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Gregintosh

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jan 29, 2008
1,973
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Chicago
Some of you may remember I ran a test of my used 15 pro to the 16e before. There were some flaws in the test but it did show that the 15 pro drains battery fast even when idle.

I re-did the test with the iPhone 17 Air and the 16e.

Background

Nothing is worse than enjoying the moment outside with friends, and after several hours needing to use your phone... only to discover half the battery is gone already!

So to see which phone can last longer while on standby, I decided to run a test.

- Both phones were charged to 100%
- Using the exact same carrier
- Placed next to each other
- Running the same version/update of iOS 26
- Background Refresh turned off
- Wi-Fi turned off
- Same apps (since the 17 Air was restored from iCloud backup of the 16e)
- Neither phone was used during the test for any purpose
- The Air had always on display disabled (since the 16e doesn't have this feature)

I tried to make it so that the test is as fair as possible.

Results

9:50 AM

iPhone Air - 100%
iPhone 16e - 100%

11:30 AM

iPhone Air - 100%
iPhone 16e - 100%

1:10 PM

iPhone Air - 96%
iPhone 16e - 100%

3:50 PM

iPhone Air - 89%
iPhone 16e - 95%

5:05 PM

iPhone Air - 83%
iPhone 16e - 91%


Conclusion

The iPhone 16e drains battery noticeably slower standby mode.

This lines up neatly with the fact it has a ~3200 mah battery compared to the 16e's ~4000. That's a 20% difference in battery size.

It seems the drain is really all up to the actual capacity of the battery (yes, that should be obvious), and little optimizations might not matter as much as Apple and others might want you to believe (for example the C1X modem being more efficient than the C1).

This is what I was kind of looking for (and hoping for), that Apple's claims of optimizing every bit they could on the phone would actually make a difference and the Air would punch above its weight class a bit. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

In the test, it seems after the initial 100% went away (which Apple likes to keep on an artificially long amount of time), the gap between the two kept increasing. At first 4%, then 6% gap, then 8% gap. Granted, the time intervals weren't exact, but the pattern was clear.

I did not have time to run the test all the way down to 0, but I would imagine that the gap would keep increasing bit by bit until it landed somewhere around the 20% size corresponding to the battery size.

Yes, there is a chance the gap would be slightly less than 20% at the end of the day, so perhaps Apple's optimizations might matter a tiny but, but I think the result would have been so close to it that it would not make a material difference.


Parting Words

Hope this tests helps someone out there whose considering between the 16e or the Air due to wanting a phone for simple, casual use. It is annoyingly frustrating that I have not seen any major reviewers add the 16e to the mix of phones they do the battery tests on. It's like a forgotten child.

I may try to do another test at some point soon with Instagram scrolling on reels or something else to see how each of these stack up in actual use. If anyone has any other ideas for how to run a test or what apps to test, I would be open to it. Ideally, something I can just set on both phones and check them once in a while so I don't have to spend all day occupied with babysitting them.

Feedback is welcome. :)


Edit: Since the phones were idle, there was probably no real impact of the A19 pro's efficiencies reflected, nor the ability of the display to go down to 1hz. It is entirely possible that with screen on time doing activities like reading and others the iPhone Air would make up some time, but I am not sure if any of those efficiencies would be material enough to bring the Air closer or equal to the 16e's battery life.
 
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