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iPhone 11 Pro horrible battery life when connected to Orbi RBR50 / RBS50 / RBS50Y

djc6
Luminary

iPhone 11 Pro horrible battery life when connected to Orbi RBR50 / RBS50 / RBS50Y

I have an Orbi RBR50 + two RBS50's - purcahsed as an RBK53 Kit from Costco in the Fall of 2016.  I have an RBS50Y outdoor satellite I added September 2020.  Everything has been working smoothly for a long while.

 

End of May 2021, I updated my iPhone 11 Pro to iOS 14.6 and have had horrible battery life since.  I used to get away with charging every other day - since then the phone only lasts a few hours on charge.  I've tried restoring the phone, resetting network settings, turning off private address (Random MAC addresse) - to no avail.

 

Recently I went on vacation for a week, and my fantastic battery life returned!  I took another trip to see family shortly there after, and I had the same experience.  When I got home I ran an experiment - I forgot the Orbi Wi-Fi network and only used Cellular and my fantastic battery life returned.

 

My wife's iPhone 12 Pro and my daughter's iPhone SE (1st Gen; 2016) don't have these battery life issues on the home Wi-Fi. 

 

What can I do to fix this problem?  Did iOS 14.6 change something with regard to how the phone hands off between satellites?  I'm not sure how to proceed.  My Orbi had given my years of problem free service before this.

Model: RBK53|Orbi AC3000 Tri-band WiFi System
Message 1 of 8

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djc6
Luminary

Re: iPhone 11 Pro horrible battery life when connected to Orbi RBR50 / RBS50 / RBS50Y

I performed a factory reset on my RBR50 a week ago, and my awesome battery life returned.  I waited a week to response just to have a full week of data to make sure the reset worked.

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CrimpOn
Guru

Re: iPhone 11 Pro horrible battery life when connected to Orbi RBR50 / RBS50 / RBS50Y

I did a search on "iOS 14.6 battery life". Holy Smokes, Bat Man! Too many hits to count.  From this I get a sense that it may not be related in any way to the Orbi.  Perhaps more testing is in order.  i.e. go somewhere (neighbor? office? Starbucks?), connect to a different WiFi network and see if the pattern of battery drainage happens there.

 

Several articles suggest goiing to Settings->Battery and scrolling down to Battery Usage to see if any particular apps are using a lot of battery.  On my (Android) phone, Battery settings predicts how long the battery will last at the current usage rate.  If the iPhone does something similar, it would not be necessary to sit around until the battery actually dies.

 

(I also have an 'app' that displays a graph of the battery usage (also temperature and CPU usage).  Maybe the iPhone Battery settings function does something similar?  I doubt that there is a Battery 'app' for the iPhone.  Apple seems to control things a lot more than Google does.)

Message 2 of 8
djc6
Luminary

Re: iPhone 11 Pro horrible battery life when connected to Orbi RBR50 / RBS50 / RBS50Y

I spent June, July, August looking at every possilbe solution online - it wasn't until I finally got out the house that I realized my problems seem related to home Wi-Fi.   Alll good on Cellular and other people's Wi-Fi.

Message 3 of 8
CrimpOn
Guru

Re: iPhone 11 Pro horrible battery life when connected to Orbi RBR50 / RBS50 / RBS50Y

Do their iPhones run the same version of iOS as yours?

Could there be some app that runs only when you are connected to your home WiFi? Maybe something to do with home automation or security?

Does that Battery usage page show where the battery drain is coming from?

Message 4 of 8
pdeethardt
Apprentice

Re: iPhone 11 Pro horrible battery life when connected to Orbi RBR50 / RBS50 / RBS50Y

iOS 14.8 is the latest version, and 15.0 will be released on Monday. Maybe try updating to 14.8 and see if the issue goes away? Are the other iPhones running version 14.6 as well?

Message 5 of 8
djc6
Luminary

Re: iPhone 11 Pro horrible battery life when connected to Orbi RBR50 / RBS50 / RBS50Y

I should have clarified, I've had this issue since 14.6 - I did upgrade to 14.7 and 14.8 as soon as they came out hoping it would alleviate issue.

 

My wife and daughter's phones were also upgraded, currently on 14.8.  The battery usage app shows nothing running.  If I force close all apps, set the phone down connected to wifi, the battery is dead from a full charge after 6-7 hours or so.

 

If I disconnect from Orbi and go cellular only, and sit the phone down it can go 2 days.  Similar experience if I go stay at a family member's house with a single wi-fi (non-mesh) router setup and connect to their wi-fi and just have the phone sit down on a desk somewhere doing nothing.

 

Message 6 of 8
CrimpOn
Guru

Re: iPhone 11 Pro horrible battery life when connected to Orbi RBR50 / RBS50 / RBS50Y

There has to be "something different" about the combination of this phone and this WiFi (location, perhaps).

This site mentions an app that wlil show background processes which might be running after all applications have been closed:

https://osxdaily.com/2013/08/29/see-processes-apps-running-ios/ 

 

Are there any apps that are unique to this one iPhone?

Message 7 of 8
djc6
Luminary

Re: iPhone 11 Pro horrible battery life when connected to Orbi RBR50 / RBS50 / RBS50Y

I performed a factory reset on my RBR50 a week ago, and my awesome battery life returned.  I waited a week to response just to have a full week of data to make sure the reset worked.

Message 8 of 8
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