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Does turning off Apple Intelligence Improve Battery Life?
- Thread starter Red29359
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Haven’t noticed a difference, battery life was the same for me on 16 Pro and now on 17 PM.
Having tried Apple Intelligence for the first time this weekend on my iPhone 17 and iPad Pro (M5), I have just turned it off on both devices and will not touch it again until iOS 26.4.
The main reason - it uses a lot of battery power and heats my iPhone up, as it tries to do everything on device. The battery drain was obvious even overnight, when iPhone was idle.
It is just not ripe yet and stays in Beta for a reason, IMO. The only real useful feature for me was the text proofreading and translating, but I can easily do it with stand-alone ChatGPT & Gemini apps, without cooking my devices.
The main reason - it uses a lot of battery power and heats my iPhone up, as it tries to do everything on device. The battery drain was obvious even overnight, when iPhone was idle.
It is just not ripe yet and stays in Beta for a reason, IMO. The only real useful feature for me was the text proofreading and translating, but I can easily do it with stand-alone ChatGPT & Gemini apps, without cooking my devices.
I have not noticed any difference. Overnight battery drain is null. Phone does not get hot. Maybe there still needs to be some code optimization for the iPhone 17s.
Are you saying that turning on Apple Intelligence causes your iPhone to overheat? I would say something else is going on. I have Apple Intelligence turned on, think it was turned on by default when I got the 17 Pro Max. No battery drain, no over heating, it just works like any other iPhone I have ever had just has a feature turned on that I never use.
Agreed. I have it turned off, but it was on for a while and I haven't noticed any change. It's not doing anything when you're not using it, so not sure why it would be heating up the phone.
Yes, while AI was still indexing and the iPhone was plugged into Apple’s 20W charger, it would heat up much more than usual. The heating up was occasional, yet the battery drain was very obvious.
Maybe initially. But if overheating continues there is another issue.
I had it turned on on my 17PM which I got on launch day, never gotten hot, whether or not it impacted battery life, well, it was new, so who knows?
I turned Apple Intelligence off a month or so ago and have not noticed any difference in battery performance, but that is just my unscientific observation.
That’s been exactly my experience. Had it on and now it’s off. Haven’t noticed a difference.
But I also didn’t actively use any of the features. Email summaries and things like that I had toggled off.
Yup, not using any of the features was my reasoning for turning it off. Have not found anything useful, meaning something that makes my life easier, in any of the "AI" offerings thus far, and I know that others are different, thus my opinion only.
I have had it off from day one and it’s still using 12.68GB of storage. Not a huge deal since I have plenty of space left but annoying that I can’t clear it since I’m not planing on ever using it unless the upcoming features in the rumored 26.4 update are actually useful to me. I’m also weary to turn it on as I’m afraid my awesome battery life may be changed.
There does seem to be some phantom drain in my iPad Pro m5, but not on my 15PM. Maybe one more iOS release. The IPP M5 is definitely not being cooked though.
My IPP M5 was not cooked either, it’s my iPhone 17 (not Pro) that took most of the load. Disabled AI on both of them and reinstalled 26.2 over with IPSW. Back to happy days now on both, using ChatGPT and Gemini apps as needed.