Bitdefender Mobile Security: Battery Drain On iOS. Any Fix?

Hi,

The investigation is still pending a resolution and the devs are still gathering feedback, therefore this is a message to everyone that encounters this issue: kindly get in touch with the support teams, it is VERY important for us.

You can get in touch with our engineers by choosing one of the contact methods available here:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/help/

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Given the issue is still not solved, as my subscription will expire this month, I have chosen to stop the auto renew.

Hope to select this product again next year. Thanks for your follow up.

i have the same high battery usage.it looks like its the webprotector what is taking up allot of power

Same issue here on IOS 16.1 iPhone 12

Hello,

I am an iPhone user myself and naturally I have Bitdefender Mobile Security installed on my iPhone XS MAX with a fresh iOS 16.1 update.

Today I've been testing Mobile Security in conjunction with the latest iOS version and my findings are the following:

I had enabled Web Protection before the actual update and the phone had below 50% battery so I had to plug it in for the update to be processed. I have restarted the phone once the update was installed and checked the battery usage before and after each action. I could notice that Mobile Security was using only 1% of the battery and the percentage remained still no matter what I was doing on the phone. I went on streaming platforms, opened Safari and browsed a few pages, opened multiple social media pages, messaging apps and so on. I even enabled the VPN at some point, which disables the Web Protection automatically then re-enabled Web Protection. Unplugged the charger and continued browsing. I did not have a full charge, as I only charged it to allow the update. The battery consumption was steady at 1% and Web Protection ran for 1h during my tests.

I have learned that the high usage was usually reported whenever Web Protection was turned on, but the behaviour was erratic and I could not find a pattern here, as reports where coming in from users that had various iOS versions installed and occured both on iPhone and iPad. One of the users reported that the battery consumption was fixed after the latest update, another user reported that the battery was dropping significantly while idle, one user told us that the battery drain started only after updating to iOS 15.4. Another user said that the drainage stopped after reinstalling Mobile Security.

If we look at all the different devices and operating systems where this behaviour was found, it's easy to loose ourselves in the details. Because there is no logic and no pattern and each time an iOS update is released, you can only hope that il will fix the drainage, but in some cases it can become worse.

i've been following this thread from the beginning and of course the ongoing investigation since it was launched, providing the member's feedback to the development teams whenever I got the chance.

Going through the screenshots, a pattern emerged and I have noticed that, for all battery consumption reports, in the battery settings, Mobile Security was showing the high usage only in conjunction with background activity.

Background activity means that most of the app's battery usage happened while the app was in the background. It refers to whether apps are allowed to run in the background when you are not using them on screen, or whenever the app is not visible to you. So what needs to be tested right now, in my opinion, is what happens with the Background app refresh set to OFF.

To test this, go to Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh and disable it for Mobile Protection. Then use your phone normally with Web Protection enabled and check the battery usage from time to time to see if there are any improvements.

There are no guarantees that it's going to fix the battery drain, however. But it's worth trying, after all the description for background app refresh does say that turning it off may help preserve battery life. I would appreciate some feedback on this and before anything else, please make sure to update to the latest iOS version.

Another thing that may help preserve battery until a permanent fix is found is to use Web Protection only when needed. Whenever the device is not in use and you are not browsing, especially when idle or charging, you may pause Web Protection and this will stop the battery drain.

These are just my personal findings, but I will continue to monitor the battery consumption on my iPhone and let you know if it goes south.

Regards

Day 2 using iOS 16.1.

I did not disable background app refresh, as I wanted to test the battery usage with this setting enabled first.

The battery usage increased significantly over night and Mobile Security is now the main battery consumer with background activity:

I will closely monitor the usage during the day and look for any fluctuations. Then, I will turn off the background app refresh and see if it makes any difference. I will post my findings here.

Regards

I have noticed the percent drop significantly since turning off the background refresh. It’s gone from 49% to 3% of battery usage… but it took a few a days to change. iPhone SE 2nd Gen 16.1 iOS, I do turn off my phone at night now too which may make a difference as well?

Hi,

I have the same issue.

Phone 12 pro max.

IOS 16.1.1

10 hours. 25% Bitdefender.

I think this is not normal. I almos dosen’t use the phone and this app make my phone uselles.

Best regard

I’m having the same problem on my iPad Pro after updating my Bitdefender mobile app.

I believe this issues has CRITICAL severity, sadly there are no info when we can expect update with fix :(

Hello,

Continuous efforts are being made by the developers to find a permanent fix for this. A permanent fix would work regardless of the iOS version, because even though the behaviour was corrected for certain versions at some point, it seems that it has resurfaced for others. We do not have an estimated time for the release of the fix yet, but I will post the news here as soon as it's implemented by an automatic update of Bitdefender. Please keep in mind that this is one of those situations that require investigation time and iOS is a much more restrictive environment that Windows, with limited access provided by Apple to developers such as ourselves, and this makes troubleshooting more challenging.

In the meantime, there are a couple of ways to maximize battery life on iOS and one of the recommendations is to use Web Protection depending on how you browse, or to use it especially when browsing outside regular trusted sites. More recommendations to maximize battery performance on iOS can be found in the article below:

I wish to thank everyone here for your patience and understanding throughout this process and I appreciate your feedback concerning the battery usage. Last but not least, I would advise you to get in touch with our engineers as well, because this way they can gather useful information to help our development teams in the investigation and they can also provide further guidance and available workarounds.

Regards

I installed this on my iPad Pro, running latest iOS version. Battery drain was HORRIBLE!! Starting with a full charge at about 9 am, it was completely drained 9 hours later — WITHOUT ME USING THE IPAD AT ALL!! I tried turning off background app refresh after recharging, but Bitdefender still had constant stead drain of battery at same rate as before.

Now that I’ve read all these posts, I decided to delete the app off my iPad. I’m back to normal battery life, thankfully. I find it is appalling and completely unacceptable that this company has had this as an ongoing open issue for this long. Feels like they are committing fraud when they advertise this app works for iOS. IF YOU NEED A SECURITY APP FOR AN IPAD, LOOK ELSEWHERE. 👎🏻👎🏻

It sounds like it's time to start talking about this issue one other websites to make sure nobody else buys this product. I signed my parents and in-laws up for this service over the holiday. Now I look stupid and they're not protected.

Maybe if enough of us leave and sign up for [*url removed by @Flexx*] or [*url removed by @Flexx*] they will take this issue seriously and fix it.

That's pretty shady. I most definitely did not post any URLs. I mentioned the names of competitive products, not their web addresses.

Please just fix our issue instead of wasting our time with trivial (and passive aggressive) moderation like this.

Hello, my family subscription expires in 7 days. Due to inability to fix major issue (battery drain on mobile) I will probably will not prolong subscription. Sadly we cannot get any eta for the fix.

This issue started on this site May 1st, here it is December 20th and still no fix. My wife and I both have XR's. Just recently, befor the 16.2 update, her phone would drain over night. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why. Found this site, deleted BD mobile from her phone and it has great battery now. Mine has not had the issue, not sure why. I just did notice my background refresh was off after seeing that here.

BD, you have had way more than enoguh time to figure this out if you wanted to. Maybe it is time to start issuing refunds for your defective product.

Fair enough, switching to Norton till it will be fixed.

Even with latest version the power consumption is too high and can be change every day . i attached example from few days ago

i had to uninstalled the apps till issue will be resolved ( pending for 9 month in my case ) as i will be out of power in the end of my day

Same issue on iOS phone and iPad. I have the recommended version installed. This started happening a week ago, mid-January 2023. Both phone & iPad show 60% battery use for mobile security.

I have now removed the Mobile Security app from both my Apple devices (iPhone SE 2020 and iPad Pro 2.gen.) due to heavy battery drain. If no solution is provided regarding this problem, I shall probably not be renewing my Bitdefender subscription when it expires.

Hello @KLR600,

There are some recommendations that can help improve battery consumption, however, a permanent fix will be deployed gradually in a series of updates meant to tackle this, as described in my post here:

Apart from this, I don't have any other updates, as the development teams are still collecting feedback after the latest release and they are monitoring the available metrics before releasing phase 2.

Personally, I have noticed several complaints related to iOS battery drain on other forums as well and this was not ENTIRELY due to Web Protection and the antivirus itself, but maybe some applications in conjuction with iOS updates may lead to an increased battery consumption? I mean, take a look in the Apple community and simply search using the keywords "battery consumption" and you will find plenty of reports going back years ago.

I'm not saying that this is solely the iOS's fault, as clearly it isn't. The developers know what needs to be done next, but it's kinda odd that there are so many reports of battery drainage on iOS in general, don't you think?

Regards

I appreciate Bitdefender for Window/Android devices very much. I did not have any battery issues on my Apple iPhone prior to adding Bitdefender. I did not add any other apps while trying to get Bitdefender to work for me on my Apple mobile devices. Once removing it, battery usage went back to normal. I do not understand why it would have always be top of the list on battery usage. Sorry to say, many other virus protections apps are giving Apple users grief. So… Apple community remarks say IOS does not need added “help” to protect their users. I guess don’t be foolish out there. Weird and unfortunate that some of us have issues and other Apple user do not.

Bitdefender not only drains my battery fast. It is also killing my battery health. Important distinction. Battery health indicator has dropped from 100 to 95 in three months. Only Bitdefender is in continuous use.

My fully charged iPad only lasts about hour and it says VPN connected although I have not Connected it and I’m running web protection