iPhone 15 Pro Max battery draining without use

Mine is an iPhone 15 pro, and I have the same issue 🙄 my brother has an iPhone 13 I took a screenshot of its battery before sleeping at night in the morning it only dropped two percent but mine dropped 13 percent.

Well, that's entirely unhelpful. You seem to be intentionally dismissing the point. Lots of people, me included, have noticed a significant change in battery use compared to past models/iOS. So the point isn't what the charge level is when I wake up, it's the fact that I'm seeing overnight battery discharge AT A HIGHER RATE THAN MY PRIOR PHONE/iOS. What's relevant about the "overnight" part is that it's the best, lengthy time period to compare conditions because they phone isn't used.

If, as you claim without evidence, that's just the phone doing what it's designed to do, then I'm pretty ****** that I paid so much for a phone that performs worse than the 2-year-old model it replaced.

My 15 pro max starts draining battery after updating the new ios update which is 17.1.2. What is wrong with you apple ??? Why are you putting those kinds of updates?? Before updating i used my phone easily for 1 and half day with one charge but now i have to charge it twice a day please fix this now i hate this apple phones my old xr is still working properly and the battery also better than this new i phone i’m very disappointed Apple please fix this as soon as possible.

No there is definitely something wrong with the new iPhone 15 batteries. I am experiencing the same thing and my iPhone 13 did not drain this quickly. I am surprised there is nothing out there addressing this issue and just articles stating it could be “apps running in the background”. That’s not a good enough answer.

Exactly! I don’t know why everyone is trying to justify that this is just what happens when running apps in the background etc…

No there is something wrong with the new iPhone 15 batteries. It’s a brand new battery and the point being made is the battery shouldn’t be draining nearly as fast as it is with being BRAND new.

At least someone gets it!

Dogcow-Moof wrote:

Whether you are actively using the phone or not, it is continuously in contact with your local cell tower to let it know that it is there and available to take calls and receive text messages.

This can consume a fair amount of power, especially if you have a 5G connection to the cell tower and have two bars or less of cellular signal strength.

Same apple ID on two separate phones: 15 Pro and 14 standard, same configuration (except the specific stuff that exists only on the Pro models and dont exist on the standard), same 5G network (same SIM moved between phones, for testing purpose), same room, same night stand, the conclusion is:

• the 15 Pro consumes about 3% per hour, 20-22% per 7 hours during the night.
• the 14 consumes about 1% per whole 7 hours of night.

The ugly part is that the 15 Pro also used the battery just at the same pace as the 14, but only for a limited time period of 2 weeks back in October. After that, it went back to heavy use.

And I do not agree with the overnight charging concept, because this issue is not limited to what happens during the night. It's the same drain while keeping the phone in the pocket during the day. If you do not carry a charger or a powerbank, you end up with low battery in the evening, maybe when you need it. Imagine a 1 day trip in the country-side. You want to be able to count on the phone to not drain while in the pocket. I was once in this situation, got lost in a natural park in Croatia, evening was near, got my 14 out and oriented fast.

@Lawrence There is a saying, technically correct but completely useless answer.

What the above people are asking and its a fair questions. They had an iphone 13, they got an 15 restored all the settings from their 13 and now the battery life of their new phone is worse than the battery life of their old phone.

That should not happen and there is an issue with software and some apps. Apple is fixing it, but there is an issue.

The issue surpasses the ordinary overnight idle drain. Transitioning from the iPhone X to the 13 Pro Max and now to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, I’ve observed a substantial and unexpected decline in battery life on the latest device. Despite maintaining similar usage patterns and settings, the battery depletes noticeably faster compared to all my previous iPhones.

I’ve meticulously ensured that all software updates are installed and have taken various troubleshooting measures, including adjustments to background app refresh and battery optimization settings. Unfortunately, these efforts have not resulted in a resolution, and it’s crucial to emphasize that I am not alone in facing this issue.

Please disregard any dismissive claims suggesting otherwise. A palpable problem exists that demands Apple’s immediate attention and resolution. I firmly believe that the only effective way Apple will address this matter is if the community comes together to bring it to the attention of top executives.

Without such collective action, there’s a risk of dismissal by individuals like Lawrence Finch. In reality, this issue should be recognized and brought into the spotlight by someone like @Lawrence Finch.

I've been experiencing the same issue with a new 15 running 17.0.3. Sure, "something is always running" and you shouldn't expect to wake up with the same level of charge. But the concern you're summarily dismissing has to do with the *rate* of battery discharge when there's no active use of the device. There's clearly something different happening here when I compare to what I experienced with my 13 running iOS 16.

If you search the forum you will see a steady stream of posts about perceived battery drain issues, not just for the latest iPhone, but for EVERY iPhone model ever sold, and after EVERY iOS update ever released. So clearly all iPhones have battery drain problems all the time. I’ve listed a few of them below.

Specifically, if your previous phone did not have 5G network capability then an iPhone with 5G will use more energy than an iPhone with LTE, 4G, 3G or older technologies, both because 5G inherently uses more energy than 4G for the same connection, and also because 5G network deployment is still being built out, so towers that support 5G may be further apart in your area, and thus phones need to post power to remain connection.

I started by saying that battery issues occur to a few phones with all versions after an iOS update, and the responses implied somehow that iOS 17.0.3 was “different” and was an issue that hadn’t happened before. So to back up my statement here are some threads on battery issues with previous versions (far from all of the relevant threads, but a reasonable sampling):

Battery drain (13.2.3)

ios 13.2.3 and ios 13.3 battery issue

Re: iPhone 7 Plus with iOS 13.4 battery drain problem

Serious battery drain (14.4.2)

iPhone XR is draining battery unnecessarily after iOS 14.4.2

Re: iOS 14.3 BATTERY DRAIN

Battery drain (14.5.1)

Battery drain (14.6)

Battery drain (14.7)

battery (iOS 15)

Does iOS 15 drain battery?

iOS 15 and Battery

since installing iOS 15, my battery needs to be constantly recharged. How can i improve the battery drain

iOS 15 and Battery

Re: Ios 15.1 battery drain

Ios 15.1 battery drain and heating issue iPhone se 2020

ios 15.1.1

iOS 15.2.1 battery drains

battery drain (15.3)

iOS 15.3 battery drain

Ios 15.3 battery draining issue

The bottom line is that it isn’t a problem with the specific version, and, if you want it resolved, you need to troubleshoot why your phone has this problem when 99+% of over 1 billion iPhones do not. 

KaeBFly wrote:

Something is clearly running in the background on your phone even when you’re not using it.

something is ALWAYS running on every smartphone in the world, all 6 billion of them, even when you’re not using it, as I said in my previous post.

I think it got even worse with the latest update.

Not only is my iPhone 15 Pro now heating up during simple tasks like watching YouTube, but it also drains battery in idle relatively fast which was not observed in the first two months of usage. Weird.

There is nothing to fix. Any cell phone uses energy continuously, as long as it isn’t powered off. This means that if it is not connected to power for 8 hours the battery level will be lower at the end of that time. How much lower depends on what apps you have, how many notifications you have enabled (which will be delivered and processed by apps even if you force close apps-they will relaunch when a notification arrives), and, probably most important, how strong your cellular signal from the network is; your phone maintains a "conversation" with the network so your phone can be found when a call or text arrives, and low signal strength requires much more energy to do this update to the network. Thus, you should be charging your phone overnight so this nighttime usage is powered by the external source rather than the battery.

And 11% overnight is a reasonable discharge rate for the normal things that any smartphone does; a smartphone is never without use; there are always processes running on it.

Something is clearly running in the background on your phone even when you’re not using it. Look at the battery usage and see what the high usage item(s) are. Look at how much of that usage is background. If you don’t absolutely need it to use background use turn it off. Maybe delete the app(s) in question and re-install to see if that helps. Otherwise…maybe let your phone charge overnight so it will still be 100%. It won’t overcharge if that’s a reason why you aren’t letting to charge overnight. But your settings and apps work all of the time. Notifications come through…that’s using battery. Emails coming throughout the night? Same. You don’t have to be physically using your phone for it to still be using battery life.

This is my battery drain on how it used to be for the last couple of weeks/month:

Phone is/was in airplane mode during night time (no app usage) but no change in battery consumption vs day time.

This is from yesterday (after I did a factory reset and just re-added my iCloud account photos etc).

After almost 24 hours it went from 82% to 72% (estimate) = 10% for 24 hours. Similar usage pattern.

Battery drain at night is almost nothing - maybe 1% - 3% or so.