Updated my iPhone 11 to 26 RC. The battery life with the screen on is now 1 hour less than with 18.6.1. Otherwise: no freezes, lags, jerks, the phone works great on the new iOS, animations are faster than in iOS 18.
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iOS 26 battery life thread.
- Thread starter goldmac2006
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Apple Says Installing iOS 26 Might Impact Battery Life
In the iOS 26 release notes, Apple is warning iPhone users that installing the new software might have a temporary impact on battery life, which is...
www.macrumors.com
Temporary. Like any update in the first day after installation. On old iPhones, by the way, updates work immediately without unnecessary heating and consumption. My iPhone 11, starting with iOS 15, almost never heated up or discharged quickly after updates.Apple Says Installing iOS 26 Might Impact Battery Life
In the iOS 26 release notes, Apple is warning iPhone users that installing the new software might have a temporary impact on battery life, which is...
I't depends on the user, device, apps, amount of data, version your are upgrading from, it its on battery or external power, network speed and type, type of data that's processed, recalibrating battery and quite possibly a load of other things. Different devices also have different features enabled and also different hw that can cause heat.
"Temporary" can be a number of days depending on some of what I mentioned above.
On top of that we have apps that hasn't been tested and also can cause issues.
For more than 5 years of using iPhone 11 and numerous updates and changes to the conditions you listed - there was almost never any "additional installation of additional settings" after the update. If the firmware is good, the phone immediately works as it should.
I very rarely experience any issues on my phones either, but obivously people do have issues and there has been talks about this on nearly every OS release since many years back. We all use our devices differently and talks about "post processing" activites has been going on for a long time.
With iOS 18 (or if it was 17) they added that info in the battery section to inform the user that there are activites after the installation that goes on that can affect battery performance.
Edit: I read somewhere recently that things such as the phone case can significantly affect a device's heat dissipation. Not saying that's always the issue but I can absolutely see that it may contribute to issues.
My battery has been shot to bits since the betas went weekly and it hasn't improved since the RC and then the updated release from yesterday.
Hoping it'll settle in now and improves.
Hoping it'll settle in now and improves.
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Very interesting, but after update from RC version to release yesterday (only 1 build difference), battery seems to be much better for me 👍.
I have 9 hours of screen on on 18.6.1. On 26 RC (which was released earlier) - 7 hours of screen on.
“Further, Apple says that new features could require more resources, leading to a "small impact" on performance and battery life.“ (From the MR article)Apple Says Installing iOS 26 Might Impact Battery Life
In the iOS 26 release notes, Apple is warning iPhone users that installing the new software might have a temporary impact on battery life, which is...
“New features are exciting and help you get even more out of your Apple product, though some may require additional resources from the device. Depending on individual usage, some users may notice a small impact on performance and/or battery life.” (From Apple’s support document)
“Small impact”. Very funny. Be truthful, Apple. More like “iOS updates may incur a penalty of up to a 50-60% battery life loss compared to the device’s original iOS version. Since we disallow downgrading because reasons, the battery life loss is irreversible. Good luck”.
Still, congratulations to Apple for finally acknowledging this. They spent 18 iterations denying it.
I don't have any heating, but the battery percentage goes down faster than 18 iOS.
Also… if Apple posted this, does this mean that iOS 26 obliterates battery life? I don’t recall this being said before, but I might be wrong about it.
Yes, it will. Go to the start of the ios 18 forum and find the same complaints from people who upgraded from 17 to 18. It’s the same shock and surprise every year that isn’t a shock or a surprise. Give it a few days and it will settle.
On some iOS 16 I waited a month and suffered from a hot phone and fast discharge. When iOS 16.7.1 came out - after flashing the phone immediately cooled down and stopped discharging quickly. This is the only case in 5 years of buggy firmware.
Nothing “settled” in 18. It took multiple point releases to get the battery life back where it was acceptable. It sounds like 26 is even worse, given that Apple has had to release that note about permanent impact on battery life.
That isn’t what the release notes say. They say it’s temporary while it does the usual indexing and could be permanent depending on what features are used but that they will look to improve.
Ummm… okay. That’s pretty much what I said, just coated in corpospeak ambiguity.
Very, very poor. But I don’t know anything about how you used it. Brightness, apps used, etc.
Similarly, my old SE1 got noticeably more battery hungry when I upgraded from 14.8.1 to 15.8.something directly, and it wasn't temporary.