iOS 26 battery life thread.

[one more]

Well, the RC pretty much messed up the battery of my iPhone 15. It recalculated that I would need a 85% charging limit for my use, so I left it at that, yet since then every time I plug the iPhone in, it is charged all the way up to a 100%. I have tried the hard restart and will be reinstalling iOS 26 with ISPW on Monday, just in case they come up with a newer build.

Just for the record, I have been running iOS 26 betas since DB3 and no issues at all until the RC.

Anyone else noticed anything strange with the battery on the RC?

Update: reinstalling the RC with IPSW did not fix it for me, so perhaps my iPhone is still trying to recalibrate the battery now, since I have now left the beta channel. Let’s see…

Update 2: after a full overnight charging cycle to a 100% on the RC it seems to have settled and now keeps to the set limit.

 

[Blue Hawk]

The battery life is really terrible. Phone gets warm and battery drain. At least once a day after this happens I get the adaptive power notification. Phone is a little bit cooler and less drain but still too much.

 

[goldmac2006]

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.

This explains why, on the macOS side, many Intel Macs use the OpenCore legacy patcher to bypass compatibility issues with older Macs. However, they resort to using Tahoe on unsupported Macs.

The graphics cards in the 2011s and non-Retina Macs simply cannot keep up with Liquid Glass.

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.

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

Well, the RC pretty much messed up the battery of my iPhone 15. It recalculated that I would need a 85% charging limit for my use, so I left it at that, yet since then every time I plug the iPhone in, it is charged all the way up to a 100%. I have tried the hard restart and will be reinstalling iOS 26 with ISPW on Monday, just in case they come up with a newer build.

Just for the record, I have been running iOS 26 betas since DB3 and no issues at all until the RC.

Anyone else noticed anything strange with the battery on the RC?

The battery life is really terrible. Phone gets warm and battery drain. At least once a day after this happens I get the adaptive power notification. Phone is a little bit cooler and less drain but still too much.

It totally drained a little faster on my 15 pro than last beta’s but not too bad unlike when I first installed the beta back in June

 

[elementalwingma]

After upgrading it’s been a little worse but not so much terrible than 18.6.2 honestly.

 

[jb68]

Battery life on iPhone 16 pro max using iOS 26 RC been terrible. Getting about 5 hours screen on time

 

[lindros2]

Update.
15PM. doing very little.
Battery crashed 97% > 83%.
Even when charging for a minute went 94>91%.
Yes I rebooted.
RC1 is trash.

 

[goldmac2006]

After upgrading it’s been a little worse but not so much terrible than 18.6.2 honestly.

Battery life on iPhone 16 pro max using iOS 26 RC been terrible. Getting about 5 hours screen on time

Update.
15PM. doing very little.
Battery crashed 97% > 83%.
Even when charging for a minute went 94>91%.
Yes I rebooted.
RC1 is trash.

Same here
But no heat issues on my end when it drains like crazy

 

[lindros2]

Same here
But no heat issues on my end when it drains like crazy

The release reviews should be great this week.
Nice job Apple.

 

[lindros2]

It totally drained a little faster on my 15 pro than last beta’s but not too bad unlike when I first installed the beta back in June

Yeah but it's not June any more.
Beta 8 and 9 were great.

RC1 is the worst RC since... I don't remember.

 

[s2mike]

Just dropped from 95% to 94%… this iPhone 17 Pro can’t come soon enough!

 

[goldmac2006]

The release reviews should be great this week.
Nice job Apple.

this should have been a stable release like any other RC would have

Yeah but it's not June any more.
Beta 8 and 9 were great.

RC1 is the worst RC since... I don't remember.

I understand … my iPhone 15 pro did have the worst drain in beta 1-3 of iOS 26.

 

[sziehr]

i can say from the ipad, the PB 4 aka not RC was much better battery life, then the RC and poof there went the battery and here came the heat. I have seen the same on my iphone 15 pro. I kinda want to cancel my order for the 17 pro as this software is just so trash right now

 

[Blue Hawk]

iPhone 16 Pro Max. Do you think this is good? At least I still have battery while going to sleep.

 

[goldmac2006]

Just dropped from 95% to 94%… this iPhone 17 Pro can’t come soon enough!

View attachment 2548798

iPhone model, please? Where’d you upgrading from?

i can say from the ipad, the PB 4 aka not RC was much better battery life, then the RC and poof there went the battery and here came the heat. I have seen the same on my iphone 15 pro. I kinda want to cancel my order for the 17 pro as this software is just so trash right now

Witnessed it a lot on my end too 😤

And it duked battery life so much for me. The worst drain was when I had graduation from college my iPhone battery plummeted like crazy.

iPhone 16 Pro Max. Do you think this is good? At least I still have battery while going to sleep.

Decent to me I have that result on the RC on my end

Here’s a sample from last Wednesday when I went to school all day

I left it off the charger when I went to class for a few hours

 

[c613m]

I’ve been impressed with the RC, seems to be getting better and better every day as usage stabilizes to normal on my 2 week old 16 Pro Max.

 

[sziehr]

What I find interesting is the fact it is all over the place some of us has horrible issues and others fine. Always screams to be some sort of stuck process.

 

[goldmac2006]

I’ve been impressed with the RC, seems to be getting better and better every day as usage stabilizes to normal on my 2 week old 16 Pro Max.

Interesting 🧐 16 pro is one of the narrowest demographics of all iPhone users here on this thread that don’t have these weird draining issues vs 15 pro and other models

What I find interesting is the fact it is all over the place some of us has horrible issues and others fine. Always screams to be some sort of stuck process.

Agreeable it’s a mixed bag of things

 

[James6s]

The battery life of my 16 Pro has been significantly better on the RC vs all previous betas. It’s getting better and better as time goes by after the update.

 

[one more]

What I find interesting is the fact it is all over the place some of us has horrible issues and others fine. Always screams to be some sort of stuck process.

I don’t have excessive battery drain, yet every time I plug my iPhone 15 in, it tries to charge all the way up to a 100% instead of a limit set to 85%. Reinstalling RC with IPSW did not help. 🤷🏻‍♂️

 

[kecinzer]

I'm not satisfied with RC on 16PM. Heating and battery drain. I hope for fix, but I doubt that there will be different build today.

 

[sziehr]

I'm not satisfied with RC on 16PM. Heating and battery drain. I hope for fix, but I doubt that there will be different build today.

you know what to do DFU and go back to 18 since you can and still have decently new hardware. I wished they would get hip and release the new phones with old OS option for those of us who need a new handset but need stability at all costs

 

[Blue Hawk]

I have disabled VPN today but my device is still warm and draining battery. Wow.

 

[Wasp14]

My iPhone 15 took a few days to normalize and now it feels similar or the same as to what I was getting on iOS18. Was worried at first but it must have been indexing for a day or so.

 

[FeliApple]

iPhone 16 Pro Max. Do you think this is good? At least I still have battery while going to sleep.

That is very poor. 6 hours of SOT with 76% battery usage on an iPhone 16 Pro Max either says that you’re a very heavy user, with high brightness and/or heavy apps, or iOS 26 is horrible.

Were you getting anything better on iOS 18?

 

[Blue Hawk]

That is very poor. 6 hours of SOT with 76% battery usage on an iPhone 16 Pro Max either says that you’re a very heavy user, with high brightness and/or heavy apps, or iOS 26 is horrible.

Were you getting anything better on iOS 18?

I think I’ve had 2 hours more screen on time.