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This post did get buried lol

Here are some battery usage screen shots starting on day one of using the Air on Saturday. It’s been improving day on day since first setting it up.

I’ve said before I’m not one who charges to 100% then runs it down into the red to avoid deep discharges and burning through cycles.

I’m pleasantly surprised with how the battery is performing as things settle down.

I’ll do 100% charge this morning and see where the battery is this evening without topping up.

Sunday was a day where I took lots of photos.

Monday was a normal day, phones calls, emails, social media, watching YouTube, a few photos, safari browsing etc

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This post did get buried lol

Here are some battery usage screen shots starting on day one of using the Air on Saturday. It’s been improving day on day since first setting it up.

I’ve said before I’m not one who charges to 100% then runs it down into the red to avoid deep discharges and burning through cycles.

I’m pleasantly surprised with how the battery is performing as things settle down.

I’ll do 100% charge this morning and see where the battery is this evening without topping up.

Sunday was a day where I took lots of photos.

Monday was a normal day, phones calls, emails, social media, watching YouTube, a few photos, safari browsing etc

View attachment 2556742View attachment 2556743View attachment 2556744
Well, I have a significantly different usage pattern, so I find it difficult to judge. So what I did is very simple:

I found how much battery life you got on iOS 18, and I found this post:
Post in thread 'Post your iPhone 16e impressions, pictures, etc!'
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...mpressions-pictures-etc.2450383/post-33820543

That should give us an idea. There, with the 16e’s total SOT of about 26 hours with very light, efficient use from Apple specs, you were getting about 7 hours of SOT with 55-65% battery used. Let’s take an average of 60%.


That gives you an average of 7 mins per percentage point. Extrapolating: with the 16e you were getting about 12.5 hours of SOT 100-0%.

Now I have a key question before I can compare: there is a massive difference between Monday (8.5 hours with 78% used) and Saturday (5 hours with 73% used). Since iOS 26’s new battery screen is garbage, how should I interpret that?

Did you use it while charging on Monday? Or was Saturday an unusually heavy day?
 
Well, I have a significantly different usage pattern, so I find it difficult to judge. So what I did is very simple:

I found how much battery life you got on iOS 18, and I found this post:
Post in thread 'Post your iPhone 16e impressions, pictures, etc!'
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...mpressions-pictures-etc.2450383/post-33820543

That should give us an idea. There, with the 16e’s total SOT of about 26 hours with very light, efficient use from Apple specs, you were getting about 7 hours of SOT with 55-65% battery used. Let’s take an average of 60%.


That gives you an average of 7 mins per percentage point. Extrapolating: with the 16e you were getting about 12.5 hours of SOT 100-0%.

Now I have a key question before I can compare: there is a massive difference between Monday (8.5 hours with 78% used) and Saturday (5 hours with 73% used). Since iOS 26’s new battery screen is garbage, how should I interpret that?

Did you use it while charging on Monday? Or was Saturday an unusually heavy day?

Well Saturday was the first day I activated the Air and it was restoring from an iCloud backup, hence the higher battery usage with the 5 hours of screen time which is normal when first setting up a new phone.

I’d possibly take off maybe 50 mins on Monday for some usage while charging. I try not to use it whilst charging too much.

Currently at 83% with 2 hours of screen time (not used while charging this morning) from 100% charge at 7:34am, currently 12:07pm here.
 
Well Saturday was the first day I activated the Air and it was restoring from an iCloud backup, hence the higher battery usage with the 5 hours of screen time which is normal when first setting up a new phone.

I’d possibly take off maybe 50 mins on Monday for some usage while charging. I try not to use it whilst charging too much.

Currently at 83% with 2 hours of screen time (not used while charging this morning) from 100% charge at 7:34am, currently 12:07pm here.
Yeah, then both Air results seem to have you hovering at the 10-hour SOT range, sometimes a little below that, sometimes a little over that.

9.75/12.5: about 75-80% of the 16e’s battery life, or an Apple-stat SOT extrapolation of about 20 hours give or take

Which means that this:
Post in thread 'iPhone Air battery looks (surprisingly) fantastic'
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-surprisingly-fantastic.2464954/post-34159981

Ended up being quite accurate. To compare with other iPhones, assume the Air has an Apple-spec SOT of about 19-20 hours.
 
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Here are my Monday screenshots:

Longtime 12P, 15P user who regularly tops off the battery or uses a MagSafe battery to keep it at 100%.

Monday’s test was use the Air off charging until it dies and then use the Air MagSafe battery to charge while using.

IMG_1009.jpeg


Was able to use the Air from 8am to 7pm before the battery fell thru 1% and turned off. Usage was mostly Safari, Reddit and Mail. On WiFi.

With the Air off, attached the Air MagSafe battery. The air powered on but the battery couldn’t handle charging the internal battery and running the Air and shutdown again. So I let it charge for 10 minutes with the phone off. Then manually turned on the phone which was now at 7% and continued to use the air.

IMG_1010.jpeg


The Air MagSafe battery charged for almost 2hours before emptying and charged the Air to 43%.

Continued to charge via a Sharge IceMag MagSafe battery that has a fan. It charged the Air to 80% before the Air turned off charging because of heat. I’m not sure why the Screen Active time didn’t increase much during this time.

IMG_1015.jpeg


Tuesday’s test will be start the Air fully charged and on the Air MagSafe battery until the MagSafe empties, then run the Air with just the internal battery.
 
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would love some insight on these numbers...coming from an iPhone 14 Pro not sure if I have battery anxiety or if this is normal.
 

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This is impressive but doing much better than mine, I’m at 3 hours SOT with 67% usage.

Can I ask, did you set up as new or restore? And anything like background refresh switched off?
Restored from a backup and background app refresh is off. When did you get your Air?
 
This is how yesterday finished when I went to bed. Gave it a quick top up charge late evening as I like to avoid the battery level going into the red which may have happened if I let it run into another day.

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Yes definitely it’s improved as the days have passed since first setting it up at the weekend.
Thanks for the info. That’s definitely reassuring. Loving the phone but the battery life for me seems to be the deciding factor. I can live with the other trade offs compared to the pro max but I need it to last me the day without the MagSafe battery pack. If I do keep it though and the battery is good enough for my usage the I will invest in a battery pack also
 
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Thanks for the info. That’s definitely reassuring. Loving the phone but the battery life for me seems to be the deciding factor. I can live with the other trade offs compared to the pro max but I need it to last me the day without the MagSafe battery pack. If I do keep it though and the battery is good enough for my usage the I will invest in a battery pack also
How long have you had your Air? I’d give it a few days to settle down as there’s a lot of stuff happening in the background following the first set up and transfer etc.

Yesterday I had over 8 hours of screen on time and got down to 35% by 8:30pm. I could’ve got into the next morning but I’m not one to let my phones go into the red, so I gave it a quick top up charge to 50%.
 
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