The amazing battery life on iOS 18.4.1

[1796677]

Has anybody else been noticing this? Just amazed by the battery life on iOS 18.4.1.

For context, I have a iPhone SE from October 2020. The battery life on this has never been as good as the other iPhones, and it has of course gone down over the years. But before this update, I was charging twice a day for my usage. Now I come back home with usually above 30%, single charge.

All the more incredible considering the 'Maximum Capacity' of my battery is at 75%. Just amazed at whatever they changed.

 

[Reverend Benny]

I agree, I kind of regret getting myself the 16 pro when I noticed the battery performance my 13 pro got with the 18.4.1 update. Thought it was just me having a different usage pattern for a few days but it wasn't. But, as always, the difference could be down to many things. Model specific, infrastructure being used, peripherals etc

 

[UliBaer]

Is it really that good on SE 2020?
I'm still on 17.7.2 on my spare SE 2020 and consider updating to 18.4.1 finally.
Also I'm interested in battery life on a 12 Pro - also still on 17.7.2.

 

[Momof2.1107]

I wish I could say the same. I have a 15PM with 622 charging cycles and 84% battery capacity. I’m charging twice a day and my usage pattern hasn’t changed.

 

[Reverend Benny]

Could be down to so many things, one can only speculate.



* It might be AI specific, devices that don't use AI or has AI support has a slightly different release.
* HW, some of the comms hardware are similar between devices and some not. The SE2020 and 13 pro has similar BT and Wifi standards.
* Could be down to location as in cellular network (3G/4G) or even down to what LTE band that is being used. An update might include updated drivers/FW that fixes bugs and improves performance on certain parts.
* Network HW, both at home and cellular.

+ all the other regular things that can impact performance.

I've tried it on a pile of different devices, the 13 pro seems to have received a boost, the 14 I have feels pretty much the same (not my daily driver so isn't really representative).
My dad seems happy with it on his XS, a 5 year old device that still performs well. Not a heavy user though.
My iPad M1 runs well on it.
Updated my mums iPad 9 and same there, performs well.

Only "disappointment" is my brand spanking new 16 pro, I expected more from that device. Still delivers well just thought it would a lot better. But, (and a big one) at the same time, I know its loads of post install things going on since I swapped devices, had a large backup restored on the device and quite a good chunk of data that's being indexed.

Its only now after a week search in some apps have started to work properly.

 

[fergus2019]

My most energy efficient firmware was 17.7.1

 

[Reverend Benny]

I wish I could say the same. I have a 15PM with 622 charging cycles and 84% battery capacity. I’m charging twice a day and my usage pattern hasn’t changed.

I have read many having issues with the 15 series, mostly pro, I wonder what all that is about. Is it a HW fault, some annoying bug that they haven't figured out or some other stuff?
Hope Apple (if it is SW related) do find what it is that's causing it and provide a fix.

 

[James6s]

I’m hoping they can recreate this battery life with the stable release of iOS 18.5! My iPhone 16e battery life is good on the latest 18.5 beta, but nowhere near the level of 18.4.1.

 

[fergus2019]

I’m hoping they can recreate this battery life with the stable release of iOS 18.5! My iPhone 16e battery life is good on the latest 18.5 beta, but nowhere near the level of 18.4.1.

Most likely, the autonomy will decrease. Beta versions do not work at full capacity, so the power consumption may be less than in the release version

 

[Tripps9000]

Well 18.4 did the opposite of your phone it just destroyed my battery life on my 14 to the point I really couldn’t use it much without a charger near by finally had enough of the battery problems tried to get a new battery but because it had 82 percent on it could not get one so I went and got the iPhone 16e to replace it and man this phone has the best battery life ever can go for hours without charging it best battery life ever😁

 

[UliBaer]

Most likely, the autonomy will decrease. Beta versions do not work at full capacity, so the power consumption may be less than in the release version

Normally it is the other way around? 🤔
The beta versions do a lot of logging and telemetry to analyze the behavior in the background and to send that data to the Apple servers. In the final versions these additional beta/analyze functions are not active or even completely not in the released code. So the release versions should be more efficient and the battery should last longer than on betas.
The only exception to this is the RC. The RC is normally the same as the finally released version and should have all logging/analyze code disabled or out compiled.

 

[James6s]

Most likely, the autonomy will decrease. Beta versions do not work at full capacity, so the power consumption may be less than in the release version

I’ve always found the opposite is true! Power consumption and data logging etc become less with the final release version, hence better battery life.