A theory regarding iOS 5 battery issues

Greetings, I've been playing around with my iPhone 4S after suddenly starting to have battery drain issues that I didn't have before.

What I found was that, by using a system info app that could show running processes, I had more than 30 processes called "notification_pro" running simultaneously. I have no idea what these are, but they seem to be related to plugging the phone in and syncing it via iTunes.

After rebooting the phone, they all disappeared and my phone was back in good shape. Until I reconnected it via iTunes and then synced it again. After unplugging the cable that process got stuck there again.

If however, I closed iTunes prior to disconnecting the cable, the process terminates gracefully.

I thought I was onto something big, but it now seems that I can't get a solid repro on this, sometimes that process remains there, other times it disappears as soon as I disconnect the cable.

There is also a related process called afcd which also seems to be related to usb cable connection, which also sometimes seems to linger around longer than normal.

I know it's generally not good form to post links, especially as the new guy, but I have a more concise explanation on my blog: The reason for iOS 5 battery issues?

If someone that is currently experiencing battery drain can take a look at their running processes and see if they have either afcd or notification_pro running in the background with the cable out (or if they see more than one notification_pro process while syncing), we could probably help Apple figure this out. :)

I'd like to know how I ended up with that many notification_pros in the first place, prior to my reboot. Definitely doesn't seem right.

Other applications also need notification_pro, DiskAid per example, that process is loaded separately on the iPhone for each but normally they are unloaded when the cable is disconnected. It's possible that some applications need to be updated to be compatible with the version of iOS or data transfer is not completed between iPhone and those applications before the cable is disconnected, this is more likely to happen on Windows.