I keep permanent LPM on. I last tested it with the 6s running iOS 9 and it made zero difference. I haven’t tested the difference again.
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iPhone Air iPhone Air battery life screenshots thread
- Thread starter FeliApple
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Something ain’t right here, I have similar SOT and came off the charger 6 hours ago and I’m at 90%. Been on WiFi all day though.
Yeah this feels nuts. Took a few screenshots earlier when I hit 50% battery. Phone had been off charge for 4.5 hours, SOT 75 minutes (all very light usage). Health app looks like it hit the battery hard for some reason. Not sure if I should chalk that up to phone being recently setup. But this is a clean restore with handful of apps installed, all very light usage.
I'm going to give it a few days to settle and if nothing changes then I'm swapping it for sure.
How today’s going with predominantly 5G and barely any WiFi use.
My typical office day today. Car charger kept battery at 100% till 9am and after that it’s all been 4/5g with safari, texts, emails and news. Given I have access to chargers in my usual locations I have no concerns with battery (camera is another issue, it’s a step back I have to live with) and won’t be looking anymore.
So, light usage and this is what I get;
So, light usage and this is what I get;
I’ve been away from WiFi most of the day now! Have just added a few screen shots above.
It makes a difference!!!
I took it off the charger last night at 23:00 charged till 90%.
The phone sat idle overnight till 8am.
I am now with 32% left at 18:25. So it consumed 58% battery. Screen active time 6 hours!!!
I consider that really good. Because that means with 100% charge and my usage it would hit 10,5 hours active screen time from 100-0%.
My usual active screen time is 4-6 hours. I rarely use my phone more than that during the day.
Perhaps because you have the settings that Low Power Mode modifies enabled? In my case, background app refresh, mail push, etc, are all already disabled and the device is fully optimised.
That massive difference is obtainable through settings efficiency, but you most likely had to have them all enabled before.
After years on end of pursuing massive efficiency (since my first iOS device), I never really bothered to test the difference between a fully optimised settings “suite” and having everything enabled, since I won’t change this regardless.
Literally the first thing I do after setup is optimise settings. I really never touch that again.
That looks lower in comparison with light use than what you got with the 16e’s screenshot we commented on earlier.
My running theory is that the Air can’t cope with increased power consumption as well as other iPhones. Do you have a full Wi-Fi one? Maybe with lighter use, such as no camera? Just to see how it would compare?
I have similar issues with drain overnight while I am not using the phone:
So far I have tried power cycling all of my devices watch etc and now have installed the 26.1 Beta. Hopefully this will help, as I am finding battery life to be unusable.
I just watched the Tom's Guide Air battery review and they say they had 5 hours of YouTube playback for a loss of only 19% battery which seems unbelievable. Going to try that myself.
I honestly don't understand it. I mean I can keep topping up frequently during the day. And I don't expect the life of a Pro Max device, I'm happy to top up here and there as a trade off for this design. But what I've been experiencing has been brutal.
Today was first full day after doing a clean restore and installing just a handful of apps. Traditional light use for me (most the day at work where I'm sitting at a Mac anyway).
11 hours since taking it off the charger for it to reach 1% remaining. 2:15 SOT.
I’ve not watched YouTube for that long but it’s very well optimised and easy on the battery.
Your usage is relatively heavy regardless from what you told me, but that looks better (if you didn’t use it while charging).
About 10 hours of SOT with moderate use with majority Wi-Fi is… decent I’d say?
Full cellular with the same moderately heavy use seems to give you around 6.
If I go by what I know, a fully optimised, light Wi-Fi usage pattern would give you about 14-15 hours? Maybe?
It’s pretty much Xʀ-like. It should be a little better per specs, or I’m miscalculating because your usage is likely heavier than mine.
Nevertheless, I think that for light to moderate use and maybe a little more it is good (maybe 9-10 to 15 hours of SOT depending on usage). It seems that for heavier use my 16 Plus is more resilient. The Air seems to drop heavily, like my Xʀ on iOS 12 does.
I usually got 7-8 hours of SOT to 50% with my light usage pattern on my Xʀ on iOS 12. Heavy camera use dropped that to about 5 hours, maybe 4 with mediocre cellular. For a penalty of 40-50%.
My 16 Plus has a penalty of about 27-35% with the same usage pattern:
Light Wi-Fi use: 3.5 hours to 90%.
Heavy camera use cellular: 2.5 hours to 90%
Light Wi-Fi use: 9 hours to 65%
Heavy camera use cellular: about 6 hours to 65%.
With that usage pattern, the Air suffers a little more than the Xʀ, or maybe it is similar. On Wednesday, you said you used the camera a lot. 5 hours with 63% used. You said you charged to 95%, the charged it back to 80%. Did you use it while charging? Should I subtract anything from that number?
Otherwise you got about 8 hours of heavier camera SOT. Maybe it’s similar to the Xʀ on iOS 12 if 100% of that SOT is genuine… to be determined.
I watched an hour long 1080p video (maybe a bit longer with ads and all) and I went from 95 to 92 percent which very impressive. So it would seem the results Tom’s Guide had for a five hour video are genuine.
The perplexing thing about this is that this is less battery usage than I get with the Air sitting on the nightstand with the screen off while I’m asleep. This implies that there is room for optimization in software and Apple could improve the Air’s battery life in future.
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The battery life from os26 on my 14pro was about 20% worse I reckon, so need to factor in that as well. Hopefully we see improvements as the build matures.
Yeah, comparing an iPhone 14 Pro on iOS 26 vs an iPhone Air on iOS 26 is not fair at all.
A 14 Pro on iOS 16 would be a more apt comparison.
The “view all battery usage” page shows screen-on time. Can you share that, please?
On WiFi the battery is great and when mostly on 4/5G it suffers, I guess the same can be said for all phones?
Getting 2 or so hours less when using mobile data vs WiFi.
Yesterday I got to 9pm with 6 hours of screen time, plugged it in at 25% for top up to 50% and used it some before bed. Woke up with 39% left this morning
Yesterday, subtract 20mins for some screen on time whilst charging.
Yeah, with moderately heavy usage you seem to be getting around 10 hours of Wi-Fi and (presumably with a similar usage pattern) 8 hours of cellular. With no increased brightness, that sounds normal.
Tough to compare still, it is difficult to ascertain how much I’d get with my (lighter) usage.
It nevertheless sounds good enough. It seems more or less Xʀ-like, obviously like I said it is difficult to compare using numbers from somebody else.
Should be good enough for most people. Definitely worse than the 16 Plus on iOS 18, though, without a doubt. Not even close.
Thank you! SOT looks low but the usage is very heavy. Cannot expect much with navigation.