How to Fix an iPhone that Loses Battery Power While Still Charging

One of the most perplexing iPhone issues I've ever dealt with occurred as I was driving across Nevada for my vacation. I was using the iPhone as a GPS, but as the hours rolled on, I noticed that the iPhone's battery was starting to drain. At a certain point, it started to drain rather rapidly.

This would be a predictable problem, of course, if the iPhone wasn't plugged in, but my car charger was lit up and the iPhone's battery meter clearly showed that it was receiving power.

Here's a look at what causes an iPhone to lose power while it's charging and how to stop the issue from occurring.

The Problem. The iPhone loses power when it's processing data or handling other power-intensive functions, but it doesn't use very much power when it's sleeping. That's why your iPhone can be in your pocket for a day and a half, but playing a video game for a few hours will quickly sap its power reserves.

If an iPhone loses battery power while it's plugged in, that means that it's using an extraordinary amount of power.

The most common cause of the problem is too many open apps. Apps often draw from the iPhone's power reserves to complete their functions, even if they're running in the background and especially if they're drawing data. In my case, I had apps open that were playing music and the aforementioned GPS app. When combined, these apps drew more energy than the iPhone was taking in from my car charger.

Fixing iPhone Battery Drain. Once you know what's causing your iPhone's battery to drain, fixing the issue is quite easy. You can shut down any programs that you're not using, which should give the iPhone more breathing room, and it should begin to charge its battery normally.

To shut down programs individually, hit the Home button twice. Press your finger to the row of apps that pops up--these are all of the apps that you have open--and hold it there until a little red circle with a white minus mark appears in the corner of each app's icon. You can hit this circle for any of the apps that you want to close.

GPS and music streaming apps tend to use the most battery power. Games can also use quite a bit of juice, so close these first, even if you're not actively using them.

If the battery drain problem keeps being a problem, you've probably got an app open with a memory leak. That means that the program has an issue that's causing it to sap excessive amounts of processing power from your iPhone. Close more apps until you find the problem.

You can also restart your iPhone by holding the top button until the shut down bar appears, then swiping across. This is a useful first treatment to quite a few iPhone issues, so it's another thing to try if you keep having battery issues.

Have questions about iPhone charging issues? Post in the comments section below.