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I wonder if this to do with the amount of capacity in the NPU?

If is this is a process that’s constantly monitoring how you use your phone, you’d want most of it in the NPU, so it doesn’t don’t slow things down.

And I guess the newer phones are the only models with the Npu capacity to spare.
 
Apple says that Adaptive Power Mode can make "small performance adjustments" when necessary to extend an iPhone's battery life, including slightly lowering the display brightness or allowing some activities to "take a little longer."
No thanks.
 
Could someone explain why this adaptive power mode is considered an “AI-powered feature?”

Is it not something coding could do? Like if iPhone temperature above a certain threshold, initiate lower brightness mode, reduce background activities. etc.?

Gatekeeping.
They probably could write an algoritm without the AI that performs 99% as well, but by gating it behind AI they're encouraging you to upgrade your phone.
 
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Meh. One more annoying thing to turn off.

No, I don't want performance throttled. I absolutely DO NOT EVER want my screen brightness turned down (and it already does that, no way to turn it off if it thinks it's too hot). I want my battery charged to full EVERY TIME.
 
You’re being entitled to think all iOS26 features need to support older phones.

Your reaction is also premature by not allowing things to play out with the beta OS being released so that tech savvy experts can reverse engineer and review the feature to properly evaluate the feature’s requirements
That seems to be the scenario that repeated itself from time to time depending on the phone model. At least the three generations of the iPhone get the latest and the greatest. I'm not here to say that Apple doesn't support their older models because they do it a lot longer than some Android phones. Sometimes, it can be a gimmick when advertising for the latest iOS coming out. Like Apple got a warning about advertising Apple Intelligence when it wasn't fully available to the public as advertised. So Apple have to pull the campaign. Don't take my word for it. Look it up. Oh, we are all entitled to think and express ourselves.....without being disrespectful. Right?
 
I wonder what the much-praised NPU of the iPhone 14 Pro and earlier was for, if it can't handle such elementary tasks.
 
They can probably enable it for older iPhones and this is just choice, but then again imo, you can optimise any iPhone for battery life by yourself just fine.

And regardless, the #1 battery killer is still brightness (and iOS updates).

I’ve been getting Apple’s 16 hours of SOT - Apple’s claimed specs - on my iPhone Xʀ since day 1. It’s running iOS 12.

There are no secrets. Keep the original iOS version, disable heavier settings, lower brightness and use efficient apps and you’ll hit Apple spec.

This has been true since the original Plus models. (I’ve found that Apple’s claimed 10 hours of SOT for the iPhone 6s were practically impossible to achieve. 8.5 was consistently doable on iOS 9, though).

In spite of that... it’s still a little funny for me that many people STILL don’t know that high brightness is the #1 independent battery killer and that they STILL ask “what’s wrong with my battery? I’m using my brand new iPhone 16 Plus at full brightness with 5G and Maps, and playing some games on it. Why is my battery life so poor”? 19 iOS iterations and iPhones since 2007 and many people still can’t associate full brightness and/or power-intensive apps with poor battery life.

Point is, don’t worry folks, you can optimize this by yourselves.
 
Yes just more Apple trying to boost it's lane IA marketing, this arrogance and short-sighted poor marketing mindset continues to erode brand loyalty and just alienates its customer base.... requires iPhone 15 or higher just means I will NOT be buying a new
iPhone anytime soon. My 14 Pro Max is good enough. If I want AI I have ChatGPT. Siri is worthless.
 
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