That’s a best practice strategy, for sure.
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I never update an OS until at least the x.1 version and then wait at least 4 days
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I trust the beta process enough, so I don’t think it’s necessary to take these precautions. Doesn’t mean I never encountered a bug, but they are rarely significant enough to ruin my workflow. To each their own.
Best practice is to run the beta, so you know what you're getting yourself into. By the time you reach Release Candidate, you'll be so happy you aren't running the betas and you won't care about the little bugs.
I've updated day one plenty of times and have been lucky. Sometimes I get a premonition that I should wait a bit longer. I've got that feeling that I need to wait a bit this time, so I just installed the security update 15.7 and will hang out on it for a bit. But as a general rule, waiting is a good idea.
Ask Xʀ users about their battery life on iOS 16... it’ll be half what mine is on iOS 12. There’s no contest (unfortunately).
Usually trade it in, but that usually happens after 5-6 years of having the phone.
So, in the meantime you just tolerate the honestly pretty severe battery impact of iOS updates? Or do you upgrade frequently but you keep the older devices until a certain point? (Like you said, until they get no more iOS updates)
I update the minute the new iOS comes out. I want those security updates. Have never had any problems or regrets.
I have the Xʀ on iOS 12. What’s your general usage pattern and screen-on time? If you want to, you can upload a screenshot of the last 24 hours screen.
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You have the latest devices. Problems with battery life start to appear two or three major versions in (mostly. The Xʀ saw a noticeable impact on iOS 13 IIRC). If you upgrade both iPhone and iPad every year, you will never see them, point updates are mostly harmless. As long as you’re on the first (and occasionally the second) major version, it will always be okay.
I’ve never really noticed actual screen time since I use my iPad almost as much as my iPhone. Perfect example is I charged my iPad yesterday and took it off the charger around 2:30 pm. Mind you my iPad is slightly older being the 10.5 inch iPad Pro running iPadOS 16 beta, and used it for around 4 hours yesterday, left it in standby all night and have used it since 6:30 am today using Split View for email and web browsing and it still has 46% charge left. Did the same thing basically with my iPhone XR, except used it for navigation 3 times yesterday and it still has 58% remaining.
Have to say that is impressive for devices that are 4 and 5 years old running basically the latest operating systems.
That sounds okay honestly. Can you add the screen-on time of the battery section of yesterday and today? Or upload a screenshot of the battery page, if you like. Of the iPad, I mean.
I see good battery life on my XS (note haven't done the 16 update, but I will). But I replaced the battery this year. Generally I do a battery replacement after year two or three. Used to do them myself by opening the phone up and sticking in a $40 battery. But the phones got harder to work on. Now it is about $70 or $80 for the work and the battery to get a replacement. Maybe the OS hits the battery harder, but since it is a new battery, I've never had significant battery life issues.
Interestingly, the 14 seems to be an intentional shift toward making the phone more reparable.
It’s hard to quantify that without numbers. I’m not saying that the battery life isn’t enough on every model after two or three major iOS updates, I’m saying that it’s worse than it was on its original version. Regarding battery replacements, I’ve found that they improve battery life when compared to a degraded battery on an updated device (which makes sense), but, if updated far enough, it can never match the original iOS version (even when the latter has a severely degraded battery!).
People generally don’t mind a moderate drop in screen-on time, especially on relatively current devices with good battery life and larger batteries, but that doesnt mean the battery life is good, just that the user finds it adequate.
I will give an example, the iPhone 6s: that device has, according to my experience and the experience of countless others, four tiers of battery life (I haven’t used every single iOS version, but I’ve used a few, and I’ve read about the others:
iOS 9/10: flawless battery life. It’s not perfect by today’s standards, but it‘s amazing when compared to later versions. It’s about 8-8.5 hours with light use, give it take a little based on usage, obviously. Go heavier and it’s lower, but for the sake of this comparison, let’s just pick light usage (web browsing, light reading, texting and other light apps on Wi-Fi only, low brightness).
iOS 11/12: Considerable drop, to about 5-6 hours of screen-on time. In terms of percentage, that matches the drop I had when Apple forced my 9.7-inch iPad Pro (with a similar processor, just better GPU) from iOS 9 to iOS 12.
iOS 13/14: Fell off a cliff. If it scraped 6 hours on iOS 12, it scrapes 4 on iOS 13 and 14. Here people started to really complain, many saying “I have to charge multiple times a day”. I tested an iPhone 6s on iOS 13 with 94% health, and it was about half of what I’m getting on an iPhone 6s on iOS 10 with 65% health. It probably stopped being fully useful as a full-day device with light use around here. (If not on iOS 11-12)
iOS 15: Even worse. it scrapes 3, it’s a shadow of its former self.
And there you have the tale of how Apple irreversibly ruined a perfect good iPhone in 7 years. Arguably, they ruined it in four. By 2019-2020 it was a shadow of its former self.
But is that because iPhone batteries tend to take about 2 years to degrade to a noticeable point (~80% of orig. capacity), which is about the same time frame for 2-3 iOS updates?
That is not the reason due to two main factors:
-iPhones in original iOS versions retain almost like-new runtime and screen-on time even with severely degraded batteries (under 70% health). Yeah, it might drop a little, but compared to the impact of iOS updates, it’s largely irrelevant. I used to say ”when in original iOS versions, battery health is largely irrelevant unless severely degraded”. Extensive testing made me scrap that and replace it with “battery health is completely irrelevant in original iOS versions unless unusably degraded”, and 64% health appears to be over that threshold, to state a number (my iPhone 6s cruises to almost 8 hours of screen-on time with light use and 64% health; conversely, my former iPhone 6s on iOS 13 with 94% health struggles to surpass 4 hours with the exact same light use).
-iPhones do not regain the original runtime if updated far enough, even after replacing the battery and even when comparing them to the same model in its original iOS version with a severely degraded battery. There is absolutely nothing a user can do to regain like-new battery life should they choose to update a device far enough, they can only improve it negligibly by replacing the battery, and - if applicable - by using the phone more lightly and/or disabling settings.