Adaptive power helps with heat management? I might use it purely for that since my 16 pro seems to heat up somewhat easily compared to iOS 18 where it always stayed cool.
Do I need to keep Apple Intelligence enabled for it to work?
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iOS 26 battery life thread.
- Thread starter goldmac2006
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Do I need to keep Apple Intelligence enabled for it to work?
Apple Intelligence? ❌ not required for it.
That’s the only one of the benefits I noticed with adaptive power, less heat generated by the chip. Others caused display brightness issues, refresh rate issues and no effects on drainage .
I’ll give it a go turned on and see if it helps run cooler, even just running Spotify with my cars Bluetooth (screen off, no maps etc) it tends to get warm
I just reinstalled IOS 26 on my 13 Pro Max after a full DFU restore, fresh and it seems (so far) to be behaving better especially with standby drain. I’m gonna give it a week or so to see if it gets any better.
Yeah, I also made a clean install of iOS 26.2 on my A15 device (an iPhone SE 3) and I’m getting quite good battery life. So far so good!!
How long does it take more or less for the battery life to stabilise ?
I updated my 16Pro to 26.2 from 18.x one week ago and the battery is still draining fast
I updated my 16Pro to 26.2 from 18.x one week ago and the battery is still draining fast
Post-update, give 24 hours at a minimum to let the update settle in the background. Things should stabilize after that.
so I'm guessing is not a good sign that after a week after the battery is not that great, and before updating the max capacity was 99%, now down to 98%
Did you update to a beta or public release? Betas bring down battery capacity rapidlyso I'm guessing is not a good sign that after a week after the battery is not that great, and before updating the max capacity was 99%, now down to 98%
The new battery life system is pathetic. It is garbage. The “screen-on time” number you see there is from 00:00-23:59, regardless of whether you used it while charging or not. Unlike on iOS 12-18, this one does NOT differentiate between charging or not.
So the answer to your question of “how do I determine SOT since last full charge on iOS 26?” Is “you can’t do that”.
It is so pathetic. I can’t see how Apple ever approved that.
To run a battery test, charge it overnight while you sleep (don’t use it while charging) and unplug it as soon as you wake up.
Run the test until 23:59 at the latest and you will see the correct number in that pathetic graph. Otherwise the number is useless.
We’ll need to approach this a bit differently. Since it doesn’t quite align with the earlier versions, I’ve decided to hold off on testing my iPhone’s battery endurance. Instead, I’ll focus on the RC and public release versions, and I’ll prioritize settings that help the battery last, rather than just measuring how much it drains over time!
It clearly is worse, more confusing, and cumbersome.
I thought about doing what you said, but unfortunately I don’t have a schedule to charge it, and I usually use it while charging.
However, I’ve thought of another way of having a bit more knowledge about the battery behavior: despite charging it at 1AM or 1PM, despite using it while charging or not, I think the key is to do a snapshot when I unplug it. That way, I know how many SoT hours to substract from the final count at the end of the day.
Say I unplug it at 1PM, I make a screenshot of it, with -for example- 4h 36m SOT. Then I start using it… and at 11:55PM I do another snapshot. Let’s say I have 11h 36m of SOT and a 25% of battery remaining. That would mean I’ve consumed 75% of the battery with 7h of screen use of the phone. Then, for 100%, I calculate how many hours it would give me.
Yes, it’s cumbersome but I think this might work.
As long as you unplug it before 00:00 lf the following day, it would work. To extrapolate that, you would need to subtract the minutes used until it dropped to 99%. The 100-99% percentage points lasts several times longer than the rest. I’ve gotten up to 1h 58 mins of SOT before it dropped to 99%. Including that in the extrapolation would be incorrect.
That’s the only hurdle, but it can be done.
Same here that happened when I jumped from iOS 18.5 to iOS 26 beta… I went from 100% battery health to 91% in less than a month.
Something weird happened. Do you remember that I was quite happy about my battery life of iOS 26 on my iPhone SE3?
Well, suddenly the current extrapolation is 5h of screen on time. The phone was unplugged 18h ago, but that’s not too relevant.
Battery health has also dropped from 86% (where it has stayed stable for many months) to 85%.
And something weird is happening with the battery indicator. It’s been stuck at 18% for quite a long time, and suddenly it drops to 15% and almost immediately (because I was staring at it) to 14%, where it seems stuck again.
I want to think that this is the phone calibrating the battery, we’ll see what happens next.
Well, suddenly the current extrapolation is 5h of screen on time. The phone was unplugged 18h ago, but that’s not too relevant.
Battery health has also dropped from 86% (where it has stayed stable for many months) to 85%.
And something weird is happening with the battery indicator. It’s been stuck at 18% for quite a long time, and suddenly it drops to 15% and almost immediately (because I was staring at it) to 14%, where it seems stuck again.
I want to think that this is the phone calibrating the battery, we’ll see what happens next.
Phew!!
Looks like I was a bit too ahead of myself. The iPhone turned off after more than 7 hours of screen on time. According to my calculations, 7h and 40 minutes took my iPhone to go from 100 to zero.
However, this is without accounting for the data usage (5G), as this phone has remained under WiFi the whole time. Maybe in more real conditions the battery life would sit between 6 and 7h, which for a device like the SE3 with an aging battery (85% health) sounds quite good.
I’ll keep you posted!
Looks like I was a bit too ahead of myself. The iPhone turned off after more than 7 hours of screen on time. According to my calculations, 7h and 40 minutes took my iPhone to go from 100 to zero.
However, this is without accounting for the data usage (5G), as this phone has remained under WiFi the whole time. Maybe in more real conditions the battery life would sit between 6 and 7h, which for a device like the SE3 with an aging battery (85% health) sounds quite good.
I’ll keep you posted!
I think this can be considered as a good battery life, especially for a device like the SE 3, with the design of an iPhone 8 and a battery of just 2000mAh
I’m still rocking that 4%, so I’ll probably reach the 8h threshold. With a degraded battery at 85% of health. Wow…
I've had my iPhone 13mini for a few years. Great phone and perfect size. Battery life generally good and it improved about a year or so ago. I have 87% of battery left. Several days a week I put on Sirius XM music, put the phone in my back pocket walk a round of golf listening to music either in hearing aids or the phone speaker itself. I always start this part of my day with 100% charge and set the phone on "low battery", turning off wifi. I spend the day of about 6 hours and never does my phone die. Always plenty of battery left til I get home and plug it in. Suddenly one day a couple of weeks ago my battery my battery died midway into my round of golf. ODD to say the least. Next day exactly same thing. Now it''s not only odd but it's really pissing me off. I realized that I had done update to 26.1 just before this "dying battery" issue started. A few days later I noticed 26.2 available but I have not done it yet. 26.1 did something bad to my phone! Talking to several friends with iphones and they all experience the same issue....just recently. I don't get it! I went online, watched a video and did a tremendous amount of work in setting shutting down everything that could be using battery unnecessarily. The next day I got about 2 extra holes on the course before the phone died. This is nuts! Not to mention unacceptable. I find nothing online which fixes this issue. Some say go ahead and go to 26.2 and that might fix the problem. I might because it can't really get worse. I'm really sick of Apple doing this kind of stuff. My phone might be a few years old and maybe they just want me to buy a new phone. I won't be buying another apple unless there's a pretty quick solution to my issue. I can afford a new phone but I just like this one. Solutions anyone?
Thanks!!
Thanks!!
Happy New Year, my iPhone SE friend! It seems a bit strange to me, especially since an iPhone with 86% battery health unexpectedly shut down.
I know it’s on WiFi, but have you considered using the following on your iPhone, which can drain battery life:
- High brightness
- Background app refresh
- Any unnecessary always-on location services (not while using) on apps that don’t need it. If it’s an app like McDonald’s or something that requires location tracking to function like Find My, please leave it.
- games like Roblox, genshin impact or asphalt?
- Beta or no beta version of iOS 26? The early beta versions were known to drain battery life quite a bit.
Hey, this doesn’t quite add up. Could you check your iPhone’s battery health? Considering its age, it might be similar to what @Populus is experiencing with the unexpected shutdown on his iPhone SE 3.
Thanks for the reply! My mention of "87% battery left" refers to the health of the battery. When I said I'd done everything possible to reduce battery drain that also included turning off auto brightness, adjusting "background app refresh" (for 99% of all my apps and yes I left "find my" on.) Wifi is always off. NO it doesn't add up but I've had apple stuff long enough to know that we don' usually expect it to add up. Too often sometime decides to help us all out and give us crap that not only we don't need but, as in this case, screws stuff up. And to the point others make in support of apple, my phone has been screwed up for a couple of weeks now so any reasonable time we might allow for things to "sort themselves out" is long since passed.
😂 I thought you said, “I end with 87% battery by the end of the day!” But I heard you corrected it.
So why’d you use only 5G? It uses up more battery than WiFi.
I think you misunderstood me. I said that my iPhone SE 3 shutted down after 5h, meaning that it reached 0% after 5h. It wasn’t an unexpected shut down at all.
However, after other runs, it holds the battery between 7 and 8h which, for an SE 3 with battery health at 85%, is quite good! So I’m actually quite happy with iOS 26.2 (non-beta, I never install betas, only really stable versions using the IPSW file, a clean install).