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photogpab

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 21, 2010
491
8
Hows everyone's battery life? I had always heard the plus phones had great battery life due to the fact that hey have much larger batteries. However, so far I'm not particularly impressed by mine:

33bojye.png


This is an improvement over my iPhone 6, however, so many reviews made it sound like the phone would last more than a day with "heavy use". Mine made it to 4pm before I had to go plug it in.

Are there any newer iOS 9 features I should be disabling to help improve battery life? Perhaps "hey Siri" or something outside of the regular battery saving tricks?
 
Last edited:

MacManTexas56

macrumors 68020
Apr 4, 2005
2,496
384
i have a 6 plus and it gets like 8-10 hours of pretty heavy use. but my brightness is set to 50% and don't have background refresh turned on etc. It really depends on your settings and how you use the device. If you do a lot of talking or texting it will use a lot of battery up.
 

photogpab

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 21, 2010
491
8
i have a 6 plus and it gets like 8-10 hours of pretty heavy use. but my brightness is set to 50% and don't have background refresh turned on etc. It really depends on your settings and how you use the device. If you do a lot of talking or texting it will use a lot of battery up.

I have my screen brightness set to much less than 50% and "auto brightness" turned on - I also have all the automatic updates turned off, etc. All the usual tips and tricks. So I'm not sure why I'm getting such poor battery life - there must be some additional stuff I can turn off or there must be something I'm doing wrong.
 

sunking101

macrumors 604
Sep 19, 2013
7,416
2,657
I have my screen brightness set to much less than 50% and "auto brightness" turned on - I also have all the automatic updates turned off, etc. All the usual tips and tricks. So I'm not sure why I'm getting such poor battery life - there must be some additional stuff I can turn off or there must be something I'm doing wrong.

Do you have bluetooth on all the time? I see the icon on your screenshot but perhaps you were using bluetooth. If not, switch it off.
I also have animations off, Siri off, background app refresh off, parallax off, system location services off and one or two other bits & bobs off.
I used to get 9-10 hours with my 6+ and I'm getting 9-11 with my 6S+.
 

Decimotox

macrumors 6502a
Jul 8, 2013
596
334
Yeah....

I'm 3 hours and 3 minutes of screen-on (usage) time (11 hours, 34 minutes standby), and I have 74% left currently.
 

MacManTexas56

macrumors 68020
Apr 4, 2005
2,496
384
and again, it all depends on how you use it. some people here will claim crazy hours, but in reality they just aren't using the phone very much. I've seen some people say they can go 3 days on 1 charge and use the phone like crazy. I don't believe that kinda stuff lol. I pretty much use mine for music/texting/facebook etc. I play music for about 4-5 hours a day while i'm at work. typically have 40-50% left by 6pm. But if I text or make phone calls a lot it goes down quite a bit.
 
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photogpab

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 21, 2010
491
8
Do you have bluetooth on all the time? I see the icon on your screenshot but perhaps you were using bluetooth. If not, switch it off.
I also have animations off, Siri off, background app refresh off, parallax off, system location services off and one or two other bits & bobs off.
I used to get 9-10 hours with my 6+ and I'm getting 9-11 with my 6S+.

I have everything you mentioned above turned off with the exception of "hey siri". I'll turn her off to be safe. I rarely have bluetooth on. I was using it briefly yesterday.

Amazed by some of the results you all are getting.
 

sqa4life

macrumors regular
Jun 27, 2011
154
59
Do you have bluetooth on all the time? I see the icon on your screenshot but perhaps you were using bluetooth. If not, switch it off.
I also have animations off, Siri off, background app refresh off, parallax off, system location services off and one or two other bits & bobs off.
I used to get 9-10 hours with my 6+ and I'm getting 9-11 with my 6S+.
Sounds more like android phones
 

Captain America

macrumors 6502
Aug 29, 2011
399
1
Philly
Do you have bluetooth on all the time? I see the icon on your screenshot but perhaps you were using bluetooth. If not, switch it off.
I also have animations off, Siri off, background app refresh off, parallax off, system location services off and one or two other bits & bobs off.
I used to get 9-10 hours with my 6+ and I'm getting 9-11 with my 6S+.

Needing to have that much off just to get 9-11 hours is some bull. Sounds like what you're saying is you basically just turn it into an iPhone 4.
 

archer75

macrumors 68040
Jan 26, 2005
3,116
1,746
Oregon
I've been following these battery life threads and looking at the screenshots of usage and most people are pretty impressed. But to me most of those battery times are not very good. My nexus 6 I got back at launch easily out lasts any of the 6s plus numbers I'm seeing. Just one of the reasons I'm leary about switching to an iPhone.
 
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Captain America

macrumors 6502
Aug 29, 2011
399
1
Philly
I've been following these battery life threads and looking at the screenshots of usage and most people are pretty impressed. But to me most of those battery times are not very good. My nexus 6 I got back at launch easily out lasts any of the 6s plus numbers I'm seeing. Just one of the reasons I'm leary about switching to an iPhone.

The concern is understandable when someone has a high battery life phone. I can't see anyone with a Droid Maxx switching for that reason.

I almost went to an S6 or Note 5 this year, but their horrible memory management is the opposite direction I wanted to go after the crappy 1GB RAM that came from the 6 last year.
 

Newtons Apple

Suspended
Mar 12, 2014
22,757
15,254
Jacksonville, Florida
I have my screen brightness set to much less than 50% and "auto brightness" turned on - I also have all the automatic updates turned off, etc. All the usual tips and tricks. So I'm not sure why I'm getting such poor battery life - there must be some additional stuff I can turn off or there must be something I'm doing wrong.

You should not have to turn anything off to get better battery life than that. It is hard to tell how mine will do till after a few days at work but i had 90% of mine left after a quiet Sunday. It seem my 6S+ is every bit as good as my 6+
 

photogpab

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 21, 2010
491
8
You should not have to turn anything off to get better battery life than that. It is hard to tell how mine will do till after a few days at work but i had 90% of mine left after a quiet Sunday. It seem my 6S+ is every bit as good as my 6+

This is what frustrates me - I don't think I should have to turn everything off either.

I just turned off a few more items to see if it helps. If I could get 9-10 hours of usage a day I would be more than happy. That would get me through the day without a charge.

However, yesterday I was up at 9:30 am and my phone was dead by 4 pm - I got roughly 6-7 hours with normal use and I was home and on wifi the entire time.
 

The Game 161

macrumors Nehalem
Dec 15, 2010
30,585
19,784
UK
I'm getting 8-11 usage and this is with bluetooth on all the time pairing with my apple watch

got over 16 hours standby on both days too

Love this battery life..best ever battery life for me on a phone

so far today

6 hours, 20 mins usage
11 hours, 17 mins standby

with still 61% left
 

photogpab

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 21, 2010
491
8
I'm getting 8-11 usage and this is with bluetooth on all the time pairing with my apple watch

got over 16 hours standby on both days too

Love this battery life..best ever battery life for me on a phone

thats great! Wish I could figure out what the hell I'm doing wrong.
 

Newtons Apple

Suspended
Mar 12, 2014
22,757
15,254
Jacksonville, Florida
This is what frustrates me - I don't think I should have to turn everything off either just to get my battery to last the whole day. I just turned off a few more things to see if it helps me make it through the day. If I could get 9-10 hours I would be more than happy, that should last me the whole day.

However, yesterday I was up by 9:30 and phone was dead by 4pm. So all I got was roughly 6-7 hours of normal use and I was home and on wifi the entire time.

Unless something is running in the background there is something wrong. I have everything running including BT all day long. I remove my 6+ from the charger at 3:45AM and it goes back to the charger around 8pm and still has 60%, average, left on the battery.have not spent a good workday with my new 6S+ but it has 94% remaining at 11:35 and seem to be as good if not better than expected.
 

throwthedice

macrumors 6502
Aug 27, 2015
262
81
Do you have bluetooth on all the time? I see the icon on your screenshot but perhaps you were using bluetooth. If not, switch it off.
I also have animations off, Siri off, background app refresh off, parallax off, system location services off and one or two other bits & bobs off.
I used to get 9-10 hours with my 6+ and I'm getting 9-11 with my 6S+.


Wait. What's the point of turning everything off just to get more out of the battery?
 
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throwthedice

macrumors 6502
Aug 27, 2015
262
81
image.png image.png


This is where I'm at. Charged it to 100% yesterday (first full charge).
I moved from android so had to set it up as a new phone- so there shouldn't be a lot of indexing going on in the background.
 

Sean76

macrumors 6502a
Feb 10, 2013
665
406
NYC
I'm getting great battery life so far with my 6s plus, actually a little better than my 6plus.

Went about 13 hours yesterday and had around 40% when I got home.

I have location turned on, and my phone is on Bluetooth all day while connected to my watch. Pretty impressed so far!
 

photogpab

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 21, 2010
491
8
I must really be doing something wrong... This doesn't seem great at all:

15flsmo.png
 

MacManTexas56

macrumors 68020
Apr 4, 2005
2,496
384
IMG_1628.PNG
here is mine....on my 6 plus.

off and on since around 6am this morning, it's almost 2pm cst here, and i have played music for over 5 hours. and that's playing via bluetooth in the car and headphones at work. that's where most of my use is from...
 
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