iOS 14.2 would have caused a severe battery drain

Users of the Apple Developer and Reddit forums widely report that iOS 14.2 causes serious battery drain issues.

Symptoms of the problem include rapid battery drain and longer than usual charging times. Some users report that their devices lose more than 50% of charge in less than 30 minutes and see big drops of around 5% within minutes of normal use.

The issue appears to be software related as several users see battery life at a high percentage before dropping as well as a sudden gain in battery life after restarting their device.

The affected iPhones all appear to be slightly older, like the iPhone XS, iPhone 7, iPhone 6S, and first-generation iPhone SE. IPad Pro 2018 running iPadOS 14.2 also appears to be affected.

iOS 14.2 and iPadOS 14.2 arrived just two weeks after iOS 14.1 and iPadOS 14.1, in the second major updates to the iOS and iPadOS 14 operating systems that were released in September. The update included new emotes, an intercom, battery charge optimized for AirPods, people detection, and new wallpapers.

There are no new reports to suggest that the battery issue has been fixed in iOS 14.2.1, which aimed to fix bugs with MMS messages, designed for iPhone hearing aids, and a significant responsiveness issue. the screen on the iPhone 12 mini.

The third developer and public beta versions of iOS 14.3 and iPadOS 14.3 have already been released, so there’s a chance Apple will fix the issue in this update. The third major update for iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 brings support for Apple ProRAW, as well as improvements for home, health and weather.

Users of older devices may wish to pause updating to iOS 14.2 if they haven’t already, until the issue is resolved by Apple.