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I have noticed that my 15 Pro Max is draining much faster on iOS26 than it was on iOS18. At the end of the day, with typical use I previously had around 30% - 40% battery remaining and only on very heavy usage days had to plug in to make it through the day. The past two days I’ve been closer to 10% - 20% charge remaining. Hoping it’s just re-indexing / background activities that will finish and stabilise over the coming days.
Regarding my experience with iOS 26, it sounds legit. There is some indexing at first, but overall, iOS 26 at this point is more demanding with all the new effects and animations.
Hopefully, they can optimise this further with the upcoming updates.
 
Haha how should he know about the vapour chamber? It’s a tiny piece. It doesn’t make a sound or gives a signal 😄
But it is supposed to do its job if y’all’s 17 pros overheat, right? Then the thermals being improved can help with the problem of battery drain.


The battery life on the 16 Pro Max is absolutely ridiculous on iOS 26. The phone is constantly warm and losing percentage just from doing almost nothing. With the 80% charge limit enabled, it was already down to 79% when I woke up, and it dropped to 76% just from checking my sleep stats and notifications. On iOS 18, the phone would stay at 80% for at least 1–2 hours with the same light usage and standby. There’s clearly a problem here, and it’s unacceptable for a phone that’s only one year old. The iPhone 17 is irrelevant in this discussion because this device is supposed to run well on iOS 26.

I know I said earlier that I wouldn’t update, but there are new features I needed, so I’m fine with my decision. Still, this is by far the worst update I’ve ever seen for battery life. It almost feels like going back to the iPhone 5 era, when battery life was awful—especially frustrating considering how great it was in the first year. Oh, and by the way, I only have 120 cycles with 100% battery health.

I have noticed that my 15 Pro Max is draining much faster on iOS26 than it was on iOS18. At the end of the day, with typical use I previously had around 30% - 40% battery remaining and only on very heavy usage days had to plug in to make it through the day. The past two days I’ve been closer to 10% - 20% charge remaining. Hoping it’s just re-indexing / background activities that will finish and stabilise over the coming days.
I’ve been getting heat issues within the first hour of regular use off the charger.

And I do agree on the indexing stuff. I’m on public release and it’s not really bad vs beta, but even light usage I sometimes stop around 40-50% at the end of the day.


I haven't yet seen anyone talk about iOS26's new Adaptive Power mode.

Apparently it uses Apple Intelligence, and will analyze your use & charging habits for 7 days to start regulating the phones hardware to save battery life.

Today marks the first 7th day that people should start seeing results from Adaptive Power mode; had they enabled it since last Monday's iOS 26 release.

Will you guys start reporting on your results with it?
We do have a few folks try it out already; but not on the public release.

I don’t personally use it but I will give it a try and report back with results. Totally didn’t want to ruin the charge limit I set y’all
 
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The new battery screen is BS !
Unplugged at 5:36 pm, used it until now almost the whole time - surfing, music, apple tv and now 7 hrs later I am at 56% battery life left ! That’s insanely good 🙏
Almost 7hrs SOT!
Going to bed now, will report back tomorrow!
 
Interesting test of how the Liquid Glass effects might be using much more battery vs iOS 18:

Which correlates to the following:
If y’all are Mac users and wondered why opencore legacy patcher for Tahoe ain’t working on the oldest of macs, the Liquid Glass requires a lot of graphic processing to get it to work so in perspective, so it eats battery and energy a lot.


So the same effect applies to iOS 26 too. It drains more than when I did iOS 18 last year.

The new battery screen is BS !
Unplugged at 5:36 pm, used it until now almost the whole time - surfing, music, apple tv and now 7 hrs later I am at 56% battery life left ! That’s insanely good 🙏
Almost 7hrs SOT!
Going to bed now, will report back tomorrow!

O dang! Back to 15 pro max battery life and doing the same things on your 17?

Did you have adaptive power on?

Did you update your iPhone?

Lmk.
 
Which correlates to the following:
If y’all are Mac users and wondered why opencore legacy patcher for Tahoe ain’t working on the oldest of macs, the Liquid Glass requires a lot of graphic processing to get it to work so in perspective, so it eats battery and energy a lot.


So the same effect applies to iOS 26 too. It drains more than when I did iOS 18 last year.



O dang! Back to 15 pro max battery life and doing the same things on your 17?

Did you have adaptive power on?

Did you update your iPhone?

Lmk.
What?
The 17 PM has way more battery life ! And I love it 🥰
No I set this option to off !

It’s on the updated iOS 26 version my 17 PM
 
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What?
The 17 PM has way more battery life ! And I love it 🥰
No I set this option to off !

It’s on the updated iOS 26 version my 17 PM
Got it. So it’s just drain?

Didn’t you update to beta iOS 26.1 yet? If no features I’d be holding off on it.
 
Like I’ve said earlier, iPhone 17 series are irrelevant here. Last year until iOS 26 I had phenomenal battery life with my 16 pro max. This year it’s like if Apple don’t care at all for even last year models and only put effort on their new shinny phones. The real test for the 17 series will be next year with iOS 27.
 
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Like I’ve said earlier, iPhone 17 series are irrelevant here. Last year until iOS 26 I had phenomenal battery life with my 16 pro max. This year it’s like if Apple don’t care at all for even last year models and only put effort on their new shinny phones. The real test for the 17 series will be next year with iOS 27.
the throttling behaviour which entices people to forcibly upgrade their iPhones…

I remember that headline years ago in the news.
 
There isn’t any drain at all, just normal battery life 🤣
Oh, my bad! Since you mentioned that the battery screen wasn’t showing good results, I thought I’d ask about it. However, the first day or two of owning an iPhone should always have really good battery life.

You’re doing well now. I just wanted to know.
 
Very, very poor. But I don’t know anything about how you used it. Brightness, apps used, etc.
The new battery interface on iOS 26 is not so clear because we don't see when we have used the phone ! We only know how % we used (better than before) but impossible to make the link between a specific use during the day and a high consumption.... Also, I find that the usage time is not accurate. I realized that if you display an app for a few seconds it counts as 1 minute.... Sometimes it indicates a screen time that seems abnormally high to me, don't you feel the same ?

My issue is that it's been years that my devices seems to consumes more battery that it should. I always set a new iPhone without iCloud backup to make sure that I have a clean install but it does not change anything and nothing in the battery usage interface seems anormal....

Here is five consecutive days... Could some people share the same graphics ?

iPhone 16 (100% battery health, 230 cycles) running iOS 26.0
FiveDays.png


My only clue is that my devices seem to consume more when they are connected to iCloud, but I can't isolate the culprit. Could someone give me a method to isolate an abnormally greedy system process? I tried to use Xcode Instruments but it's very hard to analyze ! There is so many informations. Apple Support did not help me... They just look at basic stuff and tell me everything is fine.
 
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The new battery interface on iOS 26 is not so clear because we don't see when we have used the phone ! We only know how % we used (better than before) but impossible to make the link between a specific use during the day and a high consumption.... Also, I find that the usage time is not accurate. I realized that if you display an app for a few seconds it counts as 1 minute.... Sometimes it indicates a screen time that seems abnormally high to me, don't you feel the same ?

My issue is that it's been years that my devices seems to consumes more battery that it should. I always set a new iPhone without iCloud backup to make sure that I have a clean install but it does not change anything and nothing in the battery usage interface seems anormal....

Here is five consecutive days... Could some people share the same graphics ?

iPhone 16 (100% battery health, 230 cycles) running iOS 26.0
View attachment 2556785

My only clue is that my devices seem to consume more when they are connected to iCloud, but I can't isolate the culprit. Could someone give me a method to isolate an abnormally greedy system process? I tried to use Xcode Instruments but it's very hard to analyze ! There is so many informations. Apple Support did not help me... They just look at basic stuff and tell me everything is fine.
For iOS 26, it's really fine. Want normal power consumption? Go back to iOS 18.
 
The new battery interface on iOS 26 is not so clear because we don't see when we have used the phone ! We only know how % we used (better than before) but impossible to make the link between a specific use during the day and a high consumption.... Also, I find that the usage time is not accurate. I realized that if you display an app for a few seconds it counts as 1 minute.... Sometimes it indicates a screen time that seems abnormally high to me, don't you feel the same ?

My issue is that it's been years that my devices seems to consumes more battery that it should. I always set a new iPhone without iCloud backup to make sure that I have a clean install but it does not change anything and nothing in the battery usage interface seems anormal....

Here is five consecutive days... Could some people share the same graphics ?

iPhone 16 (100% battery health, 230 cycles) running iOS 26.0
View attachment 2556785

My only clue is that my devices seem to consume more when they are connected to iCloud, but I can't isolate the culprit. Could someone give me a method to isolate an abnormally greedy system process? I tried to use Xcode Instruments but it's very hard to analyze ! There is so many informations. Apple Support did not help me... They just look at basic stuff and tell me everything is fine.
I agree that the information on iOS 26 is useless, but going by that graph and assuming that you did not use the phone while charging (which would indicate that your actual screen-on time is even worse than that), those numbers are ridiculously poor. That is what I get on my destroyed, forcibly updated iPhone 6s on iOS 13.

Again, I do not know how you used it. Apps, brightness, etc. how did you use it? For what? What are your settings?

Nevertheless, that is one of the worst iPhone 16 results I have ever seen, averaging more or less 5-6 hours of SOT 100-0%.
 
iPhone 16 Pro Max, with 100% battery health since I bought the phone during the Xmas holidays. I feel that the battery drains much faster with normal use once I updated to 26. Almost every day I get low battery notifications, when previously I rarely hit that low.
 
I agree that the information on iOS 26 is useless, but going by that graph and assuming that you did not use the phone while charging (which would indicate that your actual screen-on time is even worse than that), those numbers are ridiculously poor. That is what I get on my destroyed, forcibly updated iPhone 6s on iOS 13.

Again, I do not know how you used it. Apps, brightness, etc. how did you use it? For what? What are your settings?

Nevertheless, that is one of the worst iPhone 16 results I have ever seen, averaging more or less 5-6 hours of SOT 100-0%.
You're true, this graph is ok if we don't use the phone while charging. But we have lost the "screen on time" graph....

I don't have an orignal usage and I let the automatic brightness, I am often on WiFi. The only bad thing I do is that I use my phone lots of times a day for small usages with lots of apps... I often open 5 or 6 applicates each 10 / 15min (check mail, weather, news....). I know that it uses so much more power compared to someone who watch a 1h video on Netflix and do nothing else.

But is my inopportune use enough to explain this battery consumption? I find it hard to believe...
 
iOS 26 and iPhone 16 Pro here. 96% battery health.

Zero issues on iOS 18.
iOS 26: wow 😵‍💫 .

Charge limit 85%. Set like that since day one.

Phone is getting hot all the time now, battery life warnings at 20% a few hours earlier than normal – it used to be ~10:30pm, now it’s 6-7pm.

Reduce transparency enabled, and I’ve just switched off background app refresh.

iOS 26 eating battery doing…what? Any idea how to diagnose?
 
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I've decided to get a new battery for this 13 Pro Max, (guy quoted me "$89 or $99," he didn't quite know the exact price?? um ok, fine.) Whatever the case, I like this 13PM too much still for me to trade it in for the 17PM.

EVEN THOUGH after seeing it in person yesterday, holding it, I honestly dont hate the look after playing around it, especially the Silver PM (And honestly, I actually did want to hate it!..lol) TON of settings, features this 13 PM doesn't have obviously. Kinda left me torn when I left...trade in this nice, near mint looking 13PM and get a battery ...or trade up for still almost $1000

*It would have been trade up, a no brainer..but ya know...dropping $$$ on school tax a few weeks ago, new brakes & rotors in my car last month...just everyday expensive life expenses. Ugh.
 
The new battery interface on iOS 26 is not so clear because we don't see when we have used the phone ! We only know how % we used (better than before) but impossible to make the link between a specific use during the day and a high consumption.... Also, I find that the usage time is not accurate. I realized that if you display an app for a few seconds it counts as 1 minute.... Sometimes it indicates a screen time that seems abnormally high to me, don't you feel the same ?

My issue is that it's been years that my devices seems to consumes more battery that it should. I always set a new iPhone without iCloud backup to make sure that I have a clean install but it does not change anything and nothing in the battery usage interface seems anormal....

Here is five consecutive days... Could some people share the same graphics ?

iPhone 16 (100% battery health, 230 cycles) running iOS 26.0
View attachment 2556785

My only clue is that my devices seem to consume more when they are connected to iCloud, but I can't isolate the culprit. Could someone give me a method to isolate an abnormally greedy system process? I tried to use Xcode Instruments but it's very hard to analyze ! There is so many informations. Apple Support did not help me... They just look at basic stuff and tell me everything is fine.
That pattern…

Each one represents a cycle.

One of them shows it hit low battery on Saturday.

Same apps used?
 
I am definitely seeing more battery drain on IOS26 vs IOS18 on my iPhone 14 Plus. I expected battery drain to be high for the first couple of days as everything synced.

Time will tell if it is as bad as IOS 12 was with my iPhone 6.
 
I haven't yet seen anyone talk about iOS26's new Adaptive Power mode.

Apparently it uses Apple Intelligence, and will analyze your use & charging habits for 7 days to start regulating the phones hardware to save battery life.

Today marks the first 7th day that people should start seeing results from Adaptive Power mode; had they enabled it since last Monday's iOS 26 release.

Will you guys start reporting on your results with it?
I Have turned on adaptive mode since official release day iOS 26. I see no improvment at all. Screen on 1% down, turning Safari 1% down… More heavy task like photo editing 4-5 % down in 5 minutes. iPhone 16 Pro Max, battery 100% health, 127 cycles.
 
I Have turned on adaptive mode since official release day iOS 26. I see no improvment at all. Screen on 1% down, turning Safari 1% down… More heavy task like photo editing 4-5 % down in 5 minutes. iPhone 16 Pro Max, battery 100% health, 127 cycles.

Adaptive mode is not available on any phone that does not have Apple Intelligence. That leaves out all of the iPhone 11-14 devices.
 
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I Have turned on adaptive mode since official release day iOS 26. I see no improvment at all. Screen on 1% down, turning Safari 1% down… More heavy task like photo editing 4-5 % down in 5 minutes. iPhone 16 Pro Max, battery 100% health, 127 cycles.
Honestly, I don’t see a big difference on day two of using it either.

Also, I’m still riding the public release for iOS 26.0, not beta 1 of 26.1. What cool new features are we getting in 26.1? If you’ve already jumped on the beta and want to chat about battery life, please share your thoughts!
 
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