iPhone 17 Pro 17 Pro battery - lackluster or unreasonable expectations?

[Lobwedgephil]

Seems kind of crazy that they advertise 30+ hours of screen time and we’re happy to be getting four or five hours

You should get more then 4-5, but in no way is 30 hours real.

 

[thecatch33]

What’s up with no love for non-Max this year? It bugs me that there is no explicit non-Max 17 Pro vs 16 Pro comparisons by the major YouTubers and publications. Tons of the Max comparisons, but non-Max users have to try to extrapolate from the differences vs 16 Pro Max instead of an apples-to-apples comparison to the 16 Pro.

Doesn’t help that the anecdotal reviews seem to be pretty mixed on 17 Pro battery life. Some good, some bad. Guess I’ll have to wait longer than usual to make upgrade decision this year since I don’t like large phones.

 

[Batt4Christ]

Upgraded from my 13 pro in part due to the battery. So far, it’s been lackluster. Or maybe my expectations are too high?

With my 13 pro I would barely last thru the day, even when I got a brand new battery put in by apple, often requiring a charge if any moderate use was involved.

So far in the couple of days since the 17 pro has arrived, I’m finding that the battery isn’t SO much better. Saturday with 6:51 of screen time I was down to 5% by the evening.

Am I being unreasonable with my expectations? Or does this bear an exchange?

I"m not sure how much is the new phone vs how much is iOS26... which is a massive resource hog. Between transparency (liquid glass), and some apparently still bloated code... I'm hoping an iOS update will soon address SOME of the issues. Meanwhile, I've seen several videos of how to turn off the liquid glass UI candy and seeing some battery life improvement and slightly more responsive device.

 

[chfilm]

Battery have been a beast for me. I'm using it more than normal and can't even kill it to 0%.

Here are the first 2 full charge.
View attachment 2556253View attachment 2556254

Wow. I went down to 20% after just 4 hours of screentime. WTF? I‘m sure this is the e-sim version though?

 

[chfilm]

Upgraded from my 13 pro in part due to the battery. So far, it’s been lackluster. Or maybe my expectations are too high?

With my 13 pro I would barely last thru the day, even when I got a brand new battery put in by apple, often requiring a charge if any moderate use was involved.

So far in the couple of days since the 17 pro has arrived, I’m finding that the battery isn’t SO much better. Saturday with 6:51 of screen time I was down to 5% by the evening.

Am I being unreasonable with my expectations? Or does this bear an exchange?

To answer your original question- I‘m coming from a 15 pro and my main issues were heat and poor battery life. Both issues continue to annoy me on the 17 pro after 4 days… Today I came home with 24% battery and 3,5 hour screen on time, while my wife had still 16% on her 13 pro from 4 years ago at 76% battery health… ((

 

[okkibs]

in no way is 30 hours real.

The 30 hours are reached with sensors like true tone and auto brightness turned off and a low brightness set. I don't think Apple even tells how low the brightness is and it wouldn't surprise me if it's minimum brightness. And it's probably on Wifi too without an active sim card. Even using wifi calling with airplane mode would throw off the 30 hour estimate. Obviously no other apps running let alone installed other than some default Apple app used for video playback.

I‘m coming from a 15 pro and my main issues were heat and poor battery life. Both issues continue to annoy me on the 17 pro after 4 days…

It might be some app or something specific about how you use the iPhone or it's the climate you live in. For example I have no heat and battery issues right on my 15 Pro but on a hot summer day outside with video recording and perhaps a wireless power bank on the go the entire thing gets so hot it's almost concerning. But there's a clear reason and nothing wrong because filming prores in scorching summer heat has brought all my iPhones and all Androids I had to to their limit.

So whatever you're doing might lead to more power consumption and thus heat and bad battery life. Any one component being maxed out like lots of fast downloads over 5G uses a lot of power for the modem, on high brightness the display is usually the highest power drawing component, and apps can tax the SoC especially poorly programmed ones like anything from meta. These actually caused overheating issues when the 15 Pro first released which was covered extensively on macrumors and Apple released some update to reduce the issues.

The 17 Pro is very likely the flagship smartphone with the latest most power efficient hardware on the market and from that follows that battery life should be solid and higher than it would be on any other phone with comparable specs. I bet if you set your 17 Pro up fresh without restoring a backup and only install the most important apps it will perform much better.

 

[chfilm]

The 30 hours are reached with sensors like true tone and auto brightness turned off and a low brightness set. I don't think Apple even tells how low the brightness is and it wouldn't surprise me if it's minimum brightness. And it's probably on Wifi too without an active sim card. Even using wifi calling with airplane mode would throw off the 30 hour estimate. Obviously no other apps running let alone installed other than some default Apple app used for video playback.


It might be some app or something specific about how you use the iPhone or it's the climate you live in. For example I have no heat and battery issues right on my 15 Pro but on a hot summer day outside with video recording and perhaps a wireless power bank on the go the entire thing gets so hot it's almost concerning. But there's a clear reason and nothing wrong because filming prores in scorching summer heat has brought all my iPhones and all Androids I had to to their limit.

So whatever you're doing might lead to more power consumption and thus heat and bad battery life. Any one component being maxed out like lots of fast downloads over 5G uses a lot of power for the modem, on high brightness the display is usually the highest power drawing component, and apps can tax the SoC especially poorly programmed ones like anything from meta. These actually caused overheating issues when the 15 Pro first released which was covered extensively on macrumors and Apple released some update to reduce the issues.

The 17 Pro is very likely the flagship smartphone with the latest most power efficient hardware on the market and from that follows that battery life should be solid and higher than it would be on any other phone with comparable specs. I bet if you set your 17 Pro up fresh without restoring a backup and only install the most important apps it will perform much better.

Well I’ve tried restoring and installing only from the iCloud backup as opposed to directly from my old phone now for a change. Let’s see if that helps. I would hate to setup as a completely new phone and manually having to go through everything again…

 

[FeliApple]

Seems kind of crazy that they advertise 30+ hours of screen time and we’re happy to be getting four or five hours

I never pay much attention to that because I figure it’s likely conducted under conditions that would not fit my typical usage. They call it “video playback” time rather than the more generic “screen on” time. I am guessing that video playback refers to something like this: You’re on a long flight with some movies already downloaded to your phone. The plane interior isn’t super bright, so you don’t need the brightness turned way up. You have airplane mode on, so background processes are much more limited than usual. This is not my typical daily usage lol.

I am one of the few people who can get Apple spec on iPhones. It requires a ridiculously efficient, light usage pattern.

I will hereby provide proof:

My iPhone 16 Plus is rated for 27 hours of “Video playback”

Those 27 hours require
-Low brightness, as close to 0% as possible
-Efficient settings (disable everything heavy, like Mail push, background app refresh, heavy location settings, etc, etc).
-Light apps, like web browsing (MacRumors is a good example), or efficient apps like Netflix, Reddit, etc.
-Not too much standby, because even though there was a period of standby inefficiency that is seemingly over for some devices, standby drain is still there and it literally subtracts available percentage points (and battery life).
-Wi-Fi (and NOT cellular)

And MOST importantly:

-The original major version of iOS. Major iOS updates decrease battery life, so you aren’t getting this on iOS 26 on a 16 Plus, regardless of efficiency.


That said, this is a screenshot of my iPhone 16 Plus, rated for 27 hours of SOT:

7h 43 min of screen-on time with 79% remaining, for a total extrapolated SOT 100-0% of about 32 hours 55 minutes of screen-on time.



To prove this wasn’t a fluke.

The iPhone Xʀ is rated for 16 hours of SOT.

My iPhone Xʀ runs iOS 12.3.1 today, and has been running that iOS version since day one.
This is a screenshot (or two), showing a total SOT of 18 hours 32 minutes 100-0%: