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PowerPCFan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
As of lately I've been noticing my 16 Pro's battery getting worse, today I used nearly 180% of my battery after 7 hours of screen-on time... to be fair I was outdoors meaning cellular was being used heavily + brightness was high, but even "baseline days" have rather high usage and I find myself having to charge my phone near the end of the day for it to last

Any ideas for how quickly these batteries should age? According to settings - first use a year ago (June 2025), 341 cycles, 92% health. I'm on iOS 26.5.

I have to mention that I feel like the cycle count is pretty high given the length ive had the phone, that's nearly a cycle per day and it's pretty much always been like this, im not a particularly heavy user so this seemed a little unusual as well (well im on my phone a lot but doing basic tasks)

I expected to get a few years of good battery life out of this phone and it's been pretty disappointing to see it decline so fast

It's not too big of an issue right now but I'm not really in a situation where I could spend any more money on phones, I lost my original 16 Pro in May of last year and it was unrecoverable + no warranty/insurance coverage so I had to buy a replacement which really sucked lol
 
Well phone usage is very individual. U see all the infos in settings>screentime and battery.

calling 7hours „not a heavy user“ is downplaying the situation.

The 180% is high but a single day outdoors doesn’t help to see if in average your phone behaves unusually.

The obvious short answer is: the max phones would serve you better.
 
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A day outdoors with high screen brightness and heavy cellular usage will hit any phones battery the hardest, and 7 hours of screen time is classed as heavy usage IMO!

Losing 8% of your batteries full charge capacity will start to show reduced usage time between charges, especially on a day like you’ve described burning through nearly 2 full charge cycles.
 
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7 hours of screen time is classed as heavy usage IMO!
I more so meant the workload being done on the phone, not the time, although maybe that doesn't matter as much as you'd think

Well phone usage is very individual. U see all the infos in settings>screentime and battery.

calling 7hours „not a heavy user“ is downplaying the situation.

The 180% is high but a single day outdoors doesn’t help to see if in average your phone behaves unusually.

The obvious short answer is: the max phones would serve you better.
Tuesday was a more normal day and I used 105% in 3 hours 45 minutes

Any suggestions for how to extend battery life or slow aging besides lowering usage?
 
Check for the apps which uses the most battery. Usually GPS, games, video calls.

Regarding battery aging there are already dozens if not hundreds of threads on this forum
 
I more so meant the workload being done on the phone, not the time, although maybe that doesn't matter as much as you'd think


Tuesday was a more normal day and I used 105% in 3 hours 45 minutes

Any suggestions for how to extend battery life or slow aging besides lowering usage?

Do you have a lot of apps using background refresh? Or location services?
 
Check for the apps which uses the most battery. Usually GPS, games, video calls.

Regarding battery aging there are already dozens if not hundreds of threads on this forum
Seems to be mainly Discord and Instagram; and Flightradar24 on days that I use it which makes sense due to the heavy GPS usage

I'll search for some other threads
 
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