My pet theory - Apple was embarrassed by the AI debacle so they didn't want to miss a September OS update, regardless of whether it was ready for prime time or not.
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Reduce Transparency actually drains battery
- Thread starter deuxani
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I don’t know if that’s true for all cases. Just tried it and nope, reduce transparency lowers the overall brightness, especially the CC icons in dark mode.
If Apple cared about solving this they would provide a very simple choice. No “period”. Have confidence in your software updates.
Sign every final IPSW of every major release for every major iOS version and every device, forever and with no exceptions.
As an example, allow the iPhone 11, right now, to install iOS 26.0.1; iOS 18.7.1; iOS 17.6.1; iOS 16.6.1; iOS 15.6.1; iOS 14.8; and iOS 13.7.
Are you confident in your software? Allow unfettered downgrades to every final at-some-point-compatible point release of every major version.
Compatibility is a MASSIVE issue. If your software updates are good, people will run the latest version all the time. If they are not, people will run the earliest compatible version.
Allow it and see what they do.
We already know, they won’t update their system because they just don’t like change of any kind and then be surprised when they are the victim of a security vulnerability. (And a fairly small number of people will use it to take advantage of exploits in prior releases. I’m sure law enforcement would LOVE that!) I think the best thing about this is that a LOT of people are getting the push they need to just buy something “not Apple”. It’ll be better for them in the end!
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The second images are the ones with reduce transparency on? Did you also turn on Low Power mode at the same time? (I noticed the batteries are yellow).
Also, to capture the full dynamic range of the screen, you can enable HDR (Settings->Screen Capture->HDR).
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I truly wish this were a case of disliking change.
As this very thread proves, updates don’t maintain device quality.
If they did, I’d update everything without thinking.
Yes, both were on. You can see the battery and the accessibility icons. That’s because my Low Power toggle you see there is actually a shortcut and it’s the easiest way to turn it on and off.
HDR capture is turned on.
That’s what I expected, just wanted to make sure. In the dark image, “reduce transparency” on makes the image brighter, dark gray more than black (with the images side by side, it’s clear to see that the one with “reduce transparency” on would consume more power)
With the bright image, again side by side, the entire screen is brighter. Plus, where the Liquid Glass one has several shades of dimmer areas all over the frame (and a big one at the bottom) for the dark items in the background showing through, the other image is the same brighter shade of gray behind everything.
In playing around some more, the darker the screen, (like, the type of image in the first post), the more marked the difference will be. With Safari NOT in dark mode with the Control Center pulled down over MacRumors, I can make them close, but, because there are darker areas that “show through” in Liquid Glass, those will reduce the OLED draw. The closest I could get the two was to open a Pages document and zoom in (almost entirely white except for the interface elements).
In almost every other more normal case, though, “reduce transparency” bumps up the entire screen brightness behind the Control Center to the same fairly bright (compared to Liquid Glass) level. It’s saying, “Since they don’t want transparency, we’re going to take all those various darker areas behind the Control Center which would show through, and bring them ALL up to the same level of brightness.”
I don’t know, considering the buttons are darker and uniform with the rest, I would think the overall luminance is turned down, at least in Dark Mode.
However, I noticed that having Reduce Motion on actually slightly increases the brightness (it was on for the previous Low Power screenshots).
It is may not be surprising that an accessibility patch may use a tad more battery, However that is the wattage at the mains voltage via the charging circuit thru the battery. I would be surprised if it followed the usage that closely. Still, everything that is on video must be true, right?
OK! So, I don’t have Reduce Motion turned on. That’s an interesting thing to note. I agree the more “plain” your background, the less the difference as I believe that when “reduce transparency” is on, Apple’s determining what color to use as the “reduced transparency” background from samples of the entire image. If the image has bright spots and dark spots, the color it comes up with tends towards the brighter, such that an image with dark areas would have those dark areas still darker than the color chosen.
There’s a couple variables here that could make a pretty noticeable difference between Control Center requiring noticeably more power (had no idea about reduced motion!), or Control Center pulling roughly the same power. And, how it works has been known about for awhile. Back when OLED’s were new, people quickly understood that having black taking up most of their screen meant their phones lasted longer. People don’t really think about that as much now as many regularly get 6–8 hours of battery without concerning themselves about the brightness of their background image. They’re not consciously aware of how big of a difference that could make from moment to moment because it averages across the entire day.
It actually seems that Liquid Glass plays into this understanding by providing a mental rationale for darker backgrounds showing through elements that may have been uniformly bright (like folders of icons), for example, or forcing some interface elements to be dark where they were white previously (like the OS26 camera app being dark even when the phone isn’t in dark mode).