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iOS 18 Battery Life Thread

TexasAggie013 said:
Started my experiment to determine if my iCloud account is the source of the mysterious drain. I have a brand new 16 pro and haven’t logged into my iCloud account yet. Battery life is far superior to what I have been having on my original 16 pro.

So far I have 2 hours of screen on time and haven’t even hit 20% drain. Yesterday I had 2.5 hours of screen on time and 70% drain on my old 16 pro.

Plan to spend a couple days without signing into iCloud to see what happens. Then I’ll sign in but not download any data (no contacts, photos, reminders, etc.). Then finally I download my data. I’ll capture a bunch of screenshots along the way. Hoping to pin down where the drain really kicks in by taking the process in slow steps and building some evidence to take back to apple.

After engineering took a look at my power logs and told me nothing was wrong, I was motivated to prove them wrong or prove myself wrong. Who knows. Maybe the first 16 pro was just a bad phone and this experiment is all just overkill.
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I have my doubts it's the phone. I had these same issues on my 14 Pro after the betas were over and iOS 18 was fully released. I could be wrong, and I hope the fix is a new phone. That would be super easy.

For me it has to be 1 of 2 issues. It's either an iCloud issue, which you should figure that out quickly with your test. Or 2 it's the display. The only reason I think something to do with the display is the fact the Home and Lockscreen stay at the top of the battery usage page. I don't think the display is fully turning off when the phone is locked. Could be totally off, but it's just very odd that the home and lock screen is so high.
 
kirbysmartsdawg said:
I have my doubts it's the phone. I had these same issues on my 14 Pro after the betas were over and iOS 18 was fully released. I could be wrong, and I hope the fix is a new phone. That would be super easy.

For me it has to be 1 of 2 issues. It's either an iCloud issue, which you should figure that out quickly with your test. Or 2 it's the display. The only reason I think something to do with the display is the fact the Home and Lockscreen stay at the top of the battery usage page. I don't think the display is fully turning off when the phone is locked. Could be totally off, but it's just very odd that the home and lock screen is so high.
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The same problem with Home and Lockscreen. No AOD on.
Over the last 10 days, it’s on position 3. That can’t be normal
 
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Here is my iPhone 16 without Bluetooth on. Seems great.
I have removed my 3 AirTags of my iCloud account and tomorrow I test Bluetooth on but disable it on my Watch….

IMG_0437.png
 
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huanbrother said:
Don't panic, first of all, are you using the smaller sized iPhone(regular/Pro) , or the big brothers (Plus/Pro Max)? I assume this is a 16 Pro am I correct?
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It is the 16 (not Pro).
And my colleague has the same phone with also an Apple Watch and has better battery life.
 
Today I'm having a new low with my 15 Pro ...
1h54m screen on
1h13m screen off
equals 100 % battery ... (max. capacity 92 % after 429 cycles)
 

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ATmahe said:
Today I'm having a new low with my 15 Pro ...
1h54m screen on
1h13m screen off
equals 100 % battery ... (max. capacity 92 % after 429 cycles)
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Something is definitely no right… are you on 18.1? Have you tried resetting your network settings or all settings?
 
I‘m on the latest official iOS release (18.1).
I‘m watching the battery life since I got my 15 pro, because since the first it wasn’t that good for me or below my expectations.

I have no idea what was going on yesterday. I had less usage than the days before, was connected to WiFi the whole day (which I‘m usually not). For me, it’s the day with the worst battery stats since the release of the 15 series.

I‘m using MS Teams a lot, which is a battery drainer (especially when on calls), but also this was less yesterday.

I didn’t reset (or change) any settings, this would be a pita for me. So beside of AOD (which, in my case, doesn’t make a big difference over the whole day) nothing changed since I‘m using my 15 pro. Still, on some days battery life is okay and on most it’s definitely not.

Overall, after more than a year now, my usage during the week is basically the same and I experienced very different battery life regardless of the iOS version (of course it wasn’t exactly the same with different versions, but also not much of a difference). I don’t see any relation to my usage pattern.

So overall, I have no idea what’s going on.
 
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It has become a new standard for Apple that new iOS features take at least six months after release to be fully implemented or stabilized. Additionally, battery life issues are not limited to beta versions but also persist in early software releases. For iOS 17, noticeable improvements in battery life only started appearing as late as versions 17.4 or 17.5. This is unacceptable.
 
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Omisake said:
You as well eh? It’s so weird, I have no idea what’s causing it. And the whole battery drain in general, which I’ve found to be inconsistent ever since iOS 18 has come out. There’s days where my battery life is amazing, like just a couple weeks back, I had a day where it was phenomenal. But then with exactly identical usage, it’ll be noticeably worse the day after. So strange…

I updated to 18.2 PB Beta 2 and will report back on if there’s any improvement.
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Don MC said:
I had the Home & Lock Screen battery drain bug in september on my previous iP14PM after I upgraded to iOS 18.0. That problem went away with a network reset.

Got the same bug again now on my new iP16PM with iOS 18.1. A network reset this time did NOT help. So I went for the iOS 18.2 Public Beta instead. I hope this helps. So far it looks like it's working, but time will tell. At least Home & Lock Screen aren't first anymore on the battery usage list.
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Tomas1988 said:
Goodbye 18.1 😀
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Any updates on battery on 18.2 PB 2?
 
Try Reset Network Settings.
ATmahe said:
I‘m on the latest official iOS release (18.1).
I‘m watching the battery life since I got my 15 pro, because since the first it wasn’t that good for me or below my expectations.

I have no idea what was going on yesterday. I had less usage than the days before, was connected to WiFi the whole day (which I‘m usually not). For me, it’s the day with the worst battery stats since the release of the 15 series.

I‘m using MS Teams a lot, which is a battery drainer (especially when on calls), but also this was less yesterday.

I didn’t reset (or change) any settings, this would be a pita for me. So beside of AOD (which, in my case, doesn’t make a big difference over the whole day) nothing changed since I‘m using my 15 pro. Still, on some days battery life is okay and on most it’s definitely not.

Overall, after more than a year now, my usage during the week is basically the same and I experienced very different battery life regardless of the iOS version (of course it wasn’t exactly the same with different versions, but also not much of a difference). I don’t see any relation to my usage pattern.

So overall, I have no idea what’s going on.
Click to expand...
Try to Reset Network Settings. It’s helped me in the past. You won’t lose any data and will into have to re-add your WiFi networks and change your device name (gets reset to iPhone).
 
coffeeplease said:
Any updates on battery on 18.2 PB 2?
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My apologies, but I just wanted to use it for more than a couple days before reporting back; just because on iOS 18, I've had this weird bug where my battery life is initially good after an update or restoring it for the first day or so and then it immediately gets worse. It's what's led me to think that it may be an iCloud bug or something that some process was getting stuck while syncing.

Anyway, for me, (on an iPhone 13) the battery life on 18.2 PB 2 has been phenomenal so far. I've used it for a couple days and it's exactly what I was getting on iOS 17.7. At least so far, I updated on Wednesday afternoon and since then I've had no issues regarding battery life. Now I know this is very light usage in terms of what I'm doing because it's just Apollo through sideloading, but still, it is identical to what I was getting on iOS 17.

IMG_0238.PNG

IMG_0244.PNG


With that said, (I know this is a battery life thread but I still want to make mention of this), I am still experiencing other bugs, such as random stuttering and jittering throughout the OS (really hope this gets ironed out very soon because it really ruins the whole experience quite a bit), there's still keyboard lag occasionally, and this other strange bug where after a reboot, the home screen wallpaper becomes oversaturated. And to fix this, you go into Settings, Wallpaper, click Customize on your current wallpaper, and hit Done. And this fixes it. So for me, I'm hoping that my battery life issues are finally gone, but I will keep my eyes on things and report back to say if it's still all good or if it's gone downhill again.
 
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VSMacOne said:
Try to Reset Network Settings. It’s helped me in the past. You won’t lose any data and will into have to re-add your WiFi networks and change your device name (gets reset to iPhone).
Click to expand...
I have stored to many WiFi networks for this.

In my case it‘s not just joining the WiFi and entering the password for it. I have to manually edit most of them to be able to connect, because (at least) the MAC-address has to be registered to be able to connect to most networks I‘ve stored. And this has to be done on my Apple Watch too, gone through that back in the days, will never do that again.

Apple has to fix that, I really don’t get why I would have to reset settings if I haven’t changed them.

Edit: fixed some typos
 
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This is my horrendous battery consumption experience with IOS 18.1 on my 14PM and my partner's 13 mini:

Since installing IOS 18 I have been noticing an increase in battery consumption without changing my phone usage habits.

In coming to this thread I have learned many valuable things. I have configured everything that is configurable in order to scrape a little more life from the battery. I have not succeeded. I will try to provide as much context as possible in case someone can help me to solve this problem.

Settings I have configured to ‘try’ to improve battery consumption:

  • Background updates restricted to wifi and only on vital apps.
  • Location settings for system services following the Payette Forward video, set to the minimum.
  • Strict configuration of the mail app, only updates every hour (none of my mails need so much urgency to use push).
  • Dark mode and dark icons.
  • Reduced mobile data mode, 4G mode, IP address tracking limit: enabled.
  • More than 90% of the time connected to stable wifi.
  • Disabled all automatic updates for both App Store and operating system.
  • I use an Apple Watch S4, AirPods Pro 2 and MBA M2 in my daily life (private use context).

Before going to sleep we always switch off BT, wifi and mobile data connections and activate the low power mode. We have found in the last weeks that the idle consumption even under these conditions is between 5% to 8%.

Yesterday for example I disconnected my 14PM at 21:30 at 80%, started browsing macrumors from Safari with the minimum brightness and reduce white spot on for about 1 hour from 23:00 to 24:00, I did it with the low battery consumption on and I could see how the battery was dropping alarmingly. When I woke up at 6 o'clock I saw how the lock screen/startup, Find My and settings app had high consumption. Every time I see the location icon and go into settings to see who is responsible I notice that under System Services there are 3 culprits: Find my iPhone, compass calibration, scroll calibration.

Lately I spend more time in Settings than enjoying the phone. Maybe I need a hard reset and start from 0 but that takes time I don't have.

Sorry for my web-translated English, I understand it pretty well but I'm not able to write a text like this without help. I hope someone can give me some advice or suggestion to fix these consumptions that are clearly exaggerated.

I attach some screenshots that demonstrate what I am saying:

IMG_3793.png
IMG_3795.png
IMG_3790.png
IMG_3791.jpeg
 
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coffeeplease said:
Any updates on battery on 18.2 PB 2?
Click to expand...
A little better than the official 18.1, but not by a huge margin. Still not as good as my previous iP14PM. Home & Lock Screen is down from 1st place to 3rd on the battery usage list. It didn't usually show up at all, or it was way down below on my previous phone.

My iP14PM used to be around 55% or more by the end of the 3rd day. Now, with my iP16PM it's around 45% with identical usage.

Yeah, I know. I'm not on my phone very much. I have an iPad for that.


IMG_0609.jpg
 
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Don MC said:
A little better than the official 18.1, but not by a huge margin. Still not as good as my previous iP14PM. Home & Lock Screen is down from 1st place to 3rd on the battery usage list. It didn't usually show up at all, or it was way down below on my previous phone.

My iP14PM used to be around 55% or more by the end of the 3rd day. Now, with my iP16PM it's around 45% with identical usage.

Yeah, I know. I'm not on my phone very much. I have an iPad for that.


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Do you have iPhone Mirroring enabled by any chance? I've come across this article that suggests disabling it, since it keeps a connection alive between it and the Mac. I've disabled it and will see if it makes much of a difference.
 
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coffeeplease said:
Do you have iPhone Mirroring enabled by any chance? I've come across this article that suggests disabling it, since it keeps a connection alive between it and the Mac. I've disabled it and will see if it makes much of a difference.
Click to expand...

Does not make a difference at all. Turn it off on mine, and battery life is exactly the same.
 
coffeeplease said:
Do you have iPhone Mirroring enabled by any chance? I've come across this article that suggests disabling it, since it keeps a connection alive between it and the Mac. I've disabled it and will see if it makes much of a difference.
Click to expand...
We don’t have iPhone Mirroring at all here in the EU. So cannot disable it or enable it.
 
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