iOS 26 battery life thread.

[Populus]

If you let me brag a bit…

On my little SE 3 my battery life couldn’t be better on 26.2, so much, that I’ll probably remain on this version for a long, long time:

For context, I still have a remaining 2% and last night at 00:00 I had an 88% of battery.

So roughly the 90% of my battery lasted for roughly 9h of Screen-on time. Plus almost an extra hour of just background audio.

Not bad for a 2000mAh little guy. And definitely, better than 18.7 (remember, on my SE 3)

 

[Populus]

To anyone at Apple if they are reading this: If you want us to update all our devices instantly, give us solid battery life, zero overheating, and minimize the bugs to a minimum.

In my opinion that’s what they did for the A15 powered devices on iOS 26.2 and I couldn’t be happier after the update. Sadly from what I’ve read, some people with more advanced chips such as the A18 iPhone 16 or the A19 iPhone 17 are not as happy with iOS 26.2…

Also, I don’t know how much does it matter or not, but as I usually do, I put my iPhone SE 3 into DFU mode, then restored it with iOS 26.2 using my Mac. Interestingly, for the previous version, iOS 18.7, I had to perform an OTA update over iOS 18.6, and… placebo or not, my SE 3 was getting hotter sometimes and with slightly worse battery life, aside from the usual amount of bugs that iOS 18 had that never got fixed even in 18.7…

So, yeah, I’d say “good job Apple”, at least on my two iPhone SE 3 (yes, I have two of them, that’s how much I love this last LCD iPhone). Now let’s cross our fingers for iOS 26.3 to be as stable (if not better) and efficient as 26.2, and it gets optimized for more iPhone models. But if you’re experience with 26.2 is not good, my advice is: wait a week or two for iOS 26.3, then manually back up the contents of your phone (you know, pictures and files, avoid Time Machine if possible), then put your iPhone into DFU mode and with the help of a Mac, through Finder, or the help of a PC through the Apple Devices app, perform a clean install of it, A.K.A a restore.

 

[Populus]

Aaaand this is this morning’s battery data on my SE 3: more than two hours of Screen-on time, and I’m still at 81%.

However, I must say that this time I’m performing this measurements on a relatively new iPhone SE 3 with a battery that has a 100% of it’s health, mostly WiFi usage (not only, but mostly), and a few apps installed since I did the iOS 26.2 clean install: my password manager, my email client app, the PlayStation app, WhatsApp and WhatsApp business, and my ad-blocker Wipr 2. I have also installed a few webapps, as webapps are very easy to do on iOS 26 and I’m quite sure they are both more private and more efficient than the native apps…

 

[James6s]

If you let me brag a bit…

On my little SE 3 my battery life couldn’t be better on 26.2, so much, that I’ll probably remain on this version for a long, long time:

View attachment 2597259

For context, I still have a remaining 2% and last night at 00:00 I had an 88% of battery.

So roughly the 90% of my battery lasted for roughly 9h of Screen-on time. Plus almost an extra hour of just background audio.

Not bad for a 2000mAh little guy. And definitely, better than 18.7 (remember, on my SE 3)

Wow your SE3 battery is performing the same or even better than my iPhone 17 on 26.2! lol. Incredible!

 

[Populus]

Wow your SE3 battery is performing the same or even better than my iPhone 17 on 26.2! lol. Incredible!

View attachment 2597468
View attachment 2597469
View attachment 2597467

I suspect there are a few factors playing here, aside from the fact that maybe you’re using more the 5G that I am, or that maybe you have apps such as Instagram or Facebook that suck a lot of power, that I don’t have.

But besides that, keep in mind that the iPhone 17 has a more power hungry display, with higher refresh rate. And a more powerful chip that, especially on the GPU side, is using more power. And the neural accelerators.

I mean, iPhones nowadays are designed to do more, much more, and they’re getting designed with bigger batteries in mind. On those with smaller batteries such as the 16e or the iPhone Air, what do they do? Exactly, they disable one of the GPU cores.

And finally… Apple Intelligence. I’m pretty sure that Apple Intelligence is responsible for a certain amount of energy spent on some background processes that aren’t happening on my iPhone SE 3.

But, for sure, I’m convinced that the iPhone 17 can do better. I hope they keep optimizing the operating systems.

 

[James6s]

I suspect there are a few factors playing here, aside from the fact that maybe you’re using more the 5G that I am, or that maybe you have apps such as Instagram or Facebook that suck a lot of power, that I don’t have.

But besides that, keep in mind that the iPhone 17 has a more power hungry display, with higher refresh rate. And a more powerful chip that, especially on the GPU side, is using more power. And the neural accelerators.

I mean, iPhones nowadays are designed to do more, much more, and they’re getting designed with bigger batteries in mind. On those with smaller batteries such as the 16e or the iPhone Air, what do they do? Exactly, they disable one of the GPU cores.

And finally… Apple Intelligence. I’m pretty sure that Apple Intelligence is responsible for a certain amount of energy spent on some background processes that aren’t happening on my iPhone SE 3.

But, for sure, I’m convinced that the iPhone 17 can do better. I hope they keep optimizing the operating systems.

Yes, I use 5G where possible & have Facebook, instagram, Snapchat etc which all get some heavy use during the day! I’m quite heavy on the canera too, always taking photos which is a big power drain.

Nevertheless, your SE3 with nearly half the battery capacity is doing really well on iOS 26.2 which has been a power hungry software release!

Hopefully battery life will continue to improve in future releases.

 

[cigz]

Battery life on my iPhone 17 Pro (NanoSIM) on iOS 26.2 is a hit or miss. For the first week of owning the phone it was amazing and then it somehow got worse.
For example, this was my 3rd day of owning this phone. 47% battery used with 6,5h of (alleged) SOT.

Then here, 23% battery used with 1h SOT

Both mixed usage - WiFi and LTE, the same apps all the time. No games, nothing intensive and no updates to any of the apps I have on my phone.
At first I was impressed with the battery life but now I have mixed feelings.

 

[goldmac2006]

To anyone at Apple if they are reading this: If you want us to update all our devices instantly, give us solid battery life, zero overheating, and minimize the bugs to a minimum.

In my opinion that’s what they did for the A15 powered devices on iOS 26.2 and I couldn’t be happier after the update. Sadly from what I’ve read, some people with more advanced chips such as the A18 iPhone 16 or the A19 iPhone 17 are not as happy with iOS 26.2…

Also, I don’t know how much does it matter or not, but as I usually do, I put my iPhone SE 3 into DFU mode, then restored it with iOS 26.2 using my Mac. Interestingly, for the previous version, iOS 18.7, I had to perform an OTA update over iOS 18.6, and… placebo or not, my SE 3 was getting hotter sometimes and with slightly worse battery life, aside from the usual amount of bugs that iOS 18 had that never got fixed even in 18.7…

So, yeah, I’d say “good job Apple”, at least on my two iPhone SE 3 (yes, I have two of them, that’s how much I love this last LCD iPhone). Now let’s cross our fingers for iOS 26.3 to be as stable (if not better) and efficient as 26.2, and it gets optimized for more iPhone models. But if you’re experience with 26.2 is not good, my advice is: wait a week or two for iOS 26.3, then manually back up the contents of your phone (you know, pictures and files, avoid Time Machine if possible), then put your iPhone into DFU mode and with the help of a Mac, through Finder, or the help of a PC through the Apple Devices app, perform a clean install of it, A.K.A a restore.

Spot on mate with the PSA 🙌

I suspect there are a few factors playing here, aside from the fact that maybe you’re using more the 5G that I am, or that maybe you have apps such as Instagram or Facebook that suck a lot of power, that I don’t have.

But besides that, keep in mind that the iPhone 17 has a more power hungry display, with higher refresh rate. And a more powerful chip that, especially on the GPU side, is using more power. And the neural accelerators.

I mean, iPhones nowadays are designed to do more, much more, and they’re getting designed with bigger batteries in mind. On those with smaller batteries such as the 16e or the iPhone Air, what do they do? Exactly, they disable one of the GPU cores.

And finally… Apple Intelligence. I’m pretty sure that Apple Intelligence is responsible for a certain amount of energy spent on some background processes that aren’t happening on my iPhone SE 3.

But, for sure, I’m convinced that the iPhone 17 can do better. I hope they keep optimizing the operating systems.

All the logging stuff, betas and lack of optimisation does also habitually reduce the battery life or usage vs the advertised rate.

Liquid Glass graphics.

Background processes including location, Bluetooth and other connectivity like HomeKit.

But when Apple does their testing of batteries, do they use third party apps like video filming software or games to post the advertised battery life?

 

[goldmac2006]

Battery life on my iPhone 17 Pro (NanoSIM) on iOS 26.2 is a hit or miss. For the first week of owning the phone it was amazing and then it somehow got worse.
For example, this was my 3rd day of owning this phone. 47% battery used with 6,5h of (alleged) SOT.
View attachment 2597511

Then here, 23% battery used with 1h SOTView attachment 2597512

Both mixed usage - WiFi and LTE, the same apps all the time. No games, nothing intensive and no updates to any of the apps I have on my phone.
At first I was impressed with the battery life but now I have mixed feelings.

First week it’s ok to see this drain as the iPhone has to finish setup and sync all the apps and data from the old iPhone.

It is already optimised once you give it some time. Also by default all iPhone 17 models have adaptive power mode on by default- had you turned it off?

 

[cigz]

First week it’s ok to see this drain as the iPhone has to finish setup and sync all the apps and data from the old iPhone.

It is already optimised once you give it some time. Also by default all iPhone 17 models have adaptive power mode on by default- had you turned it off?

The thing is I used to get really good battery life in the first week of getting new phone so technically when it was still indexing.
After a whole week it started to get worse.

I turned adaptive power mode off. I turned it on for 2 days just of curiosity but I felt like the battery was draining faster compared to it turned off.

 

[goldmac2006]

The thing is I used to get really good battery life in the first week of getting new phone so technically when it was still indexing.
After a whole week it started to get worse.

I turned adaptive power mode off. I turned it on for 2 days just of curiosity but I felt like the battery was draining faster compared to it turned off.

You’re spot on! That’s exactly what I was hoping for. Using AI and Apple Intelligence to adjust power settings and improve the iPhone experience doesn’t quite make sense to me.

It doesn’t actually make your iPhone battery last longer; in fact, it can make it weaker. Many of us tried it out for days or even weeks, and honestly, we weren’t too happy with it.

If you check out the earlier posts on this thread, you’ll see the settings that the Apple Genius suggested to me to adjust on back in July to help slow down the battery drain, especially on beta versions. Including tips a former Apple employee I made friends with at school, told me about the hardware side of it.

 

[Tomas1988]

Battery life on my iPhone 17 Pro (NanoSIM) on iOS 26.2 is a hit or miss. For the first week of owning the phone it was amazing and then it somehow got worse.
For example, this was my 3rd day of owning this phone. 47% battery used with 6,5h of (alleged) SOT.
View attachment 2597511

Then here, 23% battery used with 1h SOTView attachment 2597512

Both mixed usage - WiFi and LTE, the same apps all the time. No games, nothing intensive and no updates to any of the apps I have on my phone.
At first I was impressed with the battery life but now I have mixed feelings.

Same here. Since January the battery drain has been crazy, especially idle drain. I gave up and updated to 26.3
17PRO