Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iPhone 16 Pro Anyone else burning one charge cycle per day on the 16 Pro?

D

dejanh

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 27, 2017
40
78
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Based on my typical usage, I am literally burning one charge cycle per day on the iPhone 16 Pro. I really wanted to go with the smaller device, but now I am not sure if this is a good idea. I am really liking the size, even though I came from multiple consecutive generations of Pro Max devices. The Pro Max is just an unwieldy large slab, and this year it is even bigger. I have two Pro Max devices in hand right now and a single Pro, and the Pro has been like a magnet. But...with this burn rate, I think a year from now the battery life will already be down to 90%. As is, the small device doesn't have great battery life. So, what to do? Anyone else in a similar situation? What did you decide and why?

(Note that I am now on a bi-annual upgrade cycle since the devices are virtually unchanged from one year to the other, so coming off of the 14 Pro Max now. Up to the 14-series, I was upgrading annually.)
 
  • Haha
  • Like
Reactions: _Mitchan1999, Cirillo Gherardo, cateye and 1 other person
I’m considering going from a max to a pro this year. My 12PM is at 82% battery health and I charge it daily. I’m not that worried about it because I’m never far away from a charger.
Now for you, you’re saying the Pro doesn’t have the best battery life. What are you ending your day at? What were you ending your day using the max phones? And also which Max phones did you come from? Just curious.
EDIT: I see you were coming from a 14PM, how does the battery life on the 16Pro compare?
 
I'm at 15 cycles and I activated it 11 days ago. Hmm...that can't be right. I wiped it and reinstalled everything about 6 days ago because my photos library was stuck at 58% optimizing and not moving.

I'm getting 6-7 hours of active screen time each day, and about 5 hours of idle screen time. I'm running the 18.1 public beta, so that may not be the best data and have it go into low power mode when the battery level reaches 50%. I have background activity turned off.

Can't say I'm thrilled with battery life, but it could just be the beta.
 
DevinNj said:
I’m considering going from a max to a pro this year. My 12PM is at 82% battery health and I charge it daily. I’m not that worried about it because I’m never far away from a charger.
Now for you, you’re saying the Pro doesn’t have the best battery life. What are you ending your day at? What were you ending your day using the max phones? And also which Max phones did you come from? Just curious.
EDIT: I see you were coming from a 14PM, how does the battery life on the 16Pro compare?
Click to expand...
Just posted my experience in another thread...

PatrickNSF said:
I'm at 15 cycles and I activated it 11 days ago. Hmm...that can't be right. I wiped it and reinstalled everything about 6 days ago because my photos library was stuck at 58% optimizing and not moving.

I'm getting 6-7 hours of active screen time each day, and about 5 hours of idle screen time. I'm running the 18.1 public beta, so that may not be the best data and have it go into low power mode when the battery level reaches 50%. I have background activity turned off.

Can't say I'm thrilled with battery life, but it could just be the beta.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that about matches what I am seeing. One cycle per day, unless I closely manage usage, or more than a cycle per day if I am just using it without caring.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I am currently on my 2 charge cycle (16pm) as of today 3 October 2024.

first charge 30 September 2024
 
I have a 16 Pro and I'm going through about 1 charge cycle every 2 and a half days. I pulled my phone off the charger at 8am, updated some apps, checked email several times, texted several times, went on tiktok, Facebook and listened to some music for awhile. It's now 8:42pm and my iPhone is now at 72% charge which is pretty good. I guess I'm not as heavy of a user and I do think beta software (I'm not on it) might be contributing to the poor usage.

When I first got my new iPhone I spent a lot more time on it transferring apps and generally playing with it and even then I was around about 50% battery at the end of the day. Maybe do an exchange while you are still in the return window.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: ubinko
barkomatic said:
When I first got my new iPhone I spent a lot more time on it transferring apps and generally playing with it and even then I was around about 50% battery at the end of the day.
Click to expand...
Yeah, this. I have been seeing similar stats (10 cycles for launch day 16 Pro), but looking at my Screen Time report, my usage is starting to return to baseline and the cycle count should slow down as well.
 
My 16 pro never settled I was disatisfied with battery coming off 14 pro max and returned mine.

I got a 16 plus and it’s on another level ! Than the 16 pro but even substantial against my 14 pro max :O

But it doesn’t have pro motion and all that. Still it’s a light phone for as big as the screen is and it’s got almost 1000mAh more battery for a lower refresh rate display and probably less power hungry SoC over the a18 pro

I would say glued to device when I was trying 16 pro I have to charge 1.25 to 1.5x a day. And don’t even do power hungry social media apps other than YouTube and Twitter

Seemed to drain a lot in standby too. But I dunno if a firmware fix could have addressed that. Same with battery efficiency. I was not impressed when I got over the honeymoon phase of the device
 
dejanh said:
Based on my typical usage, I am literally burning one charge cycle per day on the iPhone 16 Pro. I really wanted to go with the smaller device, but now I am not sure if this is a good idea. I am really liking the size, even though I came from multiple consecutive generations of Pro Max devices. The Pro Max is just an unwieldy large slab, and this year it is even bigger. I have two Pro Max devices in hand right now and a single Pro, and the Pro has been like a magnet. But...with this burn rate, I think a year from now the battery life will already be down to 90%. As is, the small device doesn't have great battery life. So, what to do? Anyone else in a similar situation? What did you decide and why?

(Note that I am now on a bi-annual upgrade cycle since the devices are virtually unchanged from one year to the other, so coming off of the 14 Pro Max now. Up to the 14-series, I was upgrading annually.)
Click to expand...
The only reason I went to the 16pm because the 15p battery was terrible.
 
dejanh said:
Based on my typical usage, I am literally burning one charge cycle per day on the iPhone 16 Pro. I really wanted to go with the smaller device, but now I am not sure if this is a good idea. I am really liking the size, even though I came from multiple consecutive generations of Pro Max devices. The Pro Max is just an unwieldy large slab, and this year it is even bigger. I have two Pro Max devices in hand right now and a single Pro, and the Pro has been like a magnet. But...with this burn rate, I think a year from now the battery life will already be down to 90%. As is, the small device doesn't have great battery life. So, what to do? Anyone else in a similar situation? What did you decide and why?

(Note that I am now on a bi-annual upgrade cycle since the devices are virtually unchanged from one year to the other, so coming off of the 14 Pro Max now. Up to the 14-series, I was upgrading annually.)
Click to expand...
It sounds like you're a heavy user. As long as you don't regularly drop below 20%, however, I don't think that a Pro Max will give you significantly less battery degradation. Since you prefer the smaller size, I'd rather be looking at reducing your usage, and/or try power-saving measures like turning on low power mode.
 
PatrickNSF said:
I'm at 15 cycles and I activated it 11 days ago. Hmm...that can't be right. I wiped it and reinstalled everything about 6 days ago because my photos library was stuck at 58% optimizing and not moving.

I'm getting 6-7 hours of active screen time each day, and about 5 hours of idle screen time. I'm running the 18.1 public beta, so that may not be the best data and have it go into low power mode when the battery level reaches 50%. I have background activity turned off.

Can't say I'm thrilled with battery life, but it could just be the beta.
Click to expand...
It could be you are using your phone a lot.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ubinko
Made the decision at the end to swap for the Pro Max. Battery is just causing me too much anxiety. If I am out for hours on end, I don’t want to have to think about whether I’m running on empty. Despite the love for the smaller size, the piece of mind with the Pro Max outweighs the smaller device convenience.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Antes, xxray, Carlsberg69 and 1 other person
Personally I think worrying about charge cycles and battery health is silly. It is completely normal to use 1 charge cycle per day. Unless the PM is giving you 2 full charge cycles per day, it is kind of ridiculous to buy that phone just for the charge cycle issue. If you require a larger battery than the 16 Pro offers, then of course this is a valid reason to buy something else. But if you are only worried about possibly having 90% health after a year instead of 93% on a PM (which is still very likely), just let it go.
 
  • Like
Reactions: seek3r, robotphood, maerz001 and 3 others
Zwhaler said:
Personally I think worrying about charge cycles and battery health is silly. It is completely normal to use 1 charge cycle per day. Unless the PM is giving you 2 full charge cycles per day, it is kind of ridiculous to buy that phone just for the charge cycle issue. If you require a larger battery than the 16 Pro offers, then of course this is a valid reason to buy something else. But if you are only worried about possibly having 90% health after a year instead of 93% on a PM (which is still very likely), just let it go.
Click to expand...

This. Stop looking at numbers and worrying about them.

My middle one had a 2020 SE and it just had the battery replaced at 1590 cycles and 79% battery health after 3 years. At no point did this impact her existence in any way at all.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jumpthesnark and TechnoMonk
If you can live with the Plus version, it absolutely sips power—at least that is my experience with the 15 Plus.
 
  • Like
Reactions: shr631
Zwhaler said:
Personally I think worrying about charge cycles and battery health is silly. It is completely normal to use 1 charge cycle per day. Unless the PM is giving you 2 full charge cycles per day, it is kind of ridiculous to buy that phone just for the charge cycle issue. If you require a larger battery than the 16 Pro offers, then of course this is a valid reason to buy something else. But if you are only worried about possibly having 90% health after a year instead of 93% on a PM (which is still very likely), just let it go.
Click to expand...
Battery anxiety in a smartphone is a real thing, much like range anxiety these days for electric cars. We’re so dependent on these devices sometimes and having to wonder “will it last” is a true mental distraction. This is how it is for me. I applaud you for being able to just shut the numbers out. I noticed that I’m obsessively checking how much battery I have left and that’s exhausting. At the end I decided I just don’t want to deal with this. With the Pro Max, even if my usage spikes, even if I get a bad OS update, even if I forget to put it on a charger, I know I have enough overhead to get through a few hours before I have to juice up. That’s a piece of mind.

As for the cycles? Honestly, this mattered because an already small battery that doesn’t perform that great will only get worse if the battery is constantly charged to 100% and depleted to zero (and that’s what it was for me, every day, for the past 11 days). I had to call it. The Pro just didn’t cut it.
 
dejanh said:
Battery anxiety in a smartphone is a real thing, much like range anxiety these days for electric cars. We’re so dependent on these devices sometimes and having to wonder “will it last” is a true mental distraction. This is how it is for me. I applaud you for being able to just shut the numbers out. I noticed that I’m obsessively checking how much battery I have left and that’s exhausting. At the end I decided I just don’t want to deal with this. With the Pro Max, even if my usage spikes, even if I get a bad OS update, even if I forget to put it on a charger, I know I have enough overhead to get through a few hours before I have to juice up. That’s a piece of mind.

As for the cycles? Honestly, this mattered because an already small battery that doesn’t perform that great will only get worse if the battery is constantly charged to 100% and depleted to zero (and that’s what it was for me, every day, for the past 11 days). I had to call it. The Pro just didn’t cut it.
Click to expand...
Yes, battery anxiety is a real thing and entirely self-inflicted. You made the right call by getting the PM, but if you stop checking your battery health permanently except when you're about to sell the phone you'll eventually forget about it and your anxiety will go away.
 
If you're checking your battery cycles on a daily basis, there's much deeper problems going on than the invented first-world problem of battery anxiety.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jumpthesnark
ProbablyDylan said:
I think it's important to step back and assess usage patterns. I've decided to set up more tyrannical focus mode rules when setting up my 16 Pro as new and my screen time has dropped considerably. Less screen time is the best way to save battery.
Click to expand...
🙏 this is a great point. I do need to reduce my screen time. Perhaps this is something that I can set as a goal of sorts and track necessary vs unnecessary usage. I actually enabled Screen Time for the first time with the 16 Pro. I’m going to keep it on and see how I’m using my time. In my defense, I am normally a very busy person, and the phone is my primary means of communication, most of which is one way or another written these days.
 
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: adrianlondon, ProbablyDylan and Carlsberg69
Zwhaler said:
Personally I think worrying about charge cycles and battery health is silly. It is completely normal to use 1 charge cycle per day. Unless the PM is giving you 2 full charge cycles per day, it is kind of ridiculous to buy that phone just for the charge cycle issue. If you require a larger battery than the 16 Pro offers, then of course this is a valid reason to buy something else. But if you are only worried about possibly having 90% health after a year instead of 93% on a PM (which is still very likely), just let it go.
Click to expand...
Sigh. I likely had a bad experience with my 15PM. A year later, the battery health dropped to 88%, and that really worries me.
 
  • Like
  • Haha
Reactions: Antes and Cirillo Gherardo
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back