I tested the iPhone app with my new RainMachine last week. It worked, but it ran down the iPhone battery way too fast.

The second day, I left the app in the background, with background app refresh disabled. First thing in the morning, the iPhone battery was at 100%. Without even opening the RainMachine app, the battery was dropping 1% every 2.5 minutes. Normally my battery stays at 100% for the first two hours of the day.

By mid-afternoon, the iPhone battery was so low the phone shut down without warning, the battery was dead. I charged it and the next morning, with the battery at 100%, the battery was still dropping rapidly even though I was not using the app. I turned off notifications for the app, no difference. I then disabled data for the app and there was a big difference, but later that day the iPhone dropped dead again. So I removed the RainMachine app from the iPhone. The next day, the battery usage was still much greater than normal, although not as bad as before.

I asked Apple support about this and they were mystified. They didn't see how an app not in use could consume the battery when the phone was off and with background app refresh disabled, let alone when it was uninstalled.

At their suggestion, I reset the iPhone. That changes all the settings to default, but data is unchanged. It took over a day to remember all the settings and get them back to normal.

The good news is that my iPhone is usable again - the battery usage is back to normal.

So I tried the same thing with my iPad. The iPad battery is much bigger, so it did not run down as fast, but battery consumption was at least 2 times normal. The app runs down the battery even when it is not being used, with WiFi off and when the iPad is shut down overnight. I need to recharge every 3 days, the battery used to last a week.

Looks like a bug from here....this behavior is completely different from all my other IOS apps.

Some info: iPhone IOS version 10.3.2, iPad IOS version 9.3.4 (most recent versions available)

RainMachine: hardware 3, firmware 4.0.9, IOS app 4.3.108(16), API 4.4.0