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C DM

macrumors Sandy Bridge
Oct 17, 2011
51,392
19,461
:( That's not good is it. Apple shouldn't release updates that aren't at least as good on battery as the previous. It's an essential feature.
Assuming that's something widespread enough to be the case. So far it doesn't seem to be, as is pretty much usually the case.
 

MadDane

macrumors 6502a
Apr 5, 2015
601
228
Anyone else finding 9.1 to be a bit heavy on the juice?
Yes! The battery life on my iPhone 6 is horrible. After less than 2 hours of usage (most of the time with the screen off while listening to music) and 3-4 hours of standby, my phone is down to approximately 20 %. Not long ago my phone was at at least 50 % by the end of the day with more usage that now.
 

imagineadam

macrumors 68000
Jan 19, 2011
1,704
876
Not very scientific :D
I am obsessive about battery life when I get a new phone. For the first week or so I work out how long I can get from 100% down to 99% with light & heavy use, then down through every 10% point to zero. I can tell after a couple of charge cycles whether my battery is good after an iOS update or phone exchange.

For instance, with my standard morning usage pattern if I get over 45 mins on a 6S+ from 100-99% then it's good. If I get over 1h 50 from 100-90% then it's good...and so on. I save screenshots to guide me.:D
I can relate to being a little on the obsessive side with battery life and taking screenshots at different percentages too. :) I usually do one at 50% then 20% then 5 or 10% then 1% sometimes if I'm going for a full drain. I like to see how much usage I have acquired at each of those percentages.

What I've noticed with iOS 9 compared to 8 is that when I lock my phone the usage number stops climbing immediately 99% of the time like it's supposed to. So when I come back and check say 30 minutes later it's the same as when I left it. On iOS 8 I've noticed in the same scenario that my usage minutes could go up 3-5 minutes or so after locking the phone like a background process was going or something for a few minutes. This would happen more often than not leading to unrealistic usage numbers meaning I wasn't actually using the phone as much as it was reporting and making me feel like I was having better battery life than I actually was! I often screenshot my usage before bed and check when I wake up and in an 8 hour period or so on iOS 8 my usage number could climb up 4-20 minutes (usually on the higher side) where as in iOS 9 the number will only climb 2-6 minutes every time so far all with the same settings. I find this number and behavior to more accurate in iOS 9. Therefore I've been getting about the same battery in iOS 9 but it's been reported as less but it is the true accurate number now!

I always check to see how long it takes for my battery to click off of 100% to 99 too and it's always been about 45 minutes now on every iPhone I've had and iOS version too as well. iPhone 4, 5 and even my 6 now. Same thing.

As for battery life on my iPhone 6 on 9.1 and every version before that I'm getting about 7 hours total usage of screen on time. That's if I'm just mostly using safari on wifi (brightness 50% or below) and tweetbot and light stuff like that. If I play a graphic intensive game for awhile goodbye battery! Maybe 2.5-3 hours screen on for a game. If I'm listening to a podcast through my headphones with the screen off in my pocket then sure I can get my usage numbers to look crazy and get 8-9 hours.

On a typical day of using the phone and browsing hard and messaging and mixing LTE and brightness going high some of the time I think 5:45-7 hours total usage is pretty typical with the 6. I'm talking mostly screen on time. I know the 6plus/6Splus battery absolutely smokes the 6/6s in battery but it's just too big for me. Don't you guys get like 9-10 hours of heave screen on usage times with those things?!? Anyways hope my experiences I've talked about here help someone!
 
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metsjetsfan

macrumors 65816
Feb 2, 2011
1,405
246
Anyone else finding 9.1 to be a bit heavy on the juice?
For me 9.1 started off bad first few days its seems to have stabalized and equal to 9.02. Seems like when you first get a new iphone. Nothing to do with indexing stuff which i dont beleive in past the first couple hours. It was more like the meter calibrating maybe after the update
 

Derek87

macrumors 6502a
Jan 29, 2009
690
159
i can concur with many of the experiences here.

1. iOS8 and iOS9 seemed to count usage differently. i was getting (projecting to 0%) 9-10 hours on 8.4.1. that dropped to maybe 8-9 hours in 9.0 and 9.0.1 because there seems to be less accumulated usage time when i'm not using the screen.

2. 9.0.2 and 9.1 are both definitely heavier on the consumption than 9.0 and 9.0.1 were for me. i'm down to 7 hour of life which is a bit frustrating. i haven't done a clean install yet (don't want to lose Health data as others have noted), but am holding out hope that 9.2 ...
 

sunking101

macrumors 604
Original poster
Sep 19, 2013
7,423
2,659
i can concur with many of the experiences here.

1. iOS8 and iOS9 seemed to count usage differently. i was getting (projecting to 0%) 9-10 hours on 8.4.1. that dropped to maybe 8-9 hours in 9.0 and 9.0.1 because there seems to be less accumulated usage time when i'm not using the screen.

2. 9.0.2 and 9.1 are both definitely heavier on the consumption than 9.0 and 9.0.1 were for me. i'm down to 7 hour of life which is a bit frustrating. i haven't done a clean install yet (don't want to lose Health data as others have noted), but am holding out hope that 9.2 ...

Yeah, I found 9.0.2 to be more draining than the previous two. Damn Apple and their lousy updates, they always do this. You buy a new phone and are very happy with the battery life but a couple of updates later and the battery feels a year old. If they got their act together and actually released a stable X.0 I would stay on it the whole year.

They promised performance improvements and 'up to an hour extra battery life' but then a month after release they rob that hour (and more) back.
 
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Badrottie

Suspended
May 8, 2011
4,317
336
Los Angeles
I thought battery life is much better when I was watching movies from wireless mobile hard drive last night. I checked for battery after 15 min, it says 100% I thought it was joke??
 

C DM

macrumors Sandy Bridge
Oct 17, 2011
51,392
19,461
Yeah, I found 9.0.2 to be more draining than the previous two. Damn Apple and their lousy updates, they always do this. You buy a new phone and are very happy with the battery life but a couple of updates later and the battery feels a year old. If they got their act together and actually released a stable X.0 I would stay on it the whole year.

They promised performance improvements and 'up to an hour extra battery life' but then a month after release they rob that hour (and more) back.
Just yesterday on my iPhone 6 with iOS 9 I had close to 7 hours of usage and 17 hours of standby with 37% of battery left before I plugged it in to charge. That's more than what I was generally getting with 9.0 or 8.4 and various other 8.x versions. Now, this was more of an above than average type of statistic, but there are days like that for me, just as there are days where that type of usage and standby would be there when I'm under 10%.
 
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