Pits the 16e against other large flagships (including 16 Pro Max). Shows heat measurements, along with a calculated result if they all had the same size battery. 16e didn't win the whole test (though it did well), but did maintain the coolest peak temp, and did have the lowest mAh per minute drop rate of them all. Also, cellular efficiency wasn't even a factor in this one, which I would think would only help the 16e more. Interesting test!
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iPhone 16e Great 16e Battery Comparison
- Thread starter jntdroid
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Battery life has certainly gotten a LOT better when compared to earlier devices, but it’s a tough conundrum for me particularly.
Considering the improvements are so massive… why are there so many people for which this doesn’t reflect on their battery life screenshots? And this is even on original iOS versions!
How come people keep reporting the same mediocre 7-8 hours of SOT they reported back when the 6s was current? How come the 6 Plus was, by sheer numbers, better than the 16 Pro Max, 16e, and whatever current iPhone there is? I guess my question is… why do people keep eating into that battery life improvement? We are getting at the point where I’m seeing people get the same numbers I’d get on a benchmark… why?!
I’ll give my own numbers: this is all with light use on Wi-Fi, but still. 6-7 hours of SOT on the 5s on iOS 8; 7-8 hours on the 6s on iOS 9; 11-12 hours on the 7 Plus on iOS 10; 16-18 hours on the Xʀ on iOS 12; around 27 hours on the 16 Plus on iOS 18.
People are at benchmark-level battery usage? That I’m seeing 8-9 hours on a Pro Max and people think it’s okay? Granted, I’m a light user, but still… no efficiency whatsoever?
Considering the improvements are so massive… why are there so many people for which this doesn’t reflect on their battery life screenshots? And this is even on original iOS versions!
How come people keep reporting the same mediocre 7-8 hours of SOT they reported back when the 6s was current? How come the 6 Plus was, by sheer numbers, better than the 16 Pro Max, 16e, and whatever current iPhone there is? I guess my question is… why do people keep eating into that battery life improvement? We are getting at the point where I’m seeing people get the same numbers I’d get on a benchmark… why?!
I’ll give my own numbers: this is all with light use on Wi-Fi, but still. 6-7 hours of SOT on the 5s on iOS 8; 7-8 hours on the 6s on iOS 9; 11-12 hours on the 7 Plus on iOS 10; 16-18 hours on the Xʀ on iOS 12; around 27 hours on the 16 Plus on iOS 18.
People are at benchmark-level battery usage? That I’m seeing 8-9 hours on a Pro Max and people think it’s okay? Granted, I’m a light user, but still… no efficiency whatsoever?
You are not a light user. You are hardly a user.
Can you ever imagine people use their phones outside, take pictures, make video calls, all while on Cellular and 100% brightness under the sun? Try it for once.
I actually don't think the improvements have been massive. I think battery technology hasn't changed much over the years, so it's been more about battery size plus system efficiency, while also balancing out an increase in power consumption and overall usage by people. Because I get your point (I think?). I've never had an issue with any iPhone getting through a day (going back to the 3GS). There's been some variance in there, but not a whole lot.
The 16e is a good example. It's a larger battery than any other iPhone in that size, and a more power efficient modem. Besides some other small adjustments they might've made that go beyond my scope of knowledge, that's pretty much it, and the main reasons the 16e is doing well with battery life.
Funnily enough… I do!!! Very heavy camera usage, full 5G, outdoors. 5.5 hours of SOT on my 16 Plus with 70% remaining.
Even heavier usage, Full 5G, outdoors, now with the vast majority of the usage being the Camera with 4K video AND maps… 5h 40 min with 63% remaining.
What in the world are people doing so as to kill a Pro Max in 7-8 hours of SOT? Sure… I can do that too, but every single cycle of your usage pattern is gaming with high brightness, so as to never let me see a half-decent cycle? Ever?
The improvements haven’t been massive in terms of technology, but they have been in terms of battery size. The 1,821 mAh battery of the 6s is now the 16 Plus’ 4,674 mAh. A gigantic difference which shows unless you’re trying to get the worst possible battery life, imo.
The increase in many people’s power consumption has been ridiculous. Sure, some people claim the decent “two full days”, whilst others still end the day fishing for a charger. As if they had a 5s. The 6s was, for me, a phone with enough battery life, but barely (on iOS 9 and 10, I used it for a combined 5 years). The 7 Plus on iOS 10 had more than enough. Everything that came afterwards was (and is!) an added bonus. Even my 16 Plus’ 27 hours.
Impossible to say as there are many variables to account for that are not shown in a simple battery consumption screenshot.
Some tasks which kill battery life are:
* Poor reception, where the phone is constantly searching, connecting, disconnecting etc etc for a cellular connection.
* Heavy usage of computationally demanding tasks such as demanding games, 4K video recording, editing etc
* Downloading or uploading lots of data (ie several GB's) using 5G
* High screen brightness.
Nice. As someone looking to upgrade to the 16 plus, and classifies themselves as a "light-medium" user, the stats you've posted are promising.
Yeah, I know, but I’m just surprised that seemingly everyone is performing those four tasks… ALL the time? You can barely find a good result. Nobody has a lighter day on Wi-Fi anymore?
I do admit that I’m an unusually efficient user, so take my numbers with a pinch of salt, but I’m surprised by people’s extreme inefficiency. I’m not asking people to match my numbers. I’m asking why can’t people even provide half-decent screenshots. If you’re getting 6s-level SOT with a relatively current Plus or Pro Max all the time, something is wrong, imo.
7 hours is abhorrent. My Xʀ with moderate usage gets almost twice that on iOS 12.
You (general you of course) play demanding games and record outdoor, high-brightness 4K video… every single cycle?
Another good metric? Cycle count vs days elapsed! Now that since the iPhone 15 and 2024 iPads the battery section shows that number and people love to post them (and I love to read those threads because I’ve kept track of my own health-to-cycles-to-SOT-to-time-ratios since forever and I’m interested), you can see the same thing!
A 15 Pro Max… days elapsed since purchase: about 505. Cycles? 532. How?! To do that you need every single day to be a heavy usage day.
I cycled a 6s on iOS 9 (a third of the SOT I’d get on a 15PM) at about 135 cycles per year.
Don’t have my own numbers, because perhaps I’m too light of a user. But I doubt people are using their phones 17 hours a day on average, so the answer has to be that they’re killing them extremely quickly.
I had a weird arrangement with my Xʀ on iOS 12 which resulted in me not using it much, but I’ll add the data point. About 360 cycles in 5.5 years. Let’s assume that with a more normal usage pattern I’d do a third more cycles than I did. It’s at best around 100-110 per year, for a total of about 600 in this timeframe.
If users kept the Xʀ on iOS 12 as a main phone for as long as I did, I think they’d have over three times that, about 2,000.
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Battery life has been great on my 16e. I don’t cycle 100-0% to see the max screen on time for a full discharge. I’d guess 13hrs+ is possible under the right conditions, I got 10hr 37mins using about 70% of the battery from 100% last week.
Overall very impressed and happy with the battery performance for the size of the device.
Overall very impressed and happy with the battery performance for the size of the device.
You’ve been posting some screenshots recently and I’ve repeatedly extrapolated your results to about 14-15 hours 100-0%.
Your usage pattern seems pretty predictable in terms of SOT, which matches every single iOS device I’ve ever had. It’s good!
Wow, the 16e went 11 hours through all those tests. The Samsung S24 died first, and the S25 expired second, and both have a battery that is 25% larger than the 16e (4005mAH vs 5000mAH). "Apple's cheapest iPhone beat Samsung's most expensive" the video guy says. Great performance.
EDIT: Also, he says the last time he tested the 16PM it went 11 hours and 8 minutes while running 18.0.1, and this time the same phone with iOS 18.3.2 lasted 12 hours 44 minutes.
EDIT: Also, he says the last time he tested the 16PM it went 11 hours and 8 minutes while running 18.0.1, and this time the same phone with iOS 18.3.2 lasted 12 hours 44 minutes.
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Yeah it was pretty surprising. Not exactly a perfect replica of day to day real world use, but impressive nonetheless. I love how he did the mAh decline rate to put them all on equal footing at the end as well.
I know that's a typo, but this is my new sick burn. Thanks.
If you don't use your phone for social media or gaming, even an iPhone 13 mini will last a long time.
I'd imagine with a 16e, I could eek out 2 days if I tried to. I know, back when my 13 mini was brand new I was getting almost a day and a half before I needed to charge it.
I'd imagine with a 16e, I could eek out 2 days if I tried to. I know, back when my 13 mini was brand new I was getting almost a day and a half before I needed to charge it.
So I watch a lot of videos on Netflix, Disney+, Prime and YouTube on my devices which can drain battery quickly especially when on cellular. Most folk are heavy on social media apps such as TikTok. These apps are probably the biggest battery drainers (other than graphically advances games) you’ll find on the AppStore.
Yeah, I reckon the culprits are those social media apps (especially video-heavy ones) like Instagram and TikTok, especially, like you said, at outdoor brightness and cellular. I don’t use those, so maybe that’s the reason.
If your usage pattern consists entirely of hours of those everyday, with some gaming sprinkled and you practically never use it for web browsing, messaging, or other apps (or you even use those but sparingly when compared to social media), I guess you can repeatedly achieve appallingly poor results.
I do use the four apps your mention (but on my iPad, not on my iPhone) and they’re very battery efficient. I don’t use my iPad at high brightness, though. I’ve discovered that there’s nothing you can do at high brightness that will give you good battery life. It is the #1 factor. So yeah, if you go indoors and keep brightness at 100% you can forget about any decent SOT numbers.
I’m just a little surprised by how difficult it is to find a single user with a lighter usage pattern. Even the camera isn’t that heavy. A quote above referenced that: “Can you ever imagine people use their phones outside, take pictures, make video calls, all while on Cellular and 100% brightness under the sun?”. Sure. Every single cycle, at all times?
Even a partially heavy cycle (a mixture of heavy outdoor with lighter indoor usage) would fare better than some of the appalling numbers I’ve been seeing. Streaming apps are decently light unless brightness is at 100%. Funnily enough, I have never conducted a cellular Netflix test on my iPhone.
The battery comparison video shows a ridiculously heavy usage and the phone still goes for 11 hours though, interestingly enough.
That said, you do have a point. As I mentioned earlier, the #1 proof we have is the cycles-to-time ratio. Now iPhones show cycle count. Many exceed a cycle a day on average. There’s not enough time in a day to exceed that with any semblance of light usage, so usage must necessarily be extremely heavy.
I was at around 0.37 cycles a day (or about one every three days) on my 6s on iOS 9. I’ve been using the 16 Plus heavily recently, and it’s at 7 cycles in 16 days, or 0.4375 cycles a day, with one of my heaviest usage patterns.
The cycle count of my regular usage pattern on the 16 Plus remains to be seen. I wouldn’t be surprised if, on average, it ends up being something similar to the Xʀ on iOS 12: 0.18 cycles a day. It might be slightly higher, but I use iPads at home, so yeah. I can’t see it exceeding the 6s’ 0.37 cycles/day in the long run.
As I am an efficient user who never updates iOS, I end up not cycling my devices too much, even with reasonable usage in terms of hours per day.
I recently bought the 11th-gen iPad. With Netflix at low brightness, it dropped to 90% from 100% in… 3h 37 min of screen-on time. How do you want me to cycle it heavily with those numbers? Even 16 hours of usage per day wouldn’t be enough.
Crank the brightness up and include cellular and you can kill it in about six hours or less.
I once recall a YouTube “day in the life” test (which I watched to gauge the Pro Max’s battery life since the 12 series was touted by users as worse when compared to the amazing 11 series) of an iPhone 12 Pro Max, and the user was an incredibly heavy one. It was all cellular, mostly camera and gaming with max brightness. He killed the iPhone in 5h 55 min of SOT. I get more on my 6s on cellular…
Yes, 12 hours with new cell phones just sitting on a table in a park in the middle of the city. That sounds like a study that will never be completed.
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i stream YouTube at work at my desk listening to documentaries and man…. My mini… 2 charges lol. 1bar Weak lte kills it. But I’m in the desk so it doesn’t matter.
Yeah, there are a few factors which severely affect battery life on their own. By this I mean, with every other setting and usage pattern fine-tuned efficiently, if this is present then battery life will be severely affected anyway: High brightness; poor cellular signal; gaming or heavy social media apps; constant location use; maps and other GPS apps if used constantly. And there are probably some others, but those are the main independent battery killers.
If you struggle with battery life and have any of those present, I don’t think you need to look any further.
If I may ask a few questions, please:
How high is brightness on your Mini? Which model is it? And can you check screen-on time? How fast exactly are you killing it? Add individual bars on the last 24 hours screen for accurate numbers.
Yah I don’t worry about my battery who cares really. 86 percent battery health and almost 4 years old. I work on a desk in an office or in my table at home I got charger and portable chargers for days. Heck i just too my mini hiking and I never go without my battery pack.
But brightness maybe 80%, 1 lte bar, 4th floor cement office. I just need it for audio and don’t watch the screen but I have a desk charger. So it’s not an issue as I said.
But brightness maybe 80%, 1 lte bar, 4th floor cement office. I just need it for audio and don’t watch the screen but I have a desk charger. So it’s not an issue as I said.
Because of the huge differences in display legibility and brightness between different smartphones, I find it pointless to have two products like the 16e and 16 Pro Max compete against each other in a battery life test:
The biggest battery drain comes from high SOT in bright(er) environments, and vice versa.
So, regardless of what great internals and many mAhs iPhone 16e might have, it has a significantly less bright and less legible, lower quality display than 15/16/16 Pro/Max and will thus have you increasing the brightness far more altogether leading to higher battery drain and battery wear in both the short- and longterm.
Sure, you can do this kind of artificial test scenario where you set the brightness to the same level. But in practice, in real world scenarios, you'll increase the brightness on 16e more and more frequently than you will using a 15/16/16 Pro/Max.
Best case scenario, I can maybe see 16e's C1 modem and higher mAh number compensating for how you'll be increasing brightness more in brighter environments.
But you could only really compare 16e with 15/16/16 Pro/Max battery life if the displays were more on par.
The biggest battery drain comes from high SOT in bright(er) environments, and vice versa.
So, regardless of what great internals and many mAhs iPhone 16e might have, it has a significantly less bright and less legible, lower quality display than 15/16/16 Pro/Max and will thus have you increasing the brightness far more altogether leading to higher battery drain and battery wear in both the short- and longterm.
Sure, you can do this kind of artificial test scenario where you set the brightness to the same level. But in practice, in real world scenarios, you'll increase the brightness on 16e more and more frequently than you will using a 15/16/16 Pro/Max.
Best case scenario, I can maybe see 16e's C1 modem and higher mAh number compensating for how you'll be increasing brightness more in brighter environments.
But you could only really compare 16e with 15/16/16 Pro/Max battery life if the displays were more on par.
That’s a fairly subjective response. I’ve owned every standard and Pro iPhone going back to the 13 and never changed off of the default “auto brightness” on any of them, and spend a decent amount of time outdoors. They all have the same (or extremely close) resolution and similar quality OLED panels. Some are tuned a little different with regard to warmth, but otherwise they’re all extremely similar in terms of readability. You’re correct some can get much brighter, but again, I fall back to my anecdotal experience in response to that. So while your scenario might be true in some specific cases, that doesn’t mean this comparison is completely dismissible.