iOS 18 Battery Life Thread

[lleial]

iOS 18.3 RC has recently been released.
I was hoping to see improvement in battery life on IP14 but battery drain seems to be even worse than it was in 18.2.1. 🙁

I feel ya, I myself have the IP14 pro and battery has only gotten worse over time. I've given up and now all I do is charge my phone whenever I have the chance.

There's no point in continuing the hunt for reasons. I've stripped my phone of all social media, games, and media content consumption (YouTube, Netflix, Prime, etc.), leaving it as a device for iMessage, Mail, Safari, Banking and calls.

I downloaded music to avoid streaming (didn't work), I disabled iCloud (didn't work), I disabled location tags and what not (didn't work), I dropped the 5G to 4G (this helped, but then again its obvious). I contacted Apple Support, they accessed my phone remotely, saw my settings and said nothing. I've reinstalled iOS more times than I would have liked to, didn't change the end result.

No background refresh, no AOD, no location, and it's delivering -best case scenario- 4 hours of SoT on a full charge.

It is what it is and it's not going to get better. It's the hardware, which is very power hungry.

Funny thing is, both my partner and brother have the iPhone 13 Pro. They get more than double the SoT, with much poorer battery health, and using the device for everything.

I'm sad that it was the same with my previous iPhone 7, but I guess I got two lemons!

Anyway, I don't care anymore about this. Solution is to charge it constantly and carry a battery pack all the time. Next time I won't be buying the iPhone upon release. I'll wait a bit until people report solid results (not the ****** YouTube battery benchmark videos).

Good luck to all!

 

[thadoggfather]

Can y'all rank 18.2, 18.2.1, and 18.3 RC for me best to worst battery life?

I know RC just dropped but would be curious / always am about this sort of thing

 

[Carlsberg69]

Can y'all rank 18.2, 18.2.1, and 18.3 RC for me best to worst battery life?

I know RC just dropped but would be curious / always am about this sort of thing

16 Pro
1. 18.2.1, clearly better in my case
2. 18.2, quite ok though

Sorry, no idea about 18.3 yet.

 

[kirbysmartsdawg]

Can y'all rank 18.2, 18.2.1, and 18.3 RC for me best to worst battery life?

I know RC just dropped but would be curious / always am about this sort of thing

16 Pro
1. 18.2.1, clearly better in my case
2. 18.2, quite ok though

Sorry, no idea about 18.3 yet.

1. 18.3 RC. Best battery life I have seen on my 16 Pro.

2. 18.2.1, good

3. 18.2. nothing special for me.

 

[lleial]

1. 18.3 RC. Best battery life I have seen on my 16 Pro.

2. 18.2.1, good

3. 18.2. nothing special for me.

I'll take your word on this and install 18.3 RC.

Will post back in some time to report.

Thanks!

 

[kirbysmartsdawg]

I'll take your word on this and install 18.3 RC.

Will post back in some time to report.

Thanks!

Sure!

It might not be as good as iOS 17 was on the iPhone 14 Pro, but it's better than any other iOS 18 update thus far for me.

 

[Travis299]

15PM IOS 18.3 version 22D60 excellent battery life.

 

[Hicksmat1976]

Latest beta killing my battery. Also battery health dropped to 95% on a 15 pro max

 

[Ninflu]

iPhone 15 Plus, First Use January 24, 136 Cycle Count, 99% Battery Health: iOS 18.3 RC (Beta), Battery Life is really excellent.

 

[lleial]

I gotta say that the first 2 days after installing the 18.3 RC Beta were superb, after that it has gotten horribly bad.

 

[Tomas1988]

Last 10hours after update..same as 18.2.1

 

[Morac]

I upgraded my 15 PM to 18.3 this morning. I took it off the charger at 7 am at 100%. By 7:30 am, with no usage it was at 92%. That’s much worse than 17.2.1.

 

[Ninflu]

I upgraded my 15 PM to 18.3 this morning. I took it off the charger at 7 am at 100%. By 7:30 am, with no usage it was at 92%. That’s much worse than 17.2.1.

I'm sorry to hear your issue, but you need to wait a few days to let the iOS Update settle. Right now your phone is doing a bunch of stuff in the background which could eat up some % of battery. Also, I've honestly never heard of 8% decrease in 30min if you are not using the phone and not playing any games or use heavy apps. Can you share some screenshots of your battery stats so we can figure your issue out together?

 

[Morac]

I'm sorry to hear your issue, but you need to wait a few days to let the iOS Update settle. Right now your phone is doing a bunch of stuff in the background which could eat up some % of battery. Also, I've honestly never heard of 8% decrease in 30min if you are not using the phone and not playing any games or use heavy apps. Can you share some screenshots of your battery stats so we can figure your issue out together?

Here’s today so far. I restarted my phone after it dropped. I then had my phone plugged in in my car where it charged back up to 95%. It’s dropped down to 77% since then with some Safari usage.

 

[metsi]

Here’s today so far. I restarted my phone after it dropped. I then had my phone plugged in in my car where it charged back up to 95%. It’s dropped down to 77% since then with some Safari usage.

View attachment 2476746

How much does Home & Lock screen use daily? I'm having this issue for the last 10 days, it won't go below 20% per dan, sometimes even over 30%.

 

[HouseLannister]

How much does Home & Lock screen use daily? I'm having this issue for the last 10 days, it won't go below 20% per dan, sometimes even over 30%.

My 10-day average on 18.3 RC and final is 11%. 16 PM

 

[lleial]

Well, here’s the situation with my battery today.
I must say that today I had to enable 5G for a meeting on the go (performance was amazing!).

It got me through the day no problem. 100% off the charger at 06.34 and now it’s at 33% (21.49).

But as you can see, usage is fairly light.

iPhone 14 Pro - Battery health 89% - iOS 18.3

 

[gogikr]

So that is a good battery life? Yesterday- 100% off the charger at 6:45 and at the end of the day , around 23:30 - 27% battery left with 5h Screen active - 15 Pro with 91% battery health, IOS 17.1.1 -most of the time with wifi , with 2 bars sim signal.
The whole IOS 18 is a battery killer , i guess.

 

[ATmahe]

So that is a good battery life? Yesterday- 100% off the charger at 6:45 and at the end of the day , around 23:30 - 27% battery left with 5h Screen active - 15 Pro with 91% battery health, IOS 17.7.1 -most of the time with wifi , with 2 bars sim signal.
The whole IOS 18 is a battery killer , i guess.

I'm getting jealous. Your stats are basically what I'm expecting from the 15 Pro, but ...

100 % off the charger at around 06:00
less than 20 % left before 21:00 with max. 2h screen active and max. 2h background
WiFi only
3 bars signal strength on 5G NSA (iPhone set to 5G automatic)

15 Pro, 92 % battery health, bought at release

With every iOS18 version ...

 

[2761216]

So that is a good battery life? Yesterday- 100% off the charger at 6:45 and at the end of the day , around 23:30 - 27% battery left with 5h Screen active - 15 Pro with 91% battery health, IOS 17.7.1 -most of the time with wifi , with 2 bars sim signal.
The whole IOS 18 is a battery killer , i guess.

If it's just 2 bars, why don't you just turn on airplane mode and use Wi-Fi calling instead?
Low signal is probably the primary cause of your drain.

 

[gogikr]

Еxactly, if the signal is full maybe it will hold even longer, but that has never happened to me . 4g only btw. The phone is with the software I bought it with 17.1.1.

 

[Populus]

Hey, anyone with an A15 device (iPhone 13, 13 mini, 13 Pro, 14, SE 3), how’s the new iOS 18.3 behaving, battery wise, compared to 18.1? which is excellent on my SE 3 btw…

I’d like to update my iPhone SE 3 and especially my M2 iPad Pro (A15 based), from 18.1 to 18.3 due to some bugs with media play, multitasking and Safari tabs.

Thank you.

PS: I know it’s a bit early to tell, but hopefully more and more people will share their experiences during the following days.

 

[elementalwingma]

Hey, anyone with an A15 device (iPhone 13, 13 mini, 13 Pro, 14, SE 3), how’s the new iOS 18.3 behaving, battery wise, compared to 18.1? which is excellent on my SE 3 btw…

I’d like to update my iPhone SE 3 and especially my M2 iPad Pro (A15 based), from 18.1 to 18.3 due to some bugs with media play, multitasking and Safari tabs.

Thank you.

PS: I know it’s a bit early to tell, but hopefully more and more people will share their experiences during the following days.

I don't want to jump the gun but honestly 18.3 has been running amazingly on my 13 Pro Max.

 

[ahmede]

18.3 causing heating up of my 16 Pro when charging. This with the original 5W charger. I never experienced this with earlier versions of iOS 18. I'm also noticing battery drain while on Mobile Data

18.2 / 18.2.1 rock solid battery life.

 

[mg51015bb]

To provide a comparison point, I recently sold my iPhone 16 pro as I was frustrated with battery. Found myself ending a normal day with around 35% battery left, with moderate usage (e.g. 3.5 hours usage). A lot of days I’d burn through 50% battery with just 2 hours of usage. This was surprising at it was worse than prior iOS versions and iPhones. I still remember by iPhone 11 Pro getting like 8 hours of usage across a full day and have 25% in the tank to spare at bedtime.

So now I’m currently using a Pixel 9. With my same usage patterns, things are way better. I will charge to 100% overnight. I take the phone off the charger at 6am and go through a full day and end with 60% battery left. This is with arguably more usage than my iPhone, since it’s a newer device. I don’t even bother to charge overnight half the time. Then I’m around 40% battery life mid-way through the next day.

I really really hope Apple figures out a fix, but my worry is that iOS 18 has a ton of local AI stuff running that constantly hits battery life. I don’t believe in turning off core functionality (e.g. AI, widgets, location settings) to save battery. It’s 2025 - no excuses at this point. Apple either needs to find improvements or increase battery size in phones.