I fully admit that I am not speaking from experience, and I’m a specific type of user.
First, I track battery life. For every device. I don’t update iOS ever, but the few times that Apple has forced me, I know exactly how much battery life I’ve gotten every step of the way. I’ve been burned. I lost 50% of battery life after my iPhone 6s was forced from iOS 9 to iOS 13, and I lost 30% of battery life after my 9.7-inch iPad Pro was forced from iOS 9 into iOS 12.
Determining actual SOT I’d get from user reports is tough. I’m ridiculously efficient (and I am not exaggerating). Light apps, mostly Wi-Fi, and very efficient settings mean that my 16 Plus (still running iOS 18) gives me 27 hours of light Wi-Fi SOT and maybe 20 with cellular. No social media.
Users typically use higher brightness, inefficient settings, and video-heavy socials, so battery life plummets even on good iOS versions.
I’m not sure how much your specific iPhone has suffered, but like I said, going by user reports and tests, it seemed to hover around the 20% mark for the iPhone 16. Like I said, that’s pathetic: first-major-update iPhones have typically escaped this first update unscathed. Not with iOS 26. And also, typically, the heavier the user, the more they feel the impact. Inefficient usage is the most impacted. People tend to be inefficient (Primarily due to video-heavy social media apps with high brightness).
Solutions are non-existent. That 50% drop with the 6s I mentioned? Unsolvable. If I can get 27 hours out of this, trust me, I know how to get good battery life out of an iOS device. With the 6s it is (I still have it) horrible even with maximum optimisation. I use it for downloaded music on standby on Airplane Mode (!!!) and it’s still a once-a-day iPhone, dropping to like 20-30% after a day with significant music (say, 6-7 hours), which is garbage.
iOS 26? Even worse, Liquid Glass itself is a battery killer, and the entire OS is framed like that. Even if Tinted helps a little, it’s still like trying to patch a bullet injury with a band-aid.
Sadly, all I can offer is attempt some sort of settings optimization and try not to use full brightness all the time. The difference will likely be significant regardless and there’s nothing you can do.
Agree completely. I’ve watched long-form videos about it and I was able to try it on a family member’s iPhone 15 for about half an hour.
It was horrible and I’m glad I have the latest devices that can run iOS 18 (iPhone 16 Plus and the 11th-gen (A16) iPad.
And I think what you said is key. iOS is now mature and used a lot. Apple shouldn’t be overhauling the OS like this if they can’t make it as efficient. No more excuses about newer iOS versions having more features and obliterating battery life. It has to be a mature OS with stability at some point. Regardless of updates, performance and battery life should be unchanged by now.
We are still battling (even if with lower intensity) the issues we had when iOS 4 was the latest. Performance and battery life issues should be a thing of the past.
It is ludicrous that after 15 years of iOS experience I still have to stay behind with everything because otherwise the experience collapses. It has to maintain like-new performance and battery life at some point. The fact that we are still battling this is utterly ludicrous and pathetic.
Thank you for your thoughtful and considered response.
Battery Life
I haven't measured things like you - it's just a finger in the air 'feeling' of how much battery life I typically have.
However, your estimate of 20% sounds about right.
Day to day, iOS 26 is not a disaster for me - but the battery ticks down way faster than it should do for a barely 6 month phone when iOS 26 came out.
You don't expect a very recent phone to suddenly have a battery charge capacity of 80% - but that is effectively what iOS 26 has done to mine.
I don't use social media. I let the iPhone use auto brightness most of the time (and the 16e screen isn't that bright to start with). Netflix etc. I save for my MBA. I've even got adaptive power on.
My main 'sin' is using safari quite a bit - self admitted news addict here - and that seems to burn through the battery more than ever.
Liquid Glass & iOS 18
I must admit, I've always rolled my eyes a bit at people on these forums who post that they tend to stay a version behind as much as possible (on iOS/iPadOS/MacOS), feeling that they are a little too conservative (OK, not for those who use their Macs for work and need things to be absolutely rock solid).
Not any more.
I really regret upgrading from iOS 18 and wish I resisted the new shiny stuff of 26.
As for my Mac: As many have said Tahoe's version of glass seems half finished and cursory - and that is a blessing. Yes, I could downgrade. But since I am stuck on iOS 26 I might as well have feature parity.
Talking of features:
I don't think that the Apple engineering team are incompetent.
What I think has happened is that marketing has the reins and are pushing the narrative of new features each year to keep people feeling that their phones are useful - and to of course push those upgrades when things start to feel slow (because of said new features).
I would contend that most people outside of tech enthusiasts have no idea that these new features even exist.
Take my mother. She doesn't understand - nor does she like why her iPhone - 'went all transparent'. She finds it difficult to read (I did manage to change it to 'tinted' when I was visiting).
She doesn't know that caller screening and spam detection even exists. I don't want to tell her in case she doesn't like the way it works and I have to do remote tech support.
My partner has used the iPhone for 10 years and she only finds out about new features because of me. I doubt that they are exceptions.
And just in case anyone thinks that I am being vaguely patronising - they are normal busy people who have better things to do with their time than to hang around tech enthusiast forums like I do!
My point is that so many of these features must take up so much engineering time just to get good headlines around WWDC and a sense of narrative in the tech press, The Valley, influencers etc.
And that engineering time could be used for boring things like technical debt, bug hunting etc.
I'm not saying 'no' to new features. Just for Apple to exercise the Steve Jobs maxim of saying 'no' more than you say 'yes'.
Make the new features really really count.
For me, great product marketing would be to produce platforms that are absolutely rock solid, that are aimed primarily at regular people, with sensible default settings - and yes, sensible UI. And then to tell people about it.
Most people buy Apple hardware not just because it looks great - but because it is so well built and reliable.
Would it not be a good idea for Apple's software platforms to be the same?
Thanks again.
