I have an older iPhone still on iOS 18, so I could theoretically run this same kind of test on that device, upgrade it to iOS 26, and run it again if anyone is interested.
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iOS 26.1 Beta Liquid Glass Battery Drain Test: Tinted vs Clear Mode
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I have an older iPhone still on iOS 18, so I could theoretically run this same kind of test on that device, upgrade it to iOS 26, and run it again if anyone is interested.
Thisssss. The idea that Liquid Glass would have any meaningful impact on battery life is just nonsense.
I doubt such a test would have accurate results, though, as it needs time to index things after updating. When running one test before another right after updating, it might make the first test seem slower if it still needs indexing.
Any thoughts on Adaptive Power Mode? Is it trigger happy or does it throttle things only when needed?
Or, could be whatever minor difference the calculations of the results from one shader (along with the hundreds/thousands of other things the entire system is doing at the same time) WOULD show, is substantially dwarfed by the power hungry OLED.
Anyone trying to find the power impact of a system as sophisticated as this rendering a few low complexity shaders versus not rendering those shaders are going to have to go down to the SoC diagnostic level. As long as the OLED is a part of the equation, the only thing anyone will notice is when the system is going full out rendering a full screen of ACTUAL 3D assets.
Especially considering the vast majority of third party apps haven't adopted it. I feel like I barely even see Liquid Glass.
An option to change the intensity should have always existed.
It’s only embarrassing that they took this long to add it.
People don’t remember (or never knew) that OLED’s came with a significant downside. While non-OLED screens had a specific power draw, OLED screens power draw depended on what’s on the screen. A competitor’s non-OLED screen with a bright background could have all day life while the same background on an OLED phone would be decreased by some amount. It was such a issue that people would create black backgrounds (FFFFFF) to ensure the lowest power draw.
OLED’s has become more efficient, but they still, by far, are the biggest power draw in any smartphone.
I don’t know.
Maybe the test should be longer, so that possible trends aren’t just a single percentage point off of each other.
Also, like others mentioned, most apps that were tested don’t have any Liquid Glass effects anywhere anyway, so maybe you could test with first party apps and updated third party apps with more animations over a longer timeframe.
Maybe the test should be longer, so that possible trends aren’t just a single percentage point off of each other.
Also, like others mentioned, most apps that were tested don’t have any Liquid Glass effects anywhere anyway, so maybe you could test with first party apps and updated third party apps with more animations over a longer timeframe.
For better battery life remember to turn off Wi-Fi if away from usable Wi-Fi networks for a while (and you don't need the enhanced location accuracy). It's even easy to access in Control Center.
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It's not a really well designed experiment. You only used 2/5 apps which use Liquid Glass in iOS 26 natively and a few other apps which run on React Native. It doesn't actually accomplish anything. Just lazy.
I'm not really surprised at the similar results. iOS 26 is still fairly unpolished so we will see the 17 series shine once 26.5 comes around or so.
Usually when Apple is ready to unveil their new major version is when you start to notice the combined effort of months of bugfixing after the (rushed) September launch.
Usually when Apple is ready to unveil their new major version is when you start to notice the combined effort of months of bugfixing after the (rushed) September launch.
But that's real life. One option setting for liquid glass could theoretically use twice the processing power but if it's rare compared to all the other processing then you'd never notice it. And the question of noticing it in typical usage is what really matters.
The difference shown on that pretty popular test was full control and notification center pull-downs, which is a far more representative test. This is just testing primarily non-Liquid-Glass-related drains.
WILL IOS26.1 FIX ALL OF THESE CRAZY RANDOM GLITCHES LIKE EVERYWHERE
This, along with your iPhone 15 and 16 battery limit tests, have been very useful reporting. Thank you, Juli!
You could say that about any UI - we could just use the command line again if you want maximum savings.
