Personally, wouldn't call those apps moderately heavy and I wouldn't say texting someone on instagram is a heavy usage. I used to get more than 10h SOT on iOS 15 and iOS 16 with the same apps. I have even uninstalled Facebook from my phone because *allegedly* meta apps are power hungry. And well, that didn't help at all. So that's not apps fault, that's apple and iOS 17. I have been posting about battery life on iOS 17 since august I guess?
And the problem with battery life even hit my Apple Watch S8 after apple forced me to update to watchOS10 with iOS 17.4. I charge my watch everyday around 9pm and now I have around 20-30% less than on OS9 (without AOD).
So sorry not sorry to some people, but this is my opinion and I will blame apple with that one. If I ever upgrade my phone (because I'm literally considering moving back to android cause I hate my iPhone now) I won't be updating it to any new major iOS version, just like you did with your iPhone XR.
And yes, I did erase everything and set-up as new TWICE. I didn't restore my backup, I didn't install 90% of the apps I have now (even some "power hungry" like instagram and twitter) and at the end I just lost 2 weeks of my time doing that so I restored my backup.
Meta apps are power hungry, and it’s interesting that that isn’t your experience. I won’t dispute that. 10 hours of SOT on iOS 15 still sounds moderately heavy use, though. The intriguing part (and the sad one, too), is that you’ve “only” updated through two major versions. That looks like it’s... a 60% SOT loss from iOS 15. That’s insane. Newer devices are supposed to have a milder impact than older devices.
My 9.7-inch iPad Pro was forced from iOS 9 into iOS 12, and I went from 14 hours to 10-11. That’s a 25-30% loss (it’s typically more than 10 hours, maybe 10.5). And we are talking about an older device (with an A9X processor) with one more major update (three instead of two). Your SOT loss sounds just absolutely insane. I would be as angry as you, honestly. I lost almost 30% after a forced update, five years ago, and I’m still angry about that.
Sadly, it just sounds like you’ve tried everything there is to try. My recommendation would be to accept it (I know it’s difficult, I’ve been through the same thing), upgrade eventually, and never update it. Not updating has drawbacks that many can’t tolerate. But I insist: try it. See how you like it. See how compatibility works for you. Then decide. It doesn’t work? Go to Android. But if I were you, I’d give that a shot first.
I found this to be an amazing solution. The iPhone Xʀ is now almost six years old. Mine is just as good as the iPhone 15 series in terms of performance and quality of use. Battery life, when I let it drop, is about three full days with light use, and two days with heavier use (16 hours and around 12 hours of SOT, respectively, but if I let all three days run it’s lower due to standby using some battery). Regardless, battery life will be enough on my Xʀ, always. And that’s solely due to it being on iOS 12, today, almost five years after launch.
