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iOS 26 battery life thread.

Updated to iOS 26.0 6 days ago and factory reset my iPhone 14 Pro.
Battery life is significantly worse, even now, than it was on iOS 18.6.2.
For example, two hours of scrolling and Safari use was ~55% of my battery. Phone gets randomly hot doing extremely mundane things like using Bluesky when it didn't before.
This morning, listening to a podcast via CarPlay for 30 minutes with the iPhone screen off used a whopping 5% of my battery.

How is this acceptable? This was a full functional, high performance phone a week ago. Apple robbed me.
 
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Inland-Empire said:
Updated to iOS 26.0 6 days ago and factory reset my iPhone 14 Pro.
Battery life is significantly worse, even now, than it was on iOS 18.6.2.
For example, two hours of scrolling and Safari use was ~55% of my battery. Phone gets randomly hot doing extremely mundane things like using Bluesky when it didn't before.
This morning, listening to a podcast via CarPlay for 30 minutes with the iPhone screen off used a whopping 5% of my battery.

How is this acceptable? This was a full functional, high performance phone a week ago. Apple robbed me.
Click to expand...
I updated on Tuesday and same thing. Phone gets very warm doing basic tasks where before it was ice cold. It’s weird because when I check the cpu usage it still shows it at and idle like 1-5% so I don’t know what exactly is heating up?! It feels like it’s right where the soc is so I’m stumped. Could it actually still be doing the indexing? And if so you’d imagine that would be using cpu cycles. Maybe they unleashed the main power cores for everything now and the efficiency cores are disabled? My phone is plenty snappy but the heat and faster battery drain is super annoying. I’ve been burned again by and update! I thought it would be better by now but still getting the random heating.
 
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Inland-Empire said:
Updated to iOS 26.0 6 days ago and factory reset my iPhone 14 Pro.
Battery life is significantly worse, even now, than it was on iOS 18.6.2.
For example, two hours of scrolling and Safari use was ~55% of my battery. Phone gets randomly hot doing extremely mundane things like using Bluesky when it didn't before.
This morning, listening to a podcast via CarPlay for 30 minutes with the iPhone screen off used a whopping 5% of my battery.

How is this acceptable? This was a full functional, high performance phone a week ago. Apple robbed me.
Click to expand...
Same experience for me. 16 pro battery is horrible after updating. At the time of writing I’m at 60% with barely 58 min active safari, 25 min active YouTube

Every night by 7pm I’m dipping at 20% or less with less than 5 hours of active screen time

Zero background app refreshed, mail set to fetch.

Battery on this phone has become annoying AF
 
Inland-Empire said:
Updated to iOS 26.0 6 days ago and factory reset my iPhone 14 Pro.
Battery life is significantly worse, even now, than it was on iOS 18.6.2.
For example, two hours of scrolling and Safari use was ~55% of my battery. Phone gets randomly hot doing extremely mundane things like using Bluesky when it didn't before.
This morning, listening to a podcast via CarPlay for 30 minutes with the iPhone screen off used a whopping 5% of my battery.

How is this acceptable? This was a full functional, high performance phone a week ago. Apple robbed me.
Click to expand...
What's your battery health? My 14 Pro at 78% health was also pretty bad on the public betas, and I'm wondering how much a new battery would help.
 
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HouseLannister said:
Interesting test of how the Liquid Glass effects might be using much more battery vs iOS 18:

Click to expand...
13 to 1 on the latest updatable iPhone (i.e., the latest not to have it as the original version) is INSANE.

Every user who potentially wants to update on any iPhone should at least keep this in mind and consider it.

Absolute obliteration. Absolute irreversible malware. Ridiculous.
 
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FeliApple said:
13 to 1 on the latest updatable iPhone (i.e., the latest not to have it as the original version) is INSANE.

Every user who potentially wants to update on any iPhone should at least keep this in mind and consider it.

Absolute obliteration. Absolute irreversible malware. Ridiculous.
Click to expand...
True or false: Liquid Glass is a battery eater.
 
FeliApple said:
The video speaks for itself. It is ridiculous.

People should update if they want to, but they should at least consider that.
Click to expand...
Exactly.

Doesn’t it take so much graphics to make it look good yet destroy y’all’s battery life?

And it ain’t malware 😂 only people who jailbreak or do hideous stuff on their iPhone or iPad would get viruses 🦠
 
goldmac2006 said:
Exactly.

Doesn’t it take so much graphics to make it look good yet destroy y’all’s battery life?
Click to expand...

Apparently it does. I mean, at this point I’ve given up on people learning. Apple has no reason to care: it has shown that it can do anything and everything to any iOS device and people will keep updating. They have no incentive to stop.

It’s fine, I’ve solved the issue for myself regardless. If people want to continuously and endlessly kill their own devices, let them.
goldmac2006 said:
And it ain’t malware 😂 only people who jailbreak or do hideous stuff on their iPhone or iPad would get viruses 🦠
Click to expand...
It’s a manner of speaking, but it is quite malicious, imo.
 
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Battery life is definitely worse on my 13 pro max.

Battery health is at 85%. I used to end the day with my phone at 50-60%. Now, I end the day at around 30%.

Funny observation - I have this budget app, Nudget, which had been lagging on my device for quite some time now. When I switch to transparent icons on my device, the lag magically goes away and the app works as smooth as butter. Not sure what to make of it. :oops:
 
The battery life on my 17 Pro is leaps and bounds better than my iPhone 16 Pro. I am usually ending the day with 50% left. My 16 Pro needed at least 1 midday charge to stay above 20% at the end of a day.
 
FeliApple said:
Apparently it does. I mean, at this point I’ve given up on people learning. Apple has no reason to care: it has shown that it can do anything and everything to any iOS device and people will keep updating. They have no incentive to stop.

It’s fine, I’ve solved the issue for myself regardless. If people want to continuously and endlessly kill their own devices, let them.

It’s a manner of speaking, but it is quite malicious, imo.
Click to expand...
We also can’t control what others do with their iPhones, whether they receive betas or public releases, etc. Therefore, you all need to assess the risks involved with these builds. That’s why Apple recommends that all iPhone and iPad users back up their devices through Finder before installing these builds.

People may need to revert to iOS 18 if they find the battery drain too uncomfortable. Adaptive power mode isn’t sufficient to help preserve battery life, and even any mitigation to reduce screen time or charge limits (if applicable) may not be enough. Additionally, there may be other unpredictable issues that require a downgrade.
 
You can’t downgrade anymore to iOS 18. Also at one point you’ll have no choice to update and yes, staying on an old OS without any update for months is also not very responsable. Yes the chances are minimal but as further the times go, the further you expose yourself on security holes. So I can’t blame anyone who update to the latest OS. But yes, being on a beta is another story though.

And returning on topic, after 8 days, my 16 pro max stabilized since 2 days and I have very decent battery life now. I don’t think it’s on par with iOS 18,7 but it’s not too far away like the days after I installed 26.
 
Battery life on my 16PM, with reduced transparency on, reduced motion, charge limit is 90%, background refresh off, system services all off etc etc etc.

Bottom line is it’s been over a week and the battery goes down very quick. Horrid to be honest.
 
It’s been 5 days since I installed 26.0 on my 15 pro. Battery has settled down and is on par if not close to 18.7 battery performance. I didn’t have AI or background app refresh on for either iOS. Never had a heat issue.
 
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