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These battery drain issues are also not just about battery drain, they also opens up probably quite a lot of customers to potential security risks. Apple is pretty good at pushing out updates to fix serious iOS security vulnerabilities once they are identified which is great but how many people hold off installing those updates or even skip certain releases completely because of fears about killing their battery life?

I update my iPad promptly because that’s the one I do 99% of my web browsing and banking on on, and I use it almost entirely at home so am always close to a charge, but my 14 Pro Max is still on 16.3.1 because I’m worried about compromising the great battery life I’m currently getting. I do follow the beta and new release threads here and tend to upgrade my iPhone when a release doesn’t seem to have big issues. Hopefully 16.5 will be OK but I suspect I’ll end up having never installed any 16.4.x release on my iPhone.
Apple has won that battle from day 1. iOS updates have always obliterated performance, battery life, or both. That has never discouraged the vast majority of users from updating.

People seem to tolerate every single device being obliterated by iOS updates, and it’s their call. I am surprised that the number of users who update hasn’t waned a little, honestly. This has been happening from the beginning, iOS updates have always obliterated performance and/or battery life, it doesn’t seem like it will stop, and people keep updating. I reckon there’s nothing Apple can do wrong that will get people to change course at this point.
 
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These battery drain issues are also not just about battery drain, they also opens up probably quite a lot of customers to potential security risks. Apple is pretty good at pushing out updates to fix serious iOS security vulnerabilities once they are identified which is great but how many people hold off installing those updates or even skip certain releases completely because of fears about killing their battery life?
I think people talk themselves into MR battery drain PTSD. Out IRL I have never heard anyone complaining about some update killing battery life. I have not had that happen in recent memory. At least to me security > battery life. I’ve had an anker 21000 battery pack since 2016, that’s my antidote to battery performance resulting from using the phone in bright conditions or poor signal areas.
I update my iPad promptly because that’s the one I do 99% of my web browsing and banking on on, and I use it almost entirely at home so am always close to a charge, but my 14 Pro Max is still on 16.3.1 because I’m worried about compromising the great battery life I’m currently getting. I do follow the beta and new release threads here and tend to upgrade my iPhone when a release doesn’t seem to have big issues. Hopefully 16.5 will be OK but I suspect I’ll end up having never installed any 16.4.x release on my iPhone.
No difference between 16.3.1 and 16.4 in terms of battery life on my i14PM. Can’t take the word of MR to determine battery life as others usages is not yours. My 7th gen iPad runs fine on iPadOS 16.4.

Anyway good luck.
 

Definitely not true on my iPhone [iPhone 11 Pro, iOS 16.4.1 (a), new original Battery 100%].

iOS 16 sucks🤮 – Hope that iOS 17 is completely focused on stability and battery performance.
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It can be true that there are bad third party apps out there for battery life, and that it's worth checking if any apps have high battery usage. I noticed that my Mullvad VPN app has been using more battery lately and did see that percentage of battery usage number reduced when I switched to the Wireguard VPN app instead. However, I also had this same issue with Apple's own podcasts app (battery settings consistently saying it had 20-30% of battery usage). I switched to Overcast and its percentage of battery used is much lower (5-10% battery usage) compared to Apple's podcasts app.

There's something to be said about the fact that I had excellent battery life on iOS 15 without ever having to consider if third party apps were using too much battery. I'm sure there were certain battery-sucking third party apps in iOS 15 too, but that didn't stop me from having great battery life overall. There are far too many widespread reports of battery life being bad with iOS 16 for it to just mainly be the fault of third party apps.

Some might argue that the battery life is what you sacrifice to get live activities and dynamic island features. But I regularly use Hevy for my workouts which uses both live activities and dynamic island, but it only has very low battery usage (~2-5%). Meanwhile, the apps that use the most battery for me are just the ones I use the most, and most of them don't even use dynamic island or live activities (Apple Music, Safari, WireGuard, Overcast, Messages, Phone, Kindle, TikTok). None of them even stand out as using an absorbent amount of battery either (like Mullvad and Apple's Podcasts app were before I switched to alternative apps). Also, if dynamic island was the issue, people with phones without the dynamic island wouldn't be complaining about iOS 16 ruining their battery life too.

There's just some background activity that has changed in iOS 16 from iOS 15 that is using a lot more battery life before. I suspect it might be some background activity related to the Lock Screen redesign since Home & Lock Screen is consistently having 10-15% battery usage whether Always On Display is on or not.
 
Consider me surprised, once again. That looks to be around a ~15% drop from iOS 12.

Let me compare that to the data I have on previous devices:

-iPhone 6s, iOS 15: 40-50% drop (from iOS 9-10).
-iPhone 6s, iOS 13: 33% drop (again, from iOS 9-10).
-9.7-inch iPad Pro, iOS 12: 20-23% drop (from iOS 9).

-For data’s sake, iPhone 6s, 63% health, iOS 10: 5% drop after 7 years (solely due to battery health).

As you can see, the improvement is significant. If Apple manages to maintain that 15% drop for the Xʀ’s entire update lifespan, it will perhaps manage to be the first iPhone with great battery life through its entire existence. I think everything depends on that. There’s no benefit if iOS 17 makes it 30%. So far though? It looks good enough so as to consider the Xʀ a full day phone throughout its entire update lifespan (so far).

I am not willing to see whether I can match your numbers on iOS 16 though😂

For whatever’s worth, my Xʀ on iOS 12’s last charge, with 93% health, extrapolated to the same-old 16 hours, so it looks as good as ever.

Health-wise our phones seem to be similar, so it’ll be interesting to see how both evolve, comparatively speaking.

So far, I’d describe my result as completely logical (battery health too good to see any runtime loss on the original version of iOS), and your result as positively surprising: while I knew that the Xʀ was better than the 6s in terms of runtime longevity, it still seems good. While I wouldn’t call it negligible, a 15% loss in runtime considering the Xʀ’s numbers isn’t anything abhorrent. It would mean that on heavier LTE, I’d lose a little over 1.5 hours. Neither on light use nor on moderate to heavy use is that number enough to significantly degrade the Xʀ’s battery life capabilities (at least to me). Looks decent so far. Like I said, the important test is ahead, but the fact that it looks good at this point is a whole achievement for Apple.

Your numbers match what I have expected: as of iOS 16, the iPhone Xʀ onwards have seen a degradation, but a degradation which is far better than that shown by earlier devices, and a degradation which matters less than it used to, due to the Xʀ’s sheer battery life numbers. Progress. I like that.
Is your system services using location constantly? My arrows are always purple. I’m thinking that’s causing everyone’s battery drain issue.
 
Apple could do so much better here with iOS though. In the early days Apple got a lot of criticism vs Android for not really supporting multitasking where stuff could run in the background but instead it had a very specific range of activities that an app could continue to do when not in the foreground (e.g. play music) and when an app moved out of the foreground it was only given a certain amount of background time to close files etc before it was terminated(*).

As I understand it Apple loosened those restrictions a while ago so apps can now do genuine background processing and in theory one can allow/deny full background permissions on a per-app basis or globally but my complaint is that that bit of the picture just doesn't seem to work - or maybe I've misunderstood how it's supposed to work. I have background refresh turned off globally and it doesn't seem to affect anything I want to do like getting WhatsApp messages, playing music etc yet even with background refresh globally disabled I still see apps that I don't even use (e.g. Mail and Home - as in home automation not the home screen) sometimes clocking up many hours each of background processing each day.

Whatever denying background processing permissions does it seems as if apps are able to find ways around that and still clock up lots of hours of background processing, either that or there is something totally broken in how the system is monitoring and reporting per-app background processing times. Either way Apple really needs to revisit its background refresh/processing stuff because right now something is pretty screwy if I can turn off all background refresh and still be told that apps I don't even use are running for 8+ hours each day in the background. Yes, these effects tend to be transient and full resets or deleting the aberrant apps fixes it but such stuff shouldn't be happening at all.

(*) As discussed in another thread about the wisdom of force-closing apps from the switcher or not actually terminating an app within seconds of it losing foreground status and forcing it to reload when next used almost certainly isn't the most battery-efficient thing to do but one could put restrictions on the proc table entry of an app denied full background processing permissions to prevent it being a candidate for getting processor time except for the handling of certain interrupts or an explicit user-requested switch back into the foreground. If iOS has retained most of its Unix heritage the VM system should be able to handle the release of any physical memory used after it has not been running for a while without needing to actually terminate the process.
 
Good point, I think the per app reporting system could be broken.

I also still get many hours per day (16 to 18) of background usage of two email apps, one is the standard Mail app. I do use them, but just a few minutes per day usually. The usage is either one or the other for a few days and then the other for a few days again. Always happens after a restart (due to a software update usually, but also sometimes for another reason). Then a few days normal background usage and then it starts all over again.

I find it a bit annoying, BUT I'm not sure that it is doing anything with the battery. It's not draining any faster on the days with one of those two mail apps running in the background almost all day.

So that makes me wonder if the reporting system may be broken.
 
92%

I still think Apple should put nothing less than a 5000 mah battery in the pro max, you can only do so much with a small battery, and would help a ton with all these complaints.
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I’m at 97% but it dropped a few quick in past couple days after however many months since launch at 100%
 
I don't know what I do differently. My 14pm is almost one year old and still at 100%. I lay it on a wireless charger when I go to bed, and plug it into CarPlay every day.
 

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Battery performance should be better than what it is after an update or at least the same. If you had the same apps before the update as after, your battery life shouldn’t be any worse. I wonder how well Apple tests these updates for battery consistency
 
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92%

I still think Apple should put nothing less than a 5000 mah battery in the pro max, you can only do so much with a small battery, and would help a ton with all these complaints. View attachment 2199693

I agree but I have this horrible feeling that on the 15 Pro Max Apple might go in the opposite direction, they do have history after all of one year's phone having a very slightly smaller capacity battery vs the previous year's model.

If the rumours about this year's Pro Max are true then even though the main body of the 15 Pro Max is rumoured to be slightly thicker than the 14 Pro Max the rumoured slimmed down bezel reduce the height and width and someone worked out that the total volume change was only about +3% for the 15 Pro Max vs the 14 Pro Max (from memory, I might have got that +3% number wrong but it wasn't a lot whatever the correct figure is).

Any increase is good (in my opinion, I realise others disagree vehemently) but while I really want a periscope zoom lens I am nervous that the extra internal space it presumably needs vs the current zoom might be found at the expense of battery capacity with Apple again relying on improved efficiency to maintain at least the same battery life as the 14 Pro Max with a slightly smaller battery. Then again, if this is the year when Apple ditches the physical SIM slot worldwide that would be one less thing on the main PCB and might allow them to shrink the overall PCB footprint which might compensate for any extra space eaten up by the rumoured periscope zoom.

Ultimately when I see Samsung phones of roughly similar size having 5,000mAh batteries, setting aside all my ramblings above about the internals and the practicalities involved, my knee-jerk reaction as a simple consumer is that if Samsung can put that sort of capacity battery into their high-end phones then I'd like to see Apple do it as well.
 
My iPhone 12 mini is on its third battery, I do battery service by Apple every 12 months.
On iOS 14 new battery was giving me 6 hours SOT. On iOS 15 with new battery - 5,5 hours.
Now on iOS 16.4 afte battery service I get 5 hours. (Before battery replacement 3,5 hours and the battery health was 92%).
 
I’d go back to Android if it wasn’t for being somewhat locked into an ecosystem

At least with Android you can properly diagnose battery drains/wakelocks and fix them. With iOS it’s just a crapshoot whether some rogue process doesn’t just eat battery life for fun
 
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I am sad to join the thread. My 2nd battery on my X has 531 cycles and dropped from 91% health to 88% since 16.4.1a went on it. And battery feels suddenly like it drops off a cliff. Also heat when charging is suddenly an issue, coincidences are something I tend to not believe in.....
 
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