Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iOS6 impact on battery life?

I've been using the beta for about 24 hours and I haven't seen any appreciable change in the battery behavior. I left it off the charger last night to see what would happen and woke up with the battery indicator in essentially the same place as I left it. I don't use the % indicator -- just the graphic.
 
i have been using it for 3 days and haven't seen any changes on battery performance, in fact its as bad as it was on iOS 5.1.1 :p
 
I'm getting better battery life than iOS 5.1.1 on my iPhone 4 with this besta. Kind of a nice surprise, actually. :D
 
It's weird that some are reporting better and some are reporting worse battery life with iOS 6. I'd expect it to be worse across the board since it's still in beta.

For me, my phone consumes battery life roughly 2-3 times as fast as my iPhone 4S did with the latest iOS 5. That's what I was expecting in beta software so I am not complaining, but if anybody knows what part of iOS6 is consuming the most power, it would be interesting to know so I could conserve power better until the next beta is released.
 
Holy crap this is weird...

So my battery life while using wifi is actually pretty decent for initial beta. However, once I leave my house to where I'm 3G all the time its absolutely horrendous. Anyone else seeing this? Seems like bizarro world behavior to me.
 
Battery seems to be about the same for me after turning off some of the battery draining things such as time zone support and local weather.
 
My theory was that it was wifi that was draining my phone not 3G but I could be wrong. I'm going to test it this weekend. Wifi is disabled now and I'll see how it goes. at 96% now. I'll report in later and use my forum post as a time stamp.
 
Parise said:
Holy crap this is weird...

So my battery life while using wifi is actually pretty decent for initial beta. However, once I leave my house to where I'm 3G all the time its absolutely horrendous. Anyone else seeing this? Seems like bizarro world behavior to me.
Click to expand...

I have been noticing the exact same issue. Good battery life on wifi. But horrendous on 3G. That, coupled with the display turning on whenever I change the volume while playing music makes my battery life much worse. I also suspect something is unnessesarily using 3G constantly, thus the faster battery drain.
 
I'm getting equal if not better battery results. I start work at 7:30am with 100% Battery, no use of my phone until 9am and the battery still reports 100% from 9am to 4pm I have music playing constantly with maybe 8 phone calls during this time averaging 5 mins each and lots of Siri use requesting songs and who to call etc. after all this I have still 50% Battery.
 
I've defiantly noticed poor battery life so far, it'll probably just be a bug in iOS 6.
The power went out so it was just sat on my bedside table, locked - and it managed to drain over 10%, doesn't bother me much though, I'm sure they'll fix it eventually. :)
 

Attachments

  • IMG_1354.PNG
    IMG_1354.PNG
    138.3 KB · Views: 133
I am finding really bad battery life on my iPhone 4S since iOS 6 beta 1 (release day install) e.g. in work on 5.1.1 i could get from home to work (aprox 15mins and get to my 1st tea (2hrs in for 15mins) and still be at 100% by lunch 1.5hrs later id be at 96-98% with almost full signal. Now I seem to be getting at 1st break 88% and 78-80 at lunch. Right now 20:20 battery is at 28% with mild to moderate use (would say that no more use then previously would with minor exceptions). Usually I would be at this they following day at this time. iPad 3 16GB wifi battery is not as noticeable and would not complain but I am defo seeing a drop of a few more percentage than normal. Understand that this is beta 1 and looking forward to improvements but surly they (Apple) must have seen this internally!
 
j-a-x said:
My theory was that it was wifi that was draining my phone not 3G but I could be wrong. I'm going to test it this weekend. Wifi is disabled now and I'll see how it goes. at 96% now. I'll report in later and use my forum post as a time stamp.
Click to expand...

Now I'm at 76%. 20% drop in 2 hr. I just did some light web browsing and downloaded a 12 mb app update on an excellent 3G signal. Wifi disabled. My phone was sitting in my pocket unused for the last 30 min and now it's HOT. Now after writing this I'm at 73%.
 
I was just out for 2 hours and this time it only drained about 10% doing approximately the same amount of things, and the phone also didn't get hot this time. Hmm. I am guessing there's a runaway process or something like that which runs the battery down on occasion. I just wish I knew how to figure out what it was.
 
Parise said:
Holy crap this is weird...

So my battery life while using wifi is actually pretty decent for initial beta. However, once I leave my house to where I'm 3G all the time its absolutely horrendous. Anyone else seeing this? Seems like bizarro world behavior to me.
Click to expand...

Similar problem for me. Battery seems ok on wifi (though worse than iOS 5), but when on 3G it drops significantly, quite quickly. Hope this improves with beta 2
 
Okay so the first few days I was using iOS6 on my iPhone 4S, my battery was running down like crazy and my phone was always HOT. But this week so far so good. I've been doing a variety of tasks, pretty much the same things I was doing before, and I'm not having any problems with battery life now. Anybody else notice similar behavior?
 
j-a-x said:
Okay so the first few days I was using iOS6 on my iPhone 4S, my battery was running down like crazy and my phone was always HOT. But this week so far so good. I've been doing a variety of tasks, pretty much the same things I was doing before, and I'm not having any problems with battery life now. Anybody else notice similar behavior?
Click to expand...

Mines been similar since day one. I've no battery issues to be honest
 
AndyK said:
I'm wondering if anyone is doing any testing focused on the comparative battery life of iOS6 vs iOS5?

I personally have a 4s, but in general terms, does iOS6 seem to be more efficient in its battery consumption or are new shiny features bumping up the drain instead?

I'd love to hear any comments / thoughts on it and if anyone is actually testing this aspect.
Click to expand...

When IOS5 was in beta battery life was pretty bad but was way better by release day. IOS6 is about in the same position now
 
Just as you can expect from a beta, battery life is not great.
Overall this seems very noticeable on the new iPad, where even browsing the web makes the device hot and drop by about 3-4% the battery within minutes.
 
when i'd typically be at about 70% (iOS 5) i find myself at a measly 39% (iOS6). same usage.

read something somewhere about an issue with some apps really not shutting down completely even though they say they are. i restarted the phone and will see if that helps.
 
I'm extremely impressed with the battery life on ios 6b1 on my 4S. In comparison with ios 5 where my phone could only last about ~14 hours on a single charge, my phone now last over 24 hours.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back