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iPhone SE (2016) iPhone SE old vs new Battery Life

H

hipnetic

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 5, 2010
1,275
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So, I'm looking at the specs for the new SE on Apple's website and it says that battery life is "about the same as the iPhone 8." They don't list as many estimates as they used to (they used to list estimates for "Talk time" and "Internet time", but now primarily feature "Video playback" time).

So, they're quoting an estimated "Video playback" time of 13 hours.

Now if I go through some archived tech specs for other models, I see that same "13 hour" estimate for the iPhone 8 and older SE. But my older SE, which still claims to have a "healthy" battery, gets absolutely abhorrent battery life these days. If I do some heavy web browsing, I can drain the battery from 100% to 1% in 2 hours.

Is there just something bad-wrong with my SE? Is there some OS update (or perhaps some really poorly written apps that I may be using in the background) that could be the cause of this? A big reason I want to ditch my older SE is because of this horrible battery life. I don't want to buy a new SE only to find that I'm still getting horrible battery life.

What are the rest of you SE users seeing?
 
Do you use an Apple Watch?

I have used an SE for a while now and have seen ups and downs when it comes to battery life.

I will add that I do not use my phone that often, and until recently, I very rarely ever actually charged the phone in my home, as being connected to my CarPlay in my car during my commute to and from work was enough to keep it charged.

Even on weekends I wouldn't need to charge my SE in my home.

As for iOS versions and how they influenced my SE's battery life, under iOS 10, the battery seemed to last forever. It was great. After updating to iOS12, the battery took a huge hit, but I am unsure if it was SW or HW related.

I had what I suspected were HW issues with my SE, random shutdowns and restarts, battery draining rapidly, not booting up after shutdowns, but the battery was still good with about 95% capacity after almost two years.

My SE had Apple Care+, so I ended up getting it replaced.

The battery life improved significantly, but the replacement happened around the time of iOS13, so I am unsure if the battery improvements were from new HW or using iOS13, probably a mix.

Besides the many iOS13 bugs, everything was going fine in terms of battery life on my SE since the replacement, until I got an Apple Watch about two months ago, and now my SE's battery drains crazy fast.

I am unsure why it drains so fast now that I have an Apple Watch, but I started to have to charge my SE at home.
 
supertiffany said:
The old SE was the best in battery life among the 2016-2017 release
Click to expand...
rui no onna said:
Nah. I think the 7 actually did same or better (likely thanks to the low power cores).
Click to expand...
The iPhone SE was similar, but overall better than the iPhone 7 in terms of battery life according to Apple's official battery life estimates. Tied for talk time, 3g, and Wifi, but the SE was much better with LTE and music playback.

iPhone SE:
Talk 14 hours
3g 12 hours
LTE 13 hours
Wifi 14 hours
Music 50 hours

iPhone 7:
Talk 14 hours
3g 12 hours
LTE 12 hours
Wifi 14 hours
Music 40 hours

Although the best during that time was the Plus sized iPhones.
 
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I had the same issue with my SE, very bad battery life. Perhaps iOS has just become more demanding over the years? Anyway, I got an iPhone 8, battery life is a lot better though I still long for the pre-smartphone days when I had to recharge once a week… Wireless recharging makes things a bit more convenient though.

You can check the state of your battery under Settings, how much percentage do you have left? I had about 85% after about 1.5 years, which isn't that great. Perhaps I had a faulty battery but Apple told me I would have to pay for a new battery myself; didn't find it worthwhile given its age.
 
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Reactions: rui no onna
Well, if it’s only fifty bucks and you don’t need the latest and greatest it’s a good deal.
 
iPhone 8 with iOS 11 battery performance is same as iPhone SE 2020 with iOS iOS 13.
iPhone 8 with iOS 13 battery performance is worse than SE 2020 with iOS 13.
It is expected that the A13 is less heat dissipation than A11 and the battery capacity of SE 2020 will be smaller.
 
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