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I live in the Boston area (zip code 02421). Since upgrading to iOS 6, both my iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S are getting really hot and last only 4 hours maximum, even in standby.
Also, AT&T notified me of having already reached 65% of my 4GB shared plan quota, only 1 week into he billing cycle. For years, I have barely hit 2GB after the full month. Typically the devices become really hot and the battery goes from 100% to 0% in less than 5 hours of standby time.

In both devices I found crash logs from Siri for every day in the past 2 weeks. Which is since the problem manifested itself and since I upgraded my 4S to iOS 6 and received my iPhone 5.
Is there any evidence that Apple is aware of these horrible issues? Are they going to be fixed in the next iOS update?

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Have you looked into apps running (in foreground and background)? – Gerry Oct 23 '12 at 6:43
Your question is kind of like the prototypical loaded question - So has Apple stopped beating it's wife? Unless you have sent feedback or opened a support ticket with Apple, how would they know about how your devices are running? – bmike♦ Dec 28 '12 at 15:44

3 Answers

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I believe there have been similar questions posted on here but I wasn't able to find any. What is really weird is that it is happening on both of your phones.

I think your best bet will be a factory refresh. First, however, I would recommend rebooting your phone(s) (holding the home and power buttons down together) if you haven't done that already.

After that, make a full backup of your phone(s), and then wipe them (Settings > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings). If you backup to iCloud, restoring is an very easy and simple thing to do. If you backup to iTunes, it's not quite as easy but still easy. I've heard of similar situations to yours, but it is not normal behavior, and likely will be fixed by restores.

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Most likely an app that is running in the background. Try disabling Notifications for all apps then selectively adding them back. Also you could try the Genius Bar at an Apple Store. They have diagnostic programs that they can run to tell what programs are running in the background.

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Perhaps one showing ads. – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen Oct 23 '12 at 21:01
iOS will kill non-active applications very quickly (within ten seconds, I believe). They need to have a specific and limited reason to remain active, such as streaming music, maintaining a GPS lock, etc. "Showing ads" is most definitely not one of the approved reasons to stay active in the background. – Chris Herbert Oct 23 '12 at 22:21
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It sounds like a reception issue to me. There's not much else that will consistently chew through battery life and make the phone stay hot even when not in use. – Chris Herbert Oct 23 '12 at 22:22
Apps in the notification center are woken to check status (like new email or news stories) and sometimes they can get stuck on and consume lots of resources. At least that is what I was told my an Apple tech when I had a similar problem with my phone. – Brad Patton Oct 24 '12 at 0:13
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For the data related issue, make sure in your iCloud settings that you turn-off everything you don't need. On my iPhone 4, "Documents & Data" have been consuming all of my data. After turning it off I have gone back to regular data usage. Also, in the "Usage" section of Settings make sure you reset it after reaching the end of your cycle to track actual Wi-Fi and 3G/LTE usage. There were rumors of Apple messing up and reporting Wi-Fi usage as cellular with iOS6.

The iPhone 5 battery drain sounds like a serious issue and if you do not have any suspicious applications running in the background (download an application to check CPU and RAM usage and check; I have an app for this called Monitor but I am not sure if it's still in the App Store anymore) your best bet is to take it to an Apple Store. Many friends needed to return their iPhone 5's for an exchange with the same problem.

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