Wow, so pretty much what I thought. Our expectations aren’t extreme at all. I totally get the phone losing battery while using it, but the drain while idle is the problem. A 3-year-old iPhone shouldn’t be outpacing a brand-new one.
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iOS 18 Battery Life Thread
- Thread starter gwhizkids
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Wow, so pretty much what I thought. Our expectations aren’t extreme at all. I totally get the phone losing battery while using it, but the drain while idle is the problem. A 3-year-old iPhone shouldn’t be outpacing a brand-new one.
I'm convinced that battery drain is the result of apps circumventing background app refresh being turned off.
On my M4 iPad Pro 11", I notice around 10% battery drain per 24 hours if it's just sitting there doing (apparently) absolutely nothing (with cellular turned on). When I say "nothing" I mean "2 minutes screen on time, 1 minute screen off time".
But: I think those usage statistics are incorrect. I have a lot of apps getting notifications which then do some background refresh (like Telegram downloading messages when it gets a notification). For some weird reason, these activities don't add up in my SOT values. I have some very active Telegram groups with notifications on, and it simply cannot be that the screen off time of Telegram downloading those messages only adds up to 1 minute screen off time over 24 hours. Indeed, the battery usage screen shows that 78% of the drain over those 24 hours was due to Telegram (which would be correct). But no racked up minutes of screen off time, which is wrong.
My theory is that we do have a lot of background usage (be it legitimate or lot) that is not being counted in the statistics.
But: I think those usage statistics are incorrect. I have a lot of apps getting notifications which then do some background refresh (like Telegram downloading messages when it gets a notification). For some weird reason, these activities don't add up in my SOT values. I have some very active Telegram groups with notifications on, and it simply cannot be that the screen off time of Telegram downloading those messages only adds up to 1 minute screen off time over 24 hours. Indeed, the battery usage screen shows that 78% of the drain over those 24 hours was due to Telegram (which would be correct). But no racked up minutes of screen off time, which is wrong.
My theory is that we do have a lot of background usage (be it legitimate or lot) that is not being counted in the statistics.
Is 5G available to you? Surely it would be the more efficient option? Your observation of how well 4G and 5G compare is not really a scientific analysis. Maybe 5G is too spotty in your area?
Curious to learn why you think 4G is best for you, as it's now older tech.
That's also something I noticed. Battery drain seems to be constant, no matter what I do. I am actually satisfied by the drain rate, as it's way better on my 16PM than it was on the 15PM. I guess cellular being active and the phone being carried around, keeping its connection to the Apple Push Notification Server, all the stuff it does, just has a background drain that cannot just be stopped. Even in airplane mode, it will still have the background processes running trying to connect to places. You can see that if you connect the iPhone to Xcode and open the console log. It's constantly doing tons of stuff, and that's not "free".
I noticed that as well! With the exact same usage, from one day to another, drain can change drastically. It seems like Apple sometimes tries to tweak server-side settings on some iCloud services, changing some polling intervals, idle timeouts and whatnot, and that's probably enough to affect battery usage. And this is in sync on all my devices: if they start using more or less battery, they do it all concurrently.
I agree! And also a result of background app refresh not being reported properly in the battery usage statistics (see my previous post).
When reporting SoT, I would manually add up each hour's SoT starting from the bar which I unplugged the phone, not quoting from Apple's own statistics.I guess this could be worse. Haven’t really used my phone all that much, so I don’t think this is super impressive either. Also, since this is a measure of the last 24 hours, I am not sure how we actually calculate SOT. That was just since 3:25pm yesterday, and I charged the battery in that time.
BTW: Made a report in Feedback regarding the power drain as well. Good to know that there are ">10" cases.
Seems like a reasonable approach. I have started to look at screen time as well.
Hopefully this starts picking up traction for Apple to figure it out.
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That’s a good sign. They’re actually going to look into it and hopefully fix the drain for you lot with the next update.
For me I have isolated my battery drain in idle by experimenting... when my Apple Watch is on, my iPhone 16 drains 1% an hour. With it switched off (not a permanent solution lol!) I have zero drain. Bluetooth connection surely should not be draining like this?
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I would wait for 18.1 in my opinion
Several of us have noticed that our feedback is listed that “more than 10 people with similar feedback”.. Additionally, we’ve seen Apple access our diagnosis logs on our phones in the past few days. Hopefully, Apple is working on this issue, and we can expect a fix in the full release of iOS 18.1, or at least in iOS 18.1.1.
Yeah they are, but they have never been battery drain like this. This is definitely software based.
To troubleshoot wipe your phone and start from scratch. Then add apps back one by one to see which is at fault.
Battery has been terrible on both my 15p and 16p. Just a constant drain throughout the day. I feel like I can’t use the phone or else it’s going to run out.
I had the Pixel 9 for a week and battery was significantly better on that device. My SO is noticing the same poor battery on their new phone and they are coming from a 3 year old 13 PM.
I had the Pixel 9 for a week and battery was significantly better on that device. My SO is noticing the same poor battery on their new phone and they are coming from a 3 year old 13 PM.
Battery is such a joke.
5th day since I wiped and installed fresh version of iOS 18.0.1
It gets worse each day.
I guess I'll have to carry chargers and battery packs with me everywhere.
Don't mind Thursday, I realized I had background apps enabled and thought disabling it would help, but def. not.
once again this is the iPhone 14 Pro with iOS 18.0.1 and battery health at 92% as per Coconut Battery.
5th day since I wiped and installed fresh version of iOS 18.0.1
It gets worse each day.
I guess I'll have to carry chargers and battery packs with me everywhere.
Don't mind Thursday, I realized I had background apps enabled and thought disabling it would help, but def. not.
once again this is the iPhone 14 Pro with iOS 18.0.1 and battery health at 92% as per Coconut Battery.
I’m glad it’s working wonders for you. Wish I could say the same.
I guess our bets are now on iOS 18.1
I’ll keep posting!
I think its not unusual for early releases of new major versions to contains more bugs then later releases.
However I’m only concern how much time and how many releases were needed for finally battery life become well optimized in iOS 17.
From my experience of user of old iPhone 11 (at the time) I can tell that battery usage finally improved and it was noticeable but it happened just several past releases of iOS 17 (counting back from most recent 17.7).
During the lifespan of iOS 17 Apple was focused VisionOS not to mention regular focus on working on new features.
Well, with iOS 18 the history might repeat itself, as Apple is now heavily focused on Apple Intelligence, so we might have to wait quite some time before things will get better.
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Battery has been kinda mid on my 16 Pro. I feel it was better when I got it and it’s gotten more drain in the last two weeks.