iOS 26 battery life thread.

[chrisf60647]

Newest PB. Initally when i loaded the beta last week, battery drain was pretty high. As apps update, and the sits for a bit, i must say battery life is pretty good. Again, i thik some apps are more optimized than others though.

15 pro max

 

[goldmac2006]

Yes, but it is the same-old issue. It works if and only if you unplug at the beginning of the day without having used the device earlier. Either you unplugged at 00:00 or at, say, 7 am and you haven’t used it 00:00-07:00.

And the cycle must not span two days or more. Apple keeps constraining the conditions for which a simple glance is enough.

Funny that they have always been so absolutely pathetic at designing battery pages that they never quite got it right. How can you be so bad at the only job that that screen has?

iOS 5-11, Apple added “usage time and standby time”. Usage time included EVERYTHING. The system’s background usage was counted just like listening to music with the screen off and just like gaming at full brightness. Good luck. To gauge battery life, you had to ask a million questions: “did you listen to music with the screen off?”

“did you have system usage show up there?” (Or at least, did you notice the usage time ballooning without usage (it happened a lot)

“why does it say “iPhone plugged in since last full charge”?, “did you let it drop to, say, 30 and then unplugged it at 54? If so, it’s adding both cycles together and that number is useless”.

iOS 12-18, Apple finally added SOT, but made it “last 24 hours” instead of “since last full charge”, so it included both on and off-charger usage, so good luck gauging that without screenshots. Also, the SOT number would only be relevant for the first 24 hours. iOS gods forbid a user had a longer cycle, because then you’d have to track it manually. The “last 24 hours” number was the one that shows on the “screen-on”, and people assumed it was since last full charge, and therefore reported garbage. Most users can’t read this graph.

on iOS 26, Apple destroyed everything. The only way I can determine SOT is if you unplug the first time you touch the phone after 00:00, as there is no hourly breakdown and no hourly indication of charging. It’s useless barring that specific usage pattern which nobody follows.

Apple, can you get it right? Once? It’s unbelievable at this point. How can you be so awful at making a graph? It isn’t that difficult…

Battery endurance test completed successfully.

During the school day, I noticed a slight drop in battery life, approximately 37%, over a period of 6 to 7 hours. Remarkably, I never plugged in my iPhone throughout the entire duration.

The battery drain appears to be gradual, and considering that the standby time (SOT) is only 2 hours, it seems that the battery was being drained at a rate that exceeded the SOT. My only usage of the iPhone was for taking pictures during the science lab and checking my messages.

 

[FeliApple]

Battery endurance test completed successfully.

During the school day, I noticed a slight drop in battery life, approximately 37%, over a period of 6 to 7 hours. Remarkably, I never plugged in my iPhone throughout the entire duration.

The battery drain appears to be gradual, and considering that the standby time (SOT) is only 2 hours, it seems that the battery was being drained at a rate that exceeded the SOT. My only usage of the iPhone was for taking pictures during the science lab and checking my messages.


View attachment 2543302View attachment 2543301

What’s that? 89%-62% after 2h 17 minutes of SOT? Is that accurate?

If so... on a 15 Pro, that looks like 8-9 hours of SOT with that usage for a 100%-0% charge.

Brightness? Wi-Fi or mobile data? Texting and a little camera... how much camera? How many minutes of use?

 

[goldmac2006]

What’s that? 89%-62% after 2h 17 minutes of SOT? Is that accurate?

If so... on a 15 Pro, that looks like 8-9 hours of SOT with that usage for a 100%-0% charge.

Brightness? Wi-Fi or mobile data? Texting and a little camera... how much camera? How many minutes of use?

On campus WiFi all the time so cellular was negligible as a control variable.
The time is an independent variable of which is the duration of how my iPhone lasted during the day but the iPhone was mostly on AOD on the desk or in my pockets as I use my Mac more in school.

I only used the camera for a few minutes for the lab, journal app, and brightness was only 50%. Not high in any way.

It is mostly an idle drain.

 

[FeliApple]

On campus WiFi all the time so cellular was negligible as a control variable.
The time is an independent variable of which is the duration of how my iPhone lasted during the day but the iPhone was mostly on AOD on the desk or in my pockets as I use my Mac more in school.

I only used the camera for a few minutes for the lab, journal app, and brightness was only 50%. Not high in any way.

It is mostly an idle drain.

With Wi-Fi and a 15 Pro, 50% brightness, mostly texting and the journal app I would’ve expected a little more than that.

Apple claims 23 hours. That’s only reachable with very low brightness (<5%), very light apps, Wi-Fi, and fully optimised settings.

Without that but with optimised settings, 50% brightness, a few mins of camera and texting... perhaps I’d expect 70% of that? 60%? So maybe 14-16 hours? Add the fact that it’s a beta and that perhaps your settings aren’t perfectly optimised, and yeah, maybe that’s okay-ish. If iOS 26 didn’t obliterate battery life by itself (which who knows, there is some likelihood to that), I think you could do better than that with some optimisation.

 

[James6s]

Yes, but it is the same-old issue. It works if and only if you unplug at the beginning of the day without having used the device earlier. Either you unplugged at 00:00 or at, say, 7 am and you haven’t used it 00:00-07:00.

And the cycle must not span two days or more. Apple keeps constraining the conditions for which a simple glance is enough.

Funny that they have always been so absolutely pathetic at designing battery pages that they never quite got it right. How can you be so bad at the only job that that screen has?

iOS 5-11, Apple added “usage time and standby time”. Usage time included EVERYTHING. The system’s background usage was counted just like listening to music with the screen off and just like gaming at full brightness. Good luck. To gauge battery life, you had to ask a million questions: “did you listen to music with the screen off?”

“did you have system usage show up there?” (Or at least, did you notice the usage time ballooning without usage (it happened a lot)

“why does it say “iPhone plugged in since last full charge”?, “did you let it drop to, say, 30 and then unplugged it at 54? If so, it’s adding both cycles together and that number is useless”.

iOS 12-18, Apple finally added SOT, but made it “last 24 hours” instead of “since last full charge”, so it included both on and off-charger usage, so good luck gauging that without screenshots. Also, the SOT number would only be relevant for the first 24 hours. iOS gods forbid a user had a longer cycle, because then you’d have to track it manually. The “last 24 hours” number was the one that shows on the “screen-on”, and people assumed it was since last full charge, and therefore reported garbage. Most users can’t read this graph.

on iOS 26, Apple destroyed everything. The only way I can determine SOT is if you unplug the first time you touch the phone after 00:00, as there is no hourly breakdown and no hourly indication of charging. It’s useless barring that specific usage pattern which nobody follows.

Apple, can you get it right? Once? It’s unbelievable at this point. How can you be so awful at making a graph? It isn’t that difficult…

Well yesterday I unplugged the charger at about 7:30am at 100%, the screenshot at 94% was taken at 10am. No useage at all from the night before 11pm to 6:45am whilst I was asleep.

The new battery interface settings is a little confusing IMO, visually I think it looks good.

I can say that I had more screen time yesterday than the day before and used less of the batteries capacity.

I gave it a quick top up charge about 8pm from 36% to 50% as I try to avoid any deep discharges.

A slight improvement in battery life over the previous beta, and it usually takes a good few days to properly settles down after a software update.

 

[ATmahe]

On campus WiFi all the time so cellular was negligible as a control variable.

Yes and no.
You have to take in consideration, that iOS may perform more background tasks (or background tasks more often) when connected to WiFi compared to when not.
But this also depends on how much battery and day you have left.
From my experience it's not that simple, there is more than one variable which influences those background tasks.
(even without this new adaptive power mode)

 

[goldmac2006]

Apple claims 23 hours. That’s only reachable with very low brightness (<5%), very light apps, Wi-Fi, and fully optimised settings.

Yes and no.
You have to take in consideration, that iOS may perform more background tasks (or background tasks more often) when connected to WiFi compared to when not.
But this also depends on how much battery and day you have left.
From my experience it's not that simple, there is more than one variable which influences those background tasks.
(even without this new adaptive power mode)

Hey, guess what analogy came to mind? Remember the Apple Watch Ultra 2 and the first-generation Apple Watch’s official battery stats? The longest 72hr battery life you can get is only if you turn off AOD and put low power mode on. That’s the independent variable. Now, the dependent variables come into play. The apps you use, background usage like workout tracking and sleep tracking, how many times you raise your wrist to check the time, the brightness of your Apple Watch face, and any apps you use to check data are dependent variables. The control variables are the type of connection you use.

If I add in all the browsing I do on Safari, playing music from my iPhone instead of my AirPods when I’m on campus without my Mac open, the correlation of the data will change. It’ll actually decrease more, but I’m excited to test again next Wednesday on that.

Adaptive Power Mode (iOS 26’s new battery mode) and Low Power mode are also considered control variables because they sense the battery’s charge level and usage pattern, which wasn’t the case before. The 90% battery charge limit is just the starting point for this test.

 

[FeliApple]

Well yesterday I unplugged the charger at about 7:30am at 100%, the screenshot at 94% was taken at 10am. No useage at all from the night before 11pm to 6:45am whilst I was asleep.

The new battery interface settings is a little confusing IMO, visually I think it looks good.

I can say that I had more screen time yesterday than the day before and used less of the batteries capacity.

I gave it a quick top up charge about 8pm from 36% to 50% as I try to avoid any deep discharges.

A slight improvement in battery life over the previous beta, and it usually takes a good few days to properly settles down after a software update.

Yes, so in your case (plugged-in and with NO usage 23:00-06:45), the number is accurate.

But, most importantly, I don’t know that unless you tell me. Whereas I did know that from a screenshot before.

4.5 hours to 57%, without knowing usage, is rather poor, so I’d assume usage was moderately heavy.

You see, were you to show me a screenshot right after unplugging at 50% the second time… and it would be massively misleading, as I’d have no way of knowing unless you told me.

Let’s extrapolate your result: if it was 4.5 hours to 57%, then with the same usage pattern it was, more or less, 6.5 hours to 36%, maybe a little less, 6h 20 min.

You can show me a screenshot right after you unplug with 50% remaining, and I’d see 6.5 hours of SOT with 50%. Massively misleading, as you were nowhere close to that. The more you charge, the more misleading. It’s just poor design.

Now, there is no indication of a middle-of-the-day recharge. And most importantly, what if… instead of recharging at 23:00 you did so at 02:30 after using it a while 00:00-02:30? Then the number is useless as I would have to subtract that, but I have no way of knowing what your screen-on time was during that period!

Therefore, all I can do as a reader is the following: “distrust and disregard any and all iOS 26 screenshots unless the user explicitly states they charged once, overnight, whilst sleeping, and that they didn’t use it on the same day before unplugging”. Every other result is inadmissible. Just garbage by Apple.

 

[Reverend Benny]

Anyone has any more updates or input that's running the latest beta regarding battery-time? And would be interesting to hear from users that are using "adaptive power mode" and not altering power modes manually.

Has anyone noticed any negative aspects of "adaptive power mode"?

 

[ATmahe]

Has anyone noticed any negative aspects of "adaptive power mode"?

These could also be caused by other stuff, but that's what I've recognized:
It looks like push mail isn't on all the time (I'm using Exchange Online), I've experienced delays up to 15 minutes, never had this before (on iOS18).
Sometimes it feels like the refresh rate of the display is 60 Hz.

I wouldn't say it extends how long the phone lasts, at least compared to iOS18. (I have APM on since I installed iOS26)

But my daily usage isn't high, it's usually between 1.5 to 3 hours, depending on my work day.

Oh and once, LPM got activated automatically, but imho that's not a negative aspect.

 

[goldmac2006]

The iOS 26 RC may come out after the  iPhone announcement event, which should stabilise things on battery life.

Let’s see what happens next

 

[Blue Hawk]

The iOS 26 RC may come out after the  iPhone announcement event, which should stabilise things on battery life.

Let’s see what happens next

I think it is downloading the whole OS anyway so OTA is enough? Don’t know how to do with the Apple Watch. I need to reset it

 

[goldmac2006]

I think it is downloading the whole OS anyway so OTA is enough? Don’t know how to do with the Apple Watch. I need to reset it

Apple Watch watchOS updates can be done via the paired iPhone on the Apple Watch app.

 

[lindros2]

Beta 9 - GREAT!
RC - terrible

This is like every time, every build, every year.
Also this is why I run betas. No idea why Apple does this, or WHAT RC/GA has to crater battery life.

 

[Tomas1988]

Beta 9 - GREAT!
RC - terrible

This is like every time, every build, every year.
Also this is why I run betas. No idea why Apple does this, or WHAT RC/GA has to crater battery life.

I’ve been waiting a long time to hear a comment like yours — that beta versions always worked better for me than the final ones. I agree with you, I’ve had exactly the same experience

 

[goldmac2006]

I’ve been waiting a long time to hear a comment like yours — that beta versions always worked better for me than the final ones. I agree with you, I’ve had exactly the same experience

Here’s mine on RC… on a long school day same SOT as last week’s

 

[tong_si_nan_pei]

My RC is running terrible, even one day after flash using ipsw and restore from backup. Terrible drain, running hot, stuttering all the time. iPhone 16 Pro. Took it off charge this morning and drained 10% in 15 mins doing basic stuff. Also took 2% off maximum capacity in 1 day.

 

[TwoBytes]

ios 26 has a worse battery than 18—it's a given since 18 was refined—but I'm left with 20-30% less juice than normal, which is huge.

edit : 16 Pro max

 

[fergus2019]

ios 26 has a worse battery than 18—it's a given since 18 was refined—but I'm left with 20-30% less juice than normal, which is huge.

what iPhone?

 

[TwoBytes]

what iPhone?

iphone 16 pro max

 

[SoYoung]

Reading the feedback concerning the 16 pro series, I’ll definitively update to iOS 18.7 instead of 26 Monday and will wait for better battery feedback. It sounds terrible for what I’ve read.

 

[Jakesky123]

I downgraded back to iOS 18 after RC came out, still much worse battery life than on 18. I think they can optimize all they want but those fancy "liquid glass" graphics and animation need more CPU and GPU usage and have to use more power than before. Reminds me a lot of when I upgraded my old Dell to Vista from XP, it was pretty yes but pretty requires effort.

 

[iL15hts]

Battery life on RC running worse on my phone than previous beta. I’m using iPhone 16

 

[MCKLMT]

RC running worse on my phone than previous beta. I’m using iPhone 16

Why is it worse? Battery life or what?