iPhone XR Battery life question

[luckyluca]

Hi, I'm testing my brand new Iphone XR and am not impressed by screen on time.
I'm on the latest IOS which I understand might have issues with battery draining so I suppose my findings might improve in the future with OS updates.

Screen on time likely 4hours and the screen between 20% and 70% brightness throughout with average at 33%.

I took it off the charger at 100% yesterday at noon and it lasted until 7pm today.
I turned it off at 2am and on again at 8am today.

Please note I haven't played any game nor used youtube, kept airplane mode on 50% of the time and background apps disabled, bluetooth disabled. Mobile data and Wifi enabled, location enabled.

I've spent the full day today taking occasional pictures and videos.

Does a day and a half of light use with nights off seem reasonable on 12.1.4?

I've also noticed in past days that playing games no matter how dim the display it eats battery noticeably.
It seems to me the momentum found online praising the IphoneXR for its battery life might not fully reflect findings by some people, including myself, but I'm happy to be proven wrong

 

[Apple_Robert]

What is the point of buying a new phone if you are going to leave it in airplane mode 50% of the time, not to mention restricting bluetooth etc.?

Reduce the brightness, use the phone as a normal person would for the next several days, so that you can get a more accurate reading of battery usage. If after 3 - 4 days you are still concerned, take the phone to Apple for evaluation. How you have gone about it is wrong, in my opinion.

 

[tonybarnaby]

XR has the best battery life of any iPhone

 

[now i see it]

^^ as above

You may not be impressed with the XR battery life, but it's the best that's ever been in an iPhone. No iPhone can make it through the day if you use it a lot.

 

[luckyluca]

What is the point of buying a new phone if you are going to leave it in airplane mode 50% of the time, not to mention restricting bluetooth etc.?

Reduce the brightness, use the phone as a normal person would for the next several days, so that you can get a more accurate reading of battery usage. If after 3 - 4 days you are still concerned, take the phone to Apple for evaluation. How you have gone about it is wrong, in my opinion.

That is how I normally run the phone. There is no right and wrong way of using a phone, although I would expect the way I handle a phone might help maximising battery life and to me 1.5 days sounds good, however the sot of 4h seems a bit poor.

 

[0906742]

Hi, I'm testing my brand new Iphone XR and am not impressed by screen on time.
I'm on the latest IOS which I understand might have issues with battery draining so I suppose my findings might improve in the future with OS updates.

Screen on time likely 4hours and the screen between 20% and 70% brightness throughout with average at 33%.

I took it off the charger at 100% yesterday at noon and it lasted until 7pm today.
I turned it off at 2am and on again at 8am today.

Please note I haven't played any game nor used youtube, kept airplane mode on 50% of the time and background apps disabled, bluetooth disabled. Mobile data and Wifi enabled, location enabled.

I've spent the full day today taking occasional pictures and videos.

Does a day and a half of light use with nights off seem reasonable on 12.1.4?

I've also noticed in past days that playing games no matter how dim the display it eats battery noticeably.
It seems to me the momentum found online praising the IphoneXR for its battery life might not fully reflect findings by some people, including myself, but I'm happy to be proven wrong

Seems rather low for XR especially with such low screen brightness.
Did you notice battery life getting worse after IOS 12.1.4? We have two X in our family and both started to eat battery in standby (nearly 1% percentage/hour) but do difference during use, so that does not explain your problem. Based on what I have read here and discussed about it, seems nobody having this problem with latest IOS, so probably just something that occurs only in certain type of phones (hardware batch of some components maybe or perhaps something to do with Intel/Qualcomm issue).

Anyway, from your descriptions I'd say battery in your unit is not that good. I have witnessed myself miserable battery life in two X in a row both from the same factory using the same vendor battery only manufacturing dates few weeks apart. Battery simply just melts in occasional use, it just eats 1-2% every time I pick it up and eventually then stabilizes. Another X in our family from different factory and battery vendor just hold battery very well during occasional use. I have kept track of battery condition in these two (plus the one I had briefly) and they all based on IOS have 100% battery condition and based on iMazing both are over 100% but the good one has stably stayed even after 3 months of use around 103.5% battery capacity while mine has been degrading slow, even it was equal in the beginning. It now has around 101.7% battery capacity but that number itself is obviously meaningless. From what I have learned in practise difference between good and bad battery is that how well they keep voltage up during different load and capacity percentage in good ones is very high above nominal and stays there no matter what charge level of the battery is. In the bad one capacity level keeps dropping slowly and has noticeable variations depending on charge level (even still staying above 100% nominal capacity). Also keeping track of how quickly battery voltage drop after charging it, tells a lot. In our better X it holds high for long, in mine (did also in the first one) it drops rather fast.

So my point here, monitor your battery numbers with iMazing (Windows) and keep track of how capacity percentage changes based on the battery charge level and also keep track how well or badly it holds voltage.
That tells much more than battery capacity percentage.
At the end of the day difference between two types of battery can be huge. For example in our phones that equals to that better one easily get one or even two days more use between charges with around same SOT as mine!!! Mine both X with bad battery are from F-factory while good one is from D-factory (first letter of the serial number tells that).

 

[luckyluca]

Seems rather low for XR especially with such low screen brightness.
Did you notice battery life getting worse after IOS 12.1.4? We have two X in our family and both started to eat battery in standby (nearly 1% percentage/hour) but do difference during use, so that does not explain your problem. Based on what I have read here and discussed about it, seems nobody having this problem with latest IOS, so probably just something that occurs only in certain type of phones (hardware batch of some components maybe or perhaps something to do with Intel/Qualcomm issue).

Anyway, from your descriptions I'd say battery in your unit is not that good. I have witnessed myself miserable battery life in two X in a row both from the same factory using the same vendor battery only manufacturing dates few weeks apart. Battery simply just melts in occasional use, it just eats 1-2% every time I pick it up and eventually then stabilizes. Another X in our family from different factory and battery vendor just hold battery very well during occasional use. I have kept track of battery condition in these two (plus the one I had briefly) and they all based on IOS have 100% battery condition and based on iMazing both are over 100% but the good one has stably stayed even after 3 months of use around 103.5% battery capacity while mine has been degrading slow, even it was equal in the beginning. It now has around 101.7% battery capacity but that number itself is obviously meaningless. From what I have learned in practise difference between good and bad battery is that how well they keep voltage up during different load and capacity percentage in good ones is very high above nominal and stays there no matter what charge level of the battery is. In the bad one capacity level keeps dropping slowly and has noticeable variations depending on charge level (even still staying above 100% nominal capacity). Also keeping track of how quickly battery voltage drop after charging it, tells a lot. In our better X it holds high for long, in mine (did also in the first one) it drops rather fast.

So my point here, monitor your battery numbers with iMazing (Windows) and keep track of how capacity percentage changes based on the battery charge level and also keep track how well or badly it holds voltage.
That tells much more than battery capacity percentage.
At the end of the day difference between two types of battery can be huge. For example in our phones that equals to that better one easily get one or even two days more use between charges with around same SOT as mine!!! Mine both X with bad battery are from F-factory while good one is from D-factory (first letter of the serial number tells that).

Many thanks, I find your post very useful. I had the phone for 9 days so I have no experience with IOS versions prior 12.1.4. I did notice the battery percentage dropping as soon as I run more intensive apps or games, only to settle again afterwards. I blamed the apps (one in particular, a 3d flight simulator is not optimized and to be considered alpha/beta at the moment).

I've factory reset it and restored my backup and reset settings after that and kept all settings default except for bluetooth off and reduced app background data down to just a couple of system apps. Brightness set to 50% truetone and automatic brightness on.
I'll let it discharge fully and decide tomorrow on what to do, either return for refund or keep it.
Currently it has lost 10% with 1h of sot and 7h total and use limited to a phone call and just navigating the interface, no youtube no games no downloads.
Will report back.

I noticed a big discussion about battery drain on 12.1.4 ( https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250155278?answerId=250354238022#250354238022 ).

 

[0906742]

Interesting that here nobody raised their hand when I mentioned noticing battery drain after IOS 12.1.4, only some comments saying everything is as good as before. I guess it must just occur in some limited hardware or similar.

Anyway, in our both phones only standby drain is higher than before (about double now) but definitely no change when using the phone. The good one still hold battery well in occasional use and bad one hogs it and the only thing causing that in my opinion based on long tests I have done, is that battery is weaker (stale) when it drops fast the way I described earlier. Too bad there is nothing that can be done under warranty as they rely on battery capacity reading above 80% considered normal.

 

[luckyluca]

Is there a recommended app (free ideally) which I could use as metric in order to assess how much charge drops over a small period of time?

 

[0906742]

Do you have Window PC available? Then I suggest iMazing. Free version gives full battery statistics, including voltage, capacity, temperature, battery vendor and manufacturing date etc... Very useful.
It can even access that information by WiFi, so you can monitor battery very detailed way.

IOS apps are not allowed to access that information anymore, so no way to access them by phone anymore. I know many peoples think that is just good as information causes just stress to the peoples, but I'm no one of them and I think hiding that info is just excuse for, well I let anyone use their own brain to determine that.

 

[luckyluca]

ok will check that out on my windows pc.
Although I'm not sure what number I should expect on the iphone xr.

 

[bpeeps]

If you left your phone in the box, you'd probably get 10 days of battery out of it without having to recharge.

 

[0906742]

ok will check that out on my windows pc.
Although I'm not sure what number I should expect on the iphone xr.

​

OK. It is very easy program to use. Just click green battery icon on the lower right. I don't use it for anything else, do when first time starting it, I did not allow it to make any backups or such as I rely on iTunes for those tasks anyway.
[doublepost=1551112107][/doublepost]

If you left your phone in the box, you'd probably get 10 days of battery out of it without having to recharge.

I tried that, still almost 1% drain per hour with power on...
That was with the box it came in. Should I buy some special box for that it gets 10 days?

 

[AlexJoda]

My XR is at about 50% after using it for 4 hours light office use. But that also depends on what you do with it. If you do more CPU/GPU intensive things like watching videos or playing games this goes down much faster....

 

[0906742]

That sounds pretty high drain, since even with my X I can usually consequently surf on the internet with about 12-14% per hour consumption. Drain happens from occasional use where is drops 1-2% almost every time I lift it up while another X we have with good battery does not but it gives about the same battery usage numbers as mine in consequent use.

 

[luckyluca]

My XR is at about 50% after using it for 4 hours light office use. But that also depends on what you do with it. If you do more CPU/GPU intensive things like watching videos or playing games this goes down much faster....

Thanks, did you have your screen on most of the time and what brightness if you don't mind me asking?

 

[b_fitnik]

Coming from an iPhone 7, I’m getting fantastic battery life out of my XR. I usually only charge it every other day with an average of about 4 hours per day of on screen time(probably around 7-8 hours of use per charge).

I use auto brightness but most of the time is around 30%.

I have background app refresh off of all but two apps (Weather and Deliveries)

I have most of my system location services off. Only 4 of mine are left on

Apps are set to only use location while using

Within apps, I have video auto play set to “WiFi only”.

I have WiFi assist off

I do not have WiFi at work, so for about 10hrs out of the day, I use cellular data.

After the phone was purchased, it was also set up as a new device without restoring from iTunes.

With these settings, I couldn’t be happier with my battery life. This is all on 12.1.4. I wouldn’t be satisfied with what you are posting but would have to run the phone without activating airplane mode and disabling features I would like to use to get some actual battery stats before contacting Apple

 

[Motionblurrr]

Good thread. Quick question:

With a new iPhone out of the box.. is it really necessary to tinker around with Background App Refresh on such a new device? Is that a normal thing to check and change with iPhones or is it just better to forget it's even there?

 

[C DM]

Good thread. Quick question:

With a new iPhone out of the box.. is it really necessary to tinker around with Background App Refresh on such a new device? Is that a normal thing to check and change with iPhones or is it just better to forget it's even there?

Just depends on your personal use really and whether or not you might need/want something like that, which more or less applies to many other settings.

 

[Motionblurrr]

Just depends on your personal use really and whether or not you might need/want something like that, which more or less applies to many other settings.

Thanks for your reply. So it IS a good idea to turn them off on apps I rarely use? Or once in a while? For example: I use youtube, snapchat, twitter, WhatsApp, etc etc occasionally. So it's wise to have them enabled in Background App Refresh?

 

[C DM]

Thanks for your reply. So it IS a good idea to turn them off on apps I rarely use? Or once in a while? For example: I use youtube, snapchat, twitter, WhatsApp, etc etc occasionally. So it's wise to have them enabled in Background App Refresh?

There really isn't specifically a good or bad idea as much as what fits your use and the benefits it brings (more up to date data to some degree in some apps) vs. the costs (mostly a little battery life and data usage potentially). You can try disabling/enabling it for some apps to see if it makes a difference when it comes to your usage and your device.

 

[AlexJoda]

Thanks, did you have your screen on most of the time and what brightness if you don't mind me asking?

I have a screen shutoff time of 3 minutes and the brightness slider is about a third from the lowest position...Getting Mails and other messages regularly which switches the display on every time. Checking this messages often which also switches the display on for at least 3 minutes. The activity time is mostly identical to the "display on" time (dark blue bar).

Two days ago I tried to bring the battery down intentionally by setting the brightness to maximum and replay an endless YouTube video. That brought the battery down to 28% with 4 hours activity.

 

[tonybarnaby]

As someone who likes android nearly as much as iOS, it’s a shame how many options android has for “power users”, while iOS only really has the XR. 7+/8+ and xs max are all solid, but nowhere near top tier.

My throwaway phone is a Moto Z Play with a 3510 mah battery and nearly identical size and 5.5” screen. Amoled for the z play. I paid $399 new for it at Best Buy in 2016. Even with over 2 years on the original battery, it crushes the 8+ I use on a daily basis. There are even better options out there too. iPhones have standby drain down to a science, but they just don’t last long enough in my opinion. I considered an XR, but the battery life isn’t leaps and bounds better than my 8+, and I really like the feel in hand of my 8+ due to how wide it is.

 

[dazz87]

Battery life on iphones are overrated............. Before getting my 8 plus all i heard was how great battery life was on iphones........Now with my 8 plus best i could get is 3-4 hours of SOT..........meh.....

 

[Apple_Robert]

Battery life on iphones are overrated............. Before getting my 8 plus all i heard was how great battery life was on iphones........Now with my 8 plus best i could get is 3-4 hours of SOT..........meh.....

If all you got was 3 - 4 hours, either you had a defective phone, rogue app that was hung or not optimized, in a terrible signal area, or some other anomaly.