need it before that. Go to Settings, tap Battery, and toggle Low Power Mode on.

If you’re running iOS 12, you can add Low Power Mode to Control Center. Head to Settings, tap Control Center, tap Customize Controls, and tap the green plus sign next to Low Power Mode.

Use Airplane Mode When You Have Bad Service

When you’re in a bad service area your iPhone 7 will extremely hard to pull down a signal. This can destroy your device’s battery. To offset this, you can do a few things.

If you’re fine with killing off all your services, you’ll want to toggle on Airplane Mode. Airplane Mode kills off all of your connections and it will help you conserve battery when you start noticing a huge drop.

iPhone 7 Jet Black - 9

To toggle Airplane Mode on, you can head right into your Settings. It’s right at the top. You can also access it from the Control Center. To access the Control Center, swipe up from the bottom of your iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus.

Flip off Airplane Mode when you leave the bad service area.

Shut Off Location Services

Location services like GPS can wreck havoc on your iPhone 7’s battery life. If you’ve ever used Google Maps or Waze you know what we’re talking about.

To help conserve your device’s battery life, you’ll want to get a handle on what services are active on your iPhone 7.

To do this, 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 apps should be using your services and when.

If there’s an app you barely use working in the background you’ll want to limit its capabilities. You can do that with a simple toggle.

Check Your Apps

You’ll also want to get a handle on your applications. If you use an app a lot, it’ll suck up your battery life. But if you’re confident it’s using up more battery than it should, you’ll want to dig in.

First, you’ll want to head into your Settings and locate the Battery Usage tool. It’s located in Settings > Battery. It’ll show up under the Battery Usage header. This tool will show you the apps eating up your iPhone 7’s battery.

iPhone 7 Jet Black - 3

If something seems off about an app, you’ll want to act.

The first thing to do is look for a bug fix update. Apple’s developers have been rolling out a steady stream of iOS 12 support updates and these updates should help squash bugs. They’ll also deliver new features to your iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus.

If a bug fix update doesn’t help, you can try reinstalling the application. You can also try uninstalling the app to see if that nets you positive results.

The Facebook app is known to be a problem so if you’re a heavy Facebook user you’ll want to weigh your options.

Turn Off Push When You Can

The iPhone 7’s push feature for notifications, email, and calendar can suck up battery life. If you don’t need push, you might consider turning it off to see if that helps your cause.

You’ll find your Push Notification settings in Settings > Notifications. Once you’re there you can turn off push for the applications you don’t use and even some that you do use if you decide you don’t need the feature.

Consider switching Mail, Contacts and Calendar to Fetch instead of Push. To do that, go into Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and turn off Push.

Manage the iPhone 7 Display

Your iPhone 7’s display can and will eat up battery life if you don’t manage it properly.

The iPhone’s auto brightness feature can be useful but there are times where it fails to work properly. And when that happens you will lose precious battery life. So if you start to notice abnormal drain, you might want to get a handle on your screen.

iPhone 7 Jet Black - 6

iOS 12 makes it easy. Simply pull up from the bottom of the screen to enter Control Center.

From there, just use the screen toggle to adjust your screen brightness. If you don’t need the screen to be bright, keep it low. You’ll conserve battery that way.

If you’d rather adjust the screen brightness in your settings head to Settings and Display & Brightness to adjust.

Reset All Settings

If none of the above works, it’s time to take some bigger steps to help solve your iPhone 7 battery life problems.

The first step we recommend is a reset on all of your iPhone 7’s settings. To do this, go to Settings, tap General, tap Reset, tap Reset All Settings, and then enter your passcode when prompted.

This process could take a few minutes and it will force your device to forget your connections (and passwords) but it might resolve your battery life issues. It won’t delete any files.

Update

If you’re running an older version of iOS on your iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus, try upgrading to the latest version of iOS 12. We’re having an excellent experience on Apple’s latest version and there’s a chance it’ll help your device’s performance.

Downgrade

If that doesn’t work, you could try downgrading your iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus to the previous versions of iOS if a downgrade is available.

For more on the downgrade process, take a look at our walkthrough.

Restore from a Backup

If none of that works, you can try restoring from a backup or wiping your iPhone 7/iPhone 7 Plus completely. This should only be used as a last resort because it’s extremely time consuming.

Here’s how to do this:

  1. Plug in and backup to the computer or to iCloud.
  2. Turn off Find My iPhone in Settings -> iCloud -> Find My iPhone -> Off.
  3. In iTunes, click Restore.
  4. Follow the prompts and the iPhone will reinstall iOS 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.

Again, you should only do this if nothing else works.

Take Your iPhone 7 Into an Apple Store

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. Geniuses will be able to run some diagnostics on your phone and they could help you figure out the problem.

If you’re under warranty, you might be able to get another iPhone 7 or iPhone 7 Plus for free.

4 Reasons Not to Install iOS 14.8.1 & 11 Reasons You Should

Install iOS 14.8.1 for Better Security

Install iOS 14.8.1 for Better Security

If security is important to you, think about installing iOS 14.8.1 right away.

The iOS 14.8.1 update brings 12 new security patches to the iPhone. You can read about all of them over on Apple's site

If you want to better protect your iPhone and its data, you'll want to install the iOS 14.8.1 update in the near future. 

If you missed iOS 14.8, you'll get its security patches with your upgrade. You can learn more about them right here

If you missed iOS 14.7.1, you'll get its patch with your upgrade. If you want to learn more about iOS 14.7.1's security update, check out its support page.

If you missed iOS 14.7, you'll get its 31 security patches with your upgrade. You can learn more about those on Apple's website

If you skipped iOS 14.6, you'll get the update's 38 security patches with your iOS 14.8.1 update. If you're curious about the particulars, you can read about them right here.

If you skipped iOS 14.5.1, you get the update's two security patches on board. You can read about them over on Apple's website. Both are related to WebKit. 

If you missed iOS 14.5 you'll get its patches with your upgrade. You can read more about those changes over on Apple's website.

iOS 14.5 also brought Apple's new App Tracking Transparency which lets you control which apps are allowed to track your activity across other companies' apps and websites for ads or sharing with data brokers.

If you skipped iOS 14.4.2, you get its security patch with iOS 14.8.1. You can learn more about that patch over on Apple's website as well. 

If you missed iOS 14.4.1, you get its patch with your upgrade to iOS 14.8.1. You can read about that patch right here.

If you skipped iOS 14.4, you get the update's patches with your upgrade. You can learn more about iOS 14.4's security patches right here

If you skipped iOS 14.3 you'll get its nine security updates with your upgrade. You can read more about them on its security site

iOS 14.3 also included a new privacy information section on App Store pages that includes a developer-reported summary of the app’s privacy practices.

If you skipped iOS 14.2, your iOS 14.8.1 update includes 24 additional security patches. You can learn more about the patches on Apple's security website

If you're still running iOS 13, iOS 14.8.1 includes iOS 14.0's security updates. 

iOS 14.0 brought 11 new security patches to the iPhone. If you're interested in the exact nature of these improvements, you can read about them over on Apple's website.

In addition to those patches, iOS 14 comes with some security and privacy upgrades including improvements to Home/HomeKit and Safari. 

For instance in Safari, you can now tap the Privacy Report button to better understand how websites handle your privacy.

With iOS 14 on board you can now get information on the App Store that will help you understand the privacy practices of apps before you download them. 

There is also a new recording indicator that will appear at the top of your screen whenever an app is using your microphone or camera. You can see if an app has used them recently in Control Center.

Researchers also discovered that Apple brought a new "BlastDoor" sandbox security system to iOS 14. The system is meant to prevent attacks from occurring via the Messages app. 

You can read more about "BlastDoor" right here

6 Comments

6 Comments

  1. mhd abdulla

    09/23/2016 at 11:54 am

    After paying hefty sum to get iPhone 7, Now you want us to learn this trick. Better we throw it in the sea. Sam makes better mobile

  2. Pablo

    09/30/2016 at 11:05 am

    I’m so tired of Apple advertising new phones with better batteries, new features, brighter displays, bigger cameras, but in order to get to the end of the day, please turn off notifications, location services, brightness, vibration, reduce use of video and camera, and you know what? Why getting a phone if you can’t use it?

  3. Tanya

    02/05/2017 at 9:08 pm

    What is “Push??? I don not find anything called “Push” in Notifications!

  4. David Alexander Jackson

    03/17/2017 at 10:47 am

    I think you guys should tell readers to do a complete backup of their information before you tell them to delete/restore settings . I may have missed that part in the article but I didn’t see any disclaimer . It would be devastating if somebody didn’t have a backup and followed the reset advice in this article thus losing all of their content .

  5. Michael shenk

    12/27/2017 at 11:03 pm

    I am a senior citizen who bought Apple phones since 2004. In the last this year Si feelbappke gas cheated me.paid a lot if fixed income money facile ny previous iPhone died at EXaCZtKY 2 years of age. This 7s requires 2-3 charges daily.now I’m stuck with it for 2 years..

  6. Jim Green

    03/27/2019 at 10:47 pm

    If you need TV Parts, or mobile phone parts,you can go to https://www.abctay.com. I sold them in this store. It’s very cheap, and the freight is cheap, and the service is good. Basically, if you have questions ,they will answer you.

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