Draining your battery life with iOS 14? You're not the only owner of an iPhone with that problem.
Apple iPhone owners have complained about their battery life being dramatically shortened after updating their smartphone to the latest operating system, known as iOS 14, which launched on September 16, 2020, worldwide.
First off, installing a new OS on an iPhone triggers a lot of stuff to go on in the background, from indexing to recalibrating the battery, and this can go on for hours or even days. Not only does this consume power, but the battery recalibration can give the impression that the battery is draining more rapidly. Add to this the dual-factor that accompanies a new release and several software updates, coupled with a ton and new functionality available that can bring further drain on an older smartphone.
My advice stays the same -- turn off the Health App don't worry about your iPhone's battery for a week or so after installing a new iOS. It takes time for things to normalize. If you go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health and the message is that it is good for Peak Performance Capability, then it's either just the normal stuff going on or a bug.
I suspect that having the health app do contact tracing running the background doesn't help also. Read more about what does the iOS health app contact tracing do? Contact tracing is part of the process of supporting patients and warning contacts of exposure in order to stop chains of transmission. It works by logging when two people have been in close proximity to each other for a substantial period of time. If one of the users is later diagnosed as having the disease, an alert can be sent to others they have recently been close to, telling them that they should also get tested and/or self-isolate. This likely requires a lot of processing power in the background of your phone.
Note that rolling back to iOS 13 doesn't help here because that too would be a new operating system, and would need to go through that initial setup period before things settled down.
Not only could there be bugs in iOS 14 that affect battery life, but developers have been given almost no time to release apps that are ready for iOS 14, so problems are to be expected.
So yes, I know it's annoying, but just charge your iPhone more, and keep a power bank or wireless charging pad nearby and see if things settle down after a few days.
For Apple Watch owners
I would recommend unpairing and re-pairing your watch to your phone. It will save all your faces, apps, and settings in the process and it solved the battery drain issue for me. I had to charge my watch multiple times a day after updating to watchOS 7. Then I repaired it and now I get the same or better battery life than I had before the iOS 14 and watchOS 7 updates.
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