Ehh.. I’m disappointed of intentional “laziness” of Apple.. What’s the point of bigger battery (we’ve ever had in iPhone) when we end up every year with poor battery management… I was reading this topic on the start of iOS 26 beta. On First release battery was awaful after a few updates it was getting better and better . When it was getting close to keynote iOS 26 battery hunger was increasing. Someone will say You shouldn’t update … I agree but some features needed new system like sleep score..
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iOS 26 battery life thread.
- Thread starter goldmac2006
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Sleep score is for any Apple Watch model supported.
Hypertension and sleep apnoea only for series 9 or higher, Apple Watch Ultra 2 or 3.
Yeah but you need ios 26 to update the watch to get the sleep scores. I also updated because of this.
My iphone 13 mini seems to have settled somewhat. Battery is almost the same as before.
After how long? I updated on Monday evening. Battery is not good but it may take several days indexing etc (iPhone 15 Pro).
Several days: okay (but almost inexcusable), but many of us are over a week in and battery life remains awful by comparison to iOS 18
What I hadn’t realised was that even with Reduce Transparency enabled, some of the glass edge-effects remain, for example on icons, in the control centre buttons etc.
Potentially explains why there’s still drain doing very little - every small movement in the hand will likely be using CPU/GPU to calculate new UI sheen. With iOS 18, it wouldn’t be doing anything.
It’s frustrating: liquid glass seems so needless as a UI skin. They could have improved what they had, and introduced some of the improved UI patterns, rather than created this.
I’m not saying all battery drain issues are glass related, but from the video above it’s a significant drain.
As an experiment, I’ve disabled Apple Intelligence to see if that has an impact.
Potentially explains why there’s still drain doing very little - every small movement in the hand will likely be using CPU/GPU to calculate new UI sheen. With iOS 18, it wouldn’t be doing anything.
It’s frustrating: liquid glass seems so needless as a UI skin. They could have improved what they had, and introduced some of the improved UI patterns, rather than created this.
I’m not saying all battery drain issues are glass related, but from the video above it’s a significant drain.
As an experiment, I’ve disabled Apple Intelligence to see if that has an impact.
Hi,
I have a 13 pro, so no apple intelligence, and I experiment the battery drain. Maybe 10 or 20% are missing at the end of the day compared to before 26.
But, what I clearly notice now, is that I regularly feeling my phone beeing hot in my pocket. Maybe during 5 sec every hour, something like that...
Maybe the kernel scheduler is tuned differently and is engaging performance cores more frequently...
I have a 13 pro, so no apple intelligence, and I experiment the battery drain. Maybe 10 or 20% are missing at the end of the day compared to before 26.
But, what I clearly notice now, is that I regularly feeling my phone beeing hot in my pocket. Maybe during 5 sec every hour, something like that...
Maybe the kernel scheduler is tuned differently and is engaging performance cores more frequently...
This is interesting because iPhones have had full-day battery life since the 6 Plus (for Plus models) and since the 11 series for all models (if not the Xs series, only because the regular Xs was good but not too great), yet people have consistently cited battery life as an upgrade reason when they update through enough major iOS versions.
People still cite battery life as an upgrade reason today, which is ludicrous. The largest batteries ever only to keep struggling 4-5 years in due to updates.
You said it though: at this point you know what you’ll get. You chose to update for sleep score in spite of this, you made your own choice. You should not be disappointed anymore, that word indicates you still have expectations. You still expect like-new battery life after major updates (and especially a redesign). It is way too late for that.
My 14 Plus is finally starting to settle down after 7 days. But the battery definitely drains quicker than when running IOS 18
Every user have different use patterns so for example I on one full day battery life can get 2 full days when iOS is properly optimized. Batteries struggling in a few months look for iPhone 15 Pro Series or typically 1 year after but what about people with factory new battery on last gen iPhones struggling with battery performance after update ? Maybe iPhones especially last years 16 Pro series isn’t so powerful as it says in advertisements to keep up with new iOS ?
There was no choice because sooner or later you will be forced to update to get working certain apps or features for example AirPods. Maybe you like using expensive feature phone but I don’t like. Major redesign is the reason for not optimizing performance and energy management ? So what for is beta program ? When RC version was almost unusable on older iPhones like 16 Pro ….. Yeah I need with smile buy every year new iPhone to get iPhone without getting warm when displaying widgets and icons or battery drain on nothing… this is not high expectations . I’m writing this after one week later when all indexing should stop and battery life should get slightly better.
Same experience here. Was used to 5 to 6 hours SOT on my 15 PM ( battery is 94%, EU version without AI) for over 18 months. After more than a week on IOS 26 it’s now around 4 hours. With IOS 18 I never had to recharge during the day. Now I MUST recharge around 7 PM to make it through the day
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My 15PM battery has been draining crazy since iOS 26; and I just found that the upgrade re-enabled "Background App Refresh" on my phone - when I always had it turned off (by choice).
Apple may indeed mess with the way you had your Settings configured; check them. Hopefully that helps some of you!
Apple may indeed mess with the way you had your Settings configured; check them. Hopefully that helps some of you!
Oh, I totally get what you mean! It happened to me too, especially since I got my iPhone 15 Pro.
So, when I took my iPhone 15 Pro to the Apple Genius earlier in the summer because my battery life was acting up again (it dipped from 100% to 95% and then another big drop to 91%), he suggested I turn off location services and other things that might be draining the battery. He saw that background app refresh turned on again which I did not even notice it was not turned off after I updated to iOS 26 beta; it reenabled itself. So it’s turned off again now.
But you know what? I’ve noticed that adaptive power mode is making my iPhone feel a bit warmer LESS OFTEN than it used to. How do you all feel about it? Let me know what you think!
That’s good to know, thee has been a slight improvement already. I’ll give it a week and see how it’s going. Other than the battery drain which is to be expected to some degree, I’m enjoying iOS 26.
As a test, I wiped the phone and reset and restored iOS 26, just in case something was borked with the original install.
It’s still terrible, though I concede that it could be doing some background indexing etc.
I’ve switched off Apple Intelligence, which made no difference.
It’s still terrible, though I concede that it could be doing some background indexing etc.
I’ve switched off Apple Intelligence, which made no difference.
It’s been 6 days since I’ve updated and yesterday my 16 pro max battery was much better and the phone wasn’t very warm most of the time. I don’t think it’s as good as iOS 18.7 was but it’s noticeably better. Will see today.
3rd day in on my 15 Pro. I’m seeing improvement on my battery degradation. Hope it keeps improving over the next few days.
Indexing is always an underlying issue for battery life. You can turn off the analytics stuff too
Apparently I need to wait 7 day for Adaptive Power mode to learn my habits - so I won't know until after this coming weekend, as I only enabled Adaptive Power mode last weekend.
I'm hoping to have good results to report back here and see it help as it has with you, so far.
I’ve been using it for five days already. Noticeably heat issues are not as bad as before I had it on.