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iPhone 16 Pro Seeing pretty lackluster battery life 1 week in. Going to run a battery test.

Tozovac

Tozovac

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jun 12, 2014
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I just activated my 16 Pro 3 days ago and am pretty disappointed with the battery performance so far. Link

I’m going to run a test to see how well I replicate the 22 hours:

IMG_4634.jpeg


Over a 2 hour period today mine went from 81% to 64% during which the screen was off for 40 minutes while using Apple Maps. Then I browsed safari on and off for 20-30 minutes. All the while I had low power mode on, 50% brightness, zero notifications, no push mail, no background app refresh. Using Safari I could see single digit drops in percentage every 10-20 mins even with those limited settings, which is a faster drain than my 12 mini with 80% battery health.

I’m going to try running streamed video for a few hours and see how well I match the 22 hours.

Footnote 18 gives no specific settings caveats so I was going to continue using the settings I’ve been using:

- 50% brightness
- Low power mode
- No background app refresh
- No notifications
- No other apps open/active
- WiFi streaming from the YouTube app (I’m a YouTube premium member so no commercials, if that matters)

I’ll try this over the next day or so but wanted to see if anyone had any interesting or applicable advice for this trial.

Thanks!
 
My battery life is more than acceptable - 16 Pro running 18.3.2 right now.

Thoughts: I wouldn't try to compare my actual battery life to what is advertised. It goes without saying the advertised is best case, ideal. I would be curious how much battery charge declines when the device is left without being used -- such as overnight while you are sleeping -- and not on charge. If the drop in battery is severe or extreme, then look at apps that update and send notifications. In my case, I noticed that news and weather apps (i.e local television and radio station apps) where using a lot of battery when the phone was idle, and I deleted what I didn't really need.

I see you say there is no background app refresh and no notifications, and no apps open or active, but I would still look at apps. Delete what you don't need. Even consider deleting apps for a few days or a week as a test. You can always add them back, depending.
 
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aihpcfl said:
I see you say there is no background app refresh and no notifications, and no apps open or active, but I would still look at apps. Delete what you don't need. Even consider deleting apps for a few days or a week as a test. You can always add them back, depending.
Click to expand...
Here’s what’s interesting. I have only Apple apps right now. For once I started fresh with this phone. Logged into iCloud and only have my iCloud email account connected to mail. No 3rd party apps yet. Today when driving and using Apple Maps for 40 mins no other apps were open.

I did leave it unplugged last night and looks like it went from a little under 80 to around 70 I’d estimate, 9pm to around 8 am.

This is the image I shared with Apple support help today. Maybe this is normal.

The bump at 3am is weird. I had safari running/open all night but only had 1 page open, an Apple support page.

IMG_0007.png


I think running a comparison test will be interesting. Separate from my battery question over my particular phone, if a 16 Pro at 50% brightness and in low power mode with no background app refresh on can’t get close to the 22 hour number, that would really call into question the usefulness advertising such a number. :)
 
maerz001 said:
You have a huge Photo Library? Phone scans all for different markers like faces …
Click to expand...
No and actually I don’t use iPhotos/Cloud. I’m one of those nuts who prefer my photos and music files to be completely separate from the cloud and shared across devices.
 
gigatoaster said:
Look at 1 week data rather than 2 hours patterns.
Click to expand...
Like someone said above, maybe it’ll take a while for everything to settle in, but I just found it funny to lose such a high percentage over two hours of mostly screen off during travel then light browsing with very dim screen settings for 20-30 minutes of that time.
 
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Oh, and I do have an Apple Watch 8. I think I was sleeping with it last night and had it on today but wasn’t using it for anything other than wearing.
 
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Tozovac said:
No and actually I don’t use iPhotos/Cloud. I’m one of those nuts who prefer my photos and music files to be completely separate from the cloud and shared across devices.
Click to expand...
Not speaking of cloud. Local on device
 
IJustWannaTalk said:
Please report back when you have a week/month worth of data. A few days in on a completely new phone isn't going to tell us much.
Click to expand...
Can you expand upon that. What exactly needs to "bed in" on a new phone so it runs smoother later. iCloud data imports?
 
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RRC said:
You mentioned you were using maps, was that on cellular? Maybe in a low signal area? That too would burn through battery.
Click to expand...

Really? I don’t recall such a quick drain with my 12 mini when usumg A maps or google maps.
 
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Tozovac said:
Really? I don’t recall such a quick drain with my 12 mini when usumg A maps or google maps.
Click to expand...

Really. That’s the problem with anecdotal data. It’s unreliable. In this case maps battery usage is location dependent. The weaker the data signal the harder the phone has to work to get the data to run maps the faster the battery drain.

But like others say, battery life is a trend measure over days to weeks and not over hours especially on a new phone that is running background tasks as part of set up.
 
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Apple’s specifications should be ignored. Maps is not the best app to gauge battery life vs Apple spec. It’s one of the heaviest usage patterns. If you are aiming for anything remotely close to Apple spec Maps is an immediate no-go.

The only way to achieve Apple spec on an iPhone (I’ve done it with every iPhone I’ve had barring the 5s) is to use it on Wi-Fi, with very low brightness (0-10%), and with light apps, such as web browsing, notes, light reading, light apps to watch tv shows like Netflix, etc. You must have a good signal and you must not be on Cellular. You must have efficient settings (practically every relevant setting must be disabled).

There is no other way. Ignore Apple’s battery life specifications with ANYTHING else. Social media? No. Higher brightness? No. Cellular? No. Maps? No. Camera? Also no.


99.9999% of users have a heavier usage pattern vs Apple spec. If you expect that little “Apple - technical specifications” number, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.
 
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As someone above noted, maps - any mapping software - are very high drain on battery. You should not look at battery life while using maps. My phone routinely runs through most battery within few hours when I use (any) maps - and also gets very hot. Using mapping software was the only time I ever managed to drain/overheat my iPhone 14, but every iPhone I had did have poor battery life when using maps.
This makes sense - it is using GPS all the time to keep track where you are, downloading maps and other data from servers (and pushing reports on traffic up) and locally solving where you are and what to suggest as you drive around. This is all time dependent - if it delays turn instruction by few seconds, it is too late. Therefore the mapping processes seem to have high priority. Add to it that your data reception will vary a lot and you have high drain situation on any phone.
This is why wireless chargers/phone holders for cars are so popular.
 
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I used GPS Apple Maps only for around 40 minutes then turned it off. It was an hour later when I was casually surfing in Safari that I saw a percentage drop every 10 to 20 minutes.
 
Last edited:
If you're the kind of user who is so hands-on that you turn the GPS off when not using it, I can see how you might not be disposed to wait a week before evaluating your battery. And yet... any analysis of your phone's battery life will be basically inapplicable to your day-to-day life before the one-week mark.

Obviously nobody can force you to stop thinking about it for a couple days and revisit the topic, but you'll be happier if you do!
 
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bk125 said:
If you're the kind of user who is so hands-on that you turn the GPS off when not using it, I can see how you might not be disposed to wait a week before evaluating your battery. And yet... any analysis of your phone's battery life will be basically inapplicable to your day-to-day life before the one-week mark.

Obviously nobody can force you to stop thinking about it for a couple days and revisit the topic, but you'll be happier if you do!
Click to expand...
I didn't turn off gps, I just shut down the Apple Maps app and wasn't actively using the app. I fixed my post above.

I have yet to run my experiment (and I will) but I'm finding generally slower drain today so far. Here's a discovery -- I forgot I had downloaded 1 3rd party app Golf Battle during the setup process and I suspect it was doing something and draining my battery quicker especially 3am the other night. It connects to Facebook for "an account," so who he hell knows what it was up to. It was the only 3rd party app on my phone until this morning. The reason I downloaded it during setup 4 days ago was, my son and I accidentally ordered each others' replacement phone via our AT&T family plan using each other's phone # so we needed help from AT&T to walk thru swapping IMEI's. However, she didn't have us setup our new phones by importing from a recent backup of our older phones, instead we used the "setup from nearby iPhone" type of new-phone-setup, but where many of the things normally carried over to a new phone when updating from a backup of another phone did not port over. Like wallpaper, mail accounts, etc. And no 3rd party apps ported over. She had me try one (Golf Battle) while she was helping us, for her curiosity.

I deleted it today and we'll see if I don't experience the same drain as yesterday. So far this morning, after leaving the house at 100% at 830 and browsing safari about the same amount of time I did yesterday (20-30 mins) over the course of 830-1130 today, I'm at around 95%. That's with brightness at 50% and low power mode enabled, just like yesterday. Except yesterday I was losing 1% every 10 minutes.

Although others may judge otherwise since I was drawn to start this thread, I'm one who uses their device for what it should be used for and I don't baby it or sacrifice my usage convenience/enjoyment to maximize battery life. But yesterday the drain was so quick over a 2 hour period, and especially when using safari highly with only 2windows open for about 30-30 mins, it definitely stood out as abnormal even compared to my 3 year old 12 mini with 79% battery health.

I do want to do my test to see what kind of settings might be required to come close to the 22 hours. Streaming from wifi may be variable, so maybe I'lll download a video and try to replicate the 27 hours video playback. but then the variables...volume, brightness, promotion, etc. 27 hours seems like you'd need 10% brightness, 10% volume, and wifi turned off !
 
I have the same issue. Apple's claim is simply not true with my phone and inconsistent with my 13 PM experience. The only solution is hoping that a future iOS update will fix it somehow or maybe this.
 
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