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iPhone 13 Pro Battery improvement - iPhone 13 Pro vs 11 Pro
- Thread starter akash.nu
- Start date
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Last night iPhone 13 Pro drained 7% and 11 Pro drained 2%. The only difference is that the 13 Pro is on EE e-sim and the 11 Pro is on Giffgaff physical sim.
That is pretty poor - each day will be different though..So here’s it. I’ve barely used the phone today.
1 hour 27 mins screen on time
And I’ve listened to downloaded music on Apple Music app for an hour while working out.
I’m sitting at 65% now.
Would you call this good battery life?!
This sounds kind of dumb, but is it that you’re maybe using more programs on the 13 pro that‘s causing more background processes?
either way, this is just making the 11 Pro seem like the longevity model for those that bought it
Exactly! The 13 Pro may have more battery life than the 12 series but compared to the 11 Pro it’s either similar or worse. Moreover I’m at 89% battery health on the 11 Pro.
I’m not using any extra apps on the 13 Pro. It’s literally a copy of the 11 Pro except the SIM card difference I mentioned earlier and the wallpaper.
Hmm, are you using 5G? I know the LTE antennas are better in the 13 pro too, maybe that’s eating more energy?
I've been testing my new iPhone SE 2nd Gen that my employer gave me. However at the very end I think is one of the biggest factors...
With nothing on the device, new AppleID and no iCloud data it will sip battery. I ended a 12 hour day today at 80% battery...
When I log into my personal AppleID and use Console I can see things change a bit....
1. The Spotlight engine...
Anytime data is created, modified or delete the spotlight/siri framework engine is tasked with updating its database to reflect this. This framework (Core Spotlight although might be something different now) can be used within apps as well.
Restoring a device and logging into an AppleID does the battery NO favors. While a lot of the data indexed by Spotlight/Siri is hosted in the metadata it still needs to build its own database. So if you are logging into an existing well established AppleID expect that device to have less then optimal battery for quite sometime.
Keep in mind EVERYTHING is indexed. Pull down spotlight and type in a couple words from an email and that email will pop up, type in something in a photo (blue car) then blue cars will pop up, type in information contained within a document and it will pop up.
Its also running in real time. Send a message that says something and you can immediately search what you said and find it.
This tool is incredibly powerful. If used properly its impossible to lose data. Next time you are trying to find information but can't quite remember where it is all you need is a couple key words entered into spotlight. I use it all the time to find emails, messages or to differentiate between them when I know someone told me something but I can't remember whether it was via message or email.
2. iCloud syncing.
Another incredibly useful tool and while its efficient its not free of energy use.
Using iCloud Photo Library for example, take a photo and it uploads, edit the photo and the edit is sync'd. Now if you send that image via messages in iCloud you are doing the same process again to a certain extent plus you could possibly need to transcode the image/video to compatibility on the recipients device.
Sync'ing highly complex compressed data at full res doesn't come for free. Just think of every image you take as a photo you send via messages. Setting this sync to Wifi only not only improves battery life due to minimizing cellular radios but it gives you the chance to edit without resyncing.
Another thing with photos is the optimized storage version if you have that feature on, I can determine if that is created on the device or in the cloud. Regardless if its created on the device then it needs to export a low quality version, if its created in iCloud it needs to sync a low quality version.
That is just 2 features (Photos and Messages) of iCloud, there are many other things syncing as well as handoff and continuity features. And keep in mind iCloud is using end to end encryption for everything and while the iPhone has encryption hardware to minimize power usage its not as energy efficient as no encrypting the sent data and decrypting the received data. I think we've grown spoiled of having encryption with all our data that its easy to forget what was required to accomplish this manually.
3. Apple device location awareness via Bluetooth LE and proprietary hardware protocols.
Apple devices especially iOS/WatchOS/iPadOS devices are acknowledging each others existence in the world in the background all the time. If you open the 'Share' shade in any app you'll see AirDrop devices local to you already there. Open a MacBook and your AppleWatch will unlock when its within close proximity even without being directly connected via bluetooth. If we are contacts and I goto the wifi password enter screen you will get a prompt to share the password (keep in mind I'm not on the wifi this is done via the bluetooth protocol using proprietary methods). If I lose my backpack (containing my AirTag) in your proximity your iPhone will see it and report its location to iCloud where I will be able to see it, all in the background anonymously without you even knowing about it.
Those are just a few clear examples of the low level communication between Apple devices even if they don't belong to you.
As far as battery usage goes I think other devices on the same AppleID have a very very slight negative effect. Like AirPlay 2 will show the local devices and what they are playing. Getting an iOS device that is playing music in very close proximity to a HomePod will cause the music to transfer too it (or phone call or whatever). AirDrop doesn't need to be accepted an ad hoc network is set up immediately. Instant hotspot from a Mac to an iPhone has the iPhone create a hotspot without the users intervention. Handoff and continuity are doing things like making a universal clipboard, prompting other devices like the iPad or Mac to continue using an app you are using in iOS. Plus you can make and receive phone calls on non cellular devices via your phone number and iCloud. Obviously you have everything to do with HomeKit. Etc etc etc..
Again, it might be slight but those function need a little bit of power to operate.
Ok so ALL that said, when logged into my personal AppleID my iPhone SE 2nd Gen does not get as good as battery as it does when its on an otherwise blank AppleID with no iCloud data or other devices to sync too. If you have a Mac connect your iPhone and search "iCloud", "Bluetooth" and "Spotlight". Each will have 100+ lines before you can even type one of those in.
I think if we be patient, do not force the iPhone to do anything (restore, reboots, etc) it will eventually settle in. New features like battery face recognition and identifying things in photos (animals, plants, etc) are going to use more energy, even more if we are playing with those feature unnecessarily.
_______
The other huge factor. New features + users honeymoon period. So aside from all of the above the iPhone is doing to catch up to an established device on your iCloud it offers new features you could be using and using more of.
5G is still being implemented. Weaker signal not only requires the radio to transmit at higher powers but weak signal resulting in lower bandwidth requires longer usage. I know many people are running speedtest to test their new 5G connectivity. Sending hundreds to thousands of megabytes of data via 5G will use a considerable amount of energy.
LIDAR is more effective than parallax (is that what Apple was using?) however its more hardware thus more energy.
I'm sure many people immediately recorded a Dolby Vision HDR video. This HAS to kill the battery, I don't have any hard statistics but consider the hardware required to grade Dolby Vision in FCP, Premiere or Resolve now consider it being done in real time 4k60. If you use 4k Prores for a video look at the IO overhead requirements alone (~100MBps, I doubt the NAND could sustain the datastream from 4k60hz Prores even if the SoC could keep up). Regardless that amount of data handling from SoC to NAND will come at a very high energy use.
Other camera features seem processor intensive too, HDR is just a requirement to make a half way decent image. Wider apertures = narrower depth of field. Using the night mode feature is fine on an iPhone 11 but leaves a lot of margin for error (movement blur). If the iPhone can capture more light, use a high ISO and faster shutter but then merge images via HDR to remove the noise at an acceptable level would be preferable which is what I believe we are seeing.
120hz screen, like for like will have to use more energy then 60hz.
With nothing on the device, new AppleID and no iCloud data it will sip battery. I ended a 12 hour day today at 80% battery...
When I log into my personal AppleID and use Console I can see things change a bit....
1. The Spotlight engine...
Anytime data is created, modified or delete the spotlight/siri framework engine is tasked with updating its database to reflect this. This framework (Core Spotlight although might be something different now) can be used within apps as well.
Restoring a device and logging into an AppleID does the battery NO favors. While a lot of the data indexed by Spotlight/Siri is hosted in the metadata it still needs to build its own database. So if you are logging into an existing well established AppleID expect that device to have less then optimal battery for quite sometime.
Keep in mind EVERYTHING is indexed. Pull down spotlight and type in a couple words from an email and that email will pop up, type in something in a photo (blue car) then blue cars will pop up, type in information contained within a document and it will pop up.
Its also running in real time. Send a message that says something and you can immediately search what you said and find it.
This tool is incredibly powerful. If used properly its impossible to lose data. Next time you are trying to find information but can't quite remember where it is all you need is a couple key words entered into spotlight. I use it all the time to find emails, messages or to differentiate between them when I know someone told me something but I can't remember whether it was via message or email.
2. iCloud syncing.
Another incredibly useful tool and while its efficient its not free of energy use.
Using iCloud Photo Library for example, take a photo and it uploads, edit the photo and the edit is sync'd. Now if you send that image via messages in iCloud you are doing the same process again to a certain extent plus you could possibly need to transcode the image/video to compatibility on the recipients device.
Sync'ing highly complex compressed data at full res doesn't come for free. Just think of every image you take as a photo you send via messages. Setting this sync to Wifi only not only improves battery life due to minimizing cellular radios but it gives you the chance to edit without resyncing.
Another thing with photos is the optimized storage version if you have that feature on, I can determine if that is created on the device or in the cloud. Regardless if its created on the device then it needs to export a low quality version, if its created in iCloud it needs to sync a low quality version.
That is just 2 features (Photos and Messages) of iCloud, there are many other things syncing as well as handoff and continuity features. And keep in mind iCloud is using end to end encryption for everything and while the iPhone has encryption hardware to minimize power usage its not as energy efficient as no encrypting the sent data and decrypting the received data. I think we've grown spoiled of having encryption with all our data that its easy to forget what was required to accomplish this manually.
3. Apple device location awareness via Bluetooth LE and proprietary hardware protocols.
Apple devices especially iOS/WatchOS/iPadOS devices are acknowledging each others existence in the world in the background all the time. If you open the 'Share' shade in any app you'll see AirDrop devices local to you already there. Open a MacBook and your AppleWatch will unlock when its within close proximity even without being directly connected via bluetooth. If we are contacts and I goto the wifi password enter screen you will get a prompt to share the password (keep in mind I'm not on the wifi this is done via the bluetooth protocol using proprietary methods). If I lose my backpack (containing my AirTag) in your proximity your iPhone will see it and report its location to iCloud where I will be able to see it, all in the background anonymously without you even knowing about it.
Those are just a few clear examples of the low level communication between Apple devices even if they don't belong to you.
As far as battery usage goes I think other devices on the same AppleID have a very very slight negative effect. Like AirPlay 2 will show the local devices and what they are playing. Getting an iOS device that is playing music in very close proximity to a HomePod will cause the music to transfer too it (or phone call or whatever). AirDrop doesn't need to be accepted an ad hoc network is set up immediately. Instant hotspot from a Mac to an iPhone has the iPhone create a hotspot without the users intervention. Handoff and continuity are doing things like making a universal clipboard, prompting other devices like the iPad or Mac to continue using an app you are using in iOS. Plus you can make and receive phone calls on non cellular devices via your phone number and iCloud. Obviously you have everything to do with HomeKit. Etc etc etc..
Again, it might be slight but those function need a little bit of power to operate.
Ok so ALL that said, when logged into my personal AppleID my iPhone SE 2nd Gen does not get as good as battery as it does when its on an otherwise blank AppleID with no iCloud data or other devices to sync too. If you have a Mac connect your iPhone and search "iCloud", "Bluetooth" and "Spotlight". Each will have 100+ lines before you can even type one of those in.
I think if we be patient, do not force the iPhone to do anything (restore, reboots, etc) it will eventually settle in. New features like battery face recognition and identifying things in photos (animals, plants, etc) are going to use more energy, even more if we are playing with those feature unnecessarily.
_______
The other huge factor. New features + users honeymoon period. So aside from all of the above the iPhone is doing to catch up to an established device on your iCloud it offers new features you could be using and using more of.
5G is still being implemented. Weaker signal not only requires the radio to transmit at higher powers but weak signal resulting in lower bandwidth requires longer usage. I know many people are running speedtest to test their new 5G connectivity. Sending hundreds to thousands of megabytes of data via 5G will use a considerable amount of energy.
LIDAR is more effective than parallax (is that what Apple was using?) however its more hardware thus more energy.
I'm sure many people immediately recorded a Dolby Vision HDR video. This HAS to kill the battery, I don't have any hard statistics but consider the hardware required to grade Dolby Vision in FCP, Premiere or Resolve now consider it being done in real time 4k60. If you use 4k Prores for a video look at the IO overhead requirements alone (~100MBps, I doubt the NAND could sustain the datastream from 4k60hz Prores even if the SoC could keep up). Regardless that amount of data handling from SoC to NAND will come at a very high energy use.
Other camera features seem processor intensive too, HDR is just a requirement to make a half way decent image. Wider apertures = narrower depth of field. Using the night mode feature is fine on an iPhone 11 but leaves a lot of margin for error (movement blur). If the iPhone can capture more light, use a high ISO and faster shutter but then merge images via HDR to remove the noise at an acceptable level would be preferable which is what I believe we are seeing.
120hz screen, like for like will have to use more energy then 60hz.
The battery percentage is arbitrary based on a voltage range, historical data, ignoring dips in that voltage caused by temporary loads. If you were to monitor the voltage of the iPhone throughout the day you'd see it going up and down with a declining trend based on usage. Algorithms are programmed to ignore that voltage going up and down so it gives the consumer the appearance of an always decreasing percentage. A very cold battery won't be able to provide the same energy per % number as a room temperature battery however it has to still provide 100% to 0% as evenly as possible. Battery health is another consideration, the voltage at 100% on a 2 year battery might not be as high as the voltage at 100% when it brand new. iOS still has to make it work though....
So during boot/reboot is when the system can be most vulnerable of attack. When an iOS device turns on or reboots is when its going to run through what Apple calls its "Chain of Trust". This is a hardware intensive process because boot partitions are being checked for Apples signing code, several data integrity checks, partitions decrypted all while performing processes to make sure no code except Apples is present. The hardware of the device is also being verified (cell baseband). Memory is being wiped through these steps. All the steps in this process to minimize (hopefully eliminate) weaknesses that could be maliciously exploited. Finally your device UEID and your passcode is entangled so entering your passcode allows you to unlock your iPhone and the user data can be decrypted.
That process takes a while because its somewhat hardware intensive (if not reboots would be faster), I wouldn't be surprised to see 1-2% battery be actually consumed during the reboot process.
On top of that your battery's arbitrary percentage was read from a voltage somewhere during that boot process. Since the device was performing other task it was read while the battery was under a load. When you put a load on a battery its voltage will decrease unless its massively oversized. This may give it the "appearance" of being low.
For example, if you are using your iPhone normally and its 90% which we will say is 3.999 vdc (for sake of argument I don't know the exact voltage) and you do an intensive task it might dip for a moment to 3.699 vdc than back up to 3.989 vdc when the task ends. However during that time the percentage won't drop to 88% and bounce back to 90% because that wouldn't make logical sense to the end user.
Rebooting will wipe the reference the iPhone was using plus depending on the moment the battery voltage is read it could "appear" less because of the battery intensive process it just went through.
Since that probably didn't make any sense here is a down and dirty example with a flashlight. Its an Olight Baton II which works well for this example because I can measure voltage via its magnetic charger connection...
Flashlight OFF - 4.088 vdc
Flashlight ON - 3.905 vdc (kind of see it between the crack, hard to do this one handed)
Flashlight BACK OFF - 4.085 vdc
Now imagine with an iPhone 4.08 vdc= 95% and 3.905 vdc = 91%. Depending on when the voltage was acquired will determine its "percentage". Without some sort of system in place though the percentage would be up and down all day so the percentage has to be generic in practice.
TL.DR - The battery percentage dropping after a reboot is iOS trying to present the consumer a number that makes sense even though its based off wildly fluctuating voltages and conditions that are impossible to make sense of. This is completely to do with software and could be sorted out by Apple. However its important to keep in mind, nothing is actually being "fixed" its just telling you what you'd expect/want to see.
Yes I’m using 5G but I’m in good 5G coverage area. 5G or not I was expecting much better battery life compared to my 11 Pro though.
[mention]cynics [/mention] brilliant posts with details. Thank you.
I’m aware of these features. However, my comparison was based on the fact that generally all indexing and syncing should have been completed within the first few days. I’ve given it an entire week without success and I’m comparing with an identical device.
