Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iPhone 16 Users Complain About Excessive iOS 18 Battery Drain
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
We‘re a month into launch and we’ve only had 1 iOS update. There are definitely more iPhone 16 bugs than that and even more iOS 18 bugs.
I get the sense that Apple is fully focused on Apple Intelligence in 18.1 but their poor release day quality control for hardware and software is showing.
As a day 1 adopter, this is getting old and frustrating.
I get the sense that Apple is fully focused on Apple Intelligence in 18.1 but their poor release day quality control for hardware and software is showing.
As a day 1 adopter, this is getting old and frustrating.
Apps which could also function just fine from a browser. I wouldn't even keep them at this point, I'd just delete them and set up some homepage shortcuts to those websites.
If people held off in noticeable numbers until this stuff got ironed out it just might shift priorities. But it would have to be enough to change their quarterly results
I just power my phone off for most of the day. Saves a lot of battery life.
As always there’s rogue code or RAM leaks that happen the first 6 months of these releases which is why the yearly update cycle needs to stop. The more crap they pile on the more complex it gets and the harder it is to track and squash bugs. What they should do is do smaller updates going forward. Update apps with new features slowly instead of doing the massive yearly dump. Plus it would be better for consumers to not have to wait months or years for them to fix the dumbest things.
Think of the Apple Intelligence rollout. It’s gonna be a drip of new stuff over 6month. Apply that logic to the rest of the OS.
The camera control -don’t call it a button- button is not great in practice. Too fiddly for accurate adjustment and it hides a multitude of sub-features - a hallmark of poor design
Is this a surprise to anyone?!? iPhone 16 users should have upgraded to the iPhone 17 by now. Thank you, next!
Yes there was the before time but this battery stuff largely coincides with CraigFed taking a more prominent role, for what it’s worth
I'm seeing a similar thing on my 16PM. I was coming from a 15PM with 18.1 beta installed - after my 15PM first got the OS upgrade, its battery drain was a bit more - as expected, since I assumed AI features needed to build their language models and such....but then settled to the usual 50% left at the end of a day. Then I got the 16PM and it never did settle down (my wife who did the same upgrade, complained about battery drain as well, so it's not isolated). It often gets down into the 20-30% range, but some days it's in the 50% range. All in all very disappointing as the advertised battery life (supposedly 10%?) was pretty much the only "feature" we cared for when upgrading.
BTW, I was one of the early contributors on that Apple support thread referenced above. I wonder if Apple will do anything? I wonder even more if any publications have done real-life battery tests - rather than just running videos until the battery is dead?
It remains to be seen whether the 18.X rollouts of new features will include enough bug fixes vs breaking new stuff. Overall, low quality control may be robust to choice of release schedule.
Totally subjective, but my 15 Pro has been my least favorite iPhone since the 3GS, which is when I worked at Apple and saw casing issues up close. Only reason I dislike the 15 Pro is battery life, and I’ve experienced significant battery drain and overheating on 18.1. It’s the only update I’d like to see in a new phone. I recently held my brother’s pink 16 Plus and it felt fantastic. Camera Control feels like a software update or two away from being really cool. I feel for the software engineers at Apple. I doubt they’re ever sleeping.
Would turning OFF background app refresh rectify battery drain ?
Last edited:
Apple devices- the laptops, the iPads too, these get great battery life. The phones? I’ve never felt the battery life was sufficient, it has and continues to feel lacking for real world usage. I say that as someone that’s had every model, and starts fresh with each one (no backups restored). Apple is just not there yet with battery life and I have to wonder, this far along, if they ever will be. Given the past evidence I think probably not.
Well they have months of beta upgrades available before the official release goes out, and quite a few bugs are caught yearly. Far more now than when the beta program was only for paid developers. I still feel one of the worst was iOS 7.
I disagree with the idea of stoping updates / new features. I wish they offered a similar system as they do in MacOS.
What would be nice is if iOS had continued security updates for older versions for a year or 2, similar to how MacOS does with older releases. Ventura will likely have a full year of security updates still, but Apple stopped signing, and no longer updates iOS 16 regularly which is somewhat nonsensical.
Last patch of iOS 16 was on August 7
Latest patch of 17 was on September 12
I had the issue with my 16 Pro Max while running on iOS 18. Since iOS 18.0.1. battery is back to normal.
Good to hear that Sander and that you've managed by that post to negate everyone elses experience. I'm sure others will come on here to specifically support your experience with their own phones and by then the evidence of three or four posts of no problems will be so overwhelming and we can all move on.
Excellent battery life on iOS 18 and 18.0.1 on my 15pm.
no battery life problems here its great but there is some excessive (home lock screen battery) 10% Lockscreen use over the day usage...... hope they fix that.
the lock screen when off is draining more then it should. but the battery is so big and the a18 pro so efficient i still have two day battery life while only. charging to 90 % and beeing left with 20-30+% after two days.
they just need to fix the lockscreen drain and its going to be really great.
the lock screen when off is draining more then it should. but the battery is so big and the a18 pro so efficient i still have two day battery life while only. charging to 90 % and beeing left with 20-30+% after two days.
they just need to fix the lockscreen drain and its going to be really great.
That’s not an excuse . “Oh we only released it for a month” I mean they had months to do beta and before they freaking INSTALLED it into iPhone 16 devices it should’ve solved all the battery drain issues
got 16 Pro Max last Friday, battery was meh at first, now it seems better but still not nearly as impressive as some of these reviews are saying....cmon, a day and a half off 1 full charge, please, huh?? always on is off, 60hz is on....
makes me wonder what iOS these reviewers are really getting and possibly specially tuned batteries in their phones etc
: (
makes me wonder what iOS these reviewers are really getting and possibly specially tuned batteries in their phones etc
: (