Hi everyone,
Has anyone noticed their 16 pro max battery draining quicker than it should? Got the phone on launch day, under Settings>Battery it mentioned some updates running in the background may affect battery and thermal performance so I waited. Now that the message is gone, I still notice the battery draining quicker than usual.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
iPhone 16 Pro Max, iOS 18
I’m also very disappointed with my battery life after a week of use.
down to 30% after 14 hours, I use 80% charge cap but this is also when spending about 1.5 hours at least charging in the car during the day and me sleeping for 5 hours where the phone wasn’t used at all. Screen is idling all the time (home and lock screen) even when I don’t use it or touch it for long periods of time, that’s barely any real drain though.
The real battery guzzler is safari. Since day one, it has been responsible for 45-70% of my total battery drain even though I just use it for searching a bit on google, looking up some info or buying some stuff (which is coupled with price checking, checking for best options available and so on) and maybe watching a short info video or two.
I just use it casually yet it drains an insane amount of battery for the light browsing I do. The other apps are less than 10%, almost all of them below 5%. But safari ends up at 50-60% usually, it’s like it’s cutting my battery almost in half.
considering trying another browser.
I turned off some features in the safari options like fetching pages pre-emptively when searching for things. I also installed adguard though that doesn’t seem to have helped much except make my experience better.
I’ve now made sure to stop a lot of apps from background refreshing when I don’t need them to, turned off location services for apps that don’t need it for my uses, also turned off the majority of the system services location tracking (used to have them off but apple turned them all on again, maybe with the ios update or perhaps due to changing my phone). I also turned off mobile data background refreshing and stuff like that so it only does it on wi-fi. For always on display, I turned off the wallpaper since I just want the information.
A lot of small battery drainers add up to a lot in the end.
I honestly expect that the battery draining is also due to ios 18 being new and there are probably some bugs and unoptimized parts, especially with the AI stuff, that needs to be fixed gradually.
Ordered a wireless charging powerbank to avoid ever having battery anxiety, easy to bring along since it doesn’t need cables. I will rarely need to use it though.
I’m still happy with my battery time overall, because I came from a iphone xs max, 6 years old. Still has good battery health at over 80% but thanks to new software, it would be drained of battery after a few hours of use. This one, even if used heavily, will last me all day even with the 80% battery limit. Unless I use it nonstop with safari of course. Without safari, I could use it nonstop and still have some battery left at the end of the day.
i just feel a bit tricked since they claimed 33 hours of video watching while I can just barely squeeze out a full day with 80% battery and at most moderate use. I realize they did their tests in super optimal conditions, probably with every kind of other process stalled that will be active in normal use and probably having pretty low brightness (if I wanted to use more brightness than around 40-50%, my battery would drain A LOT faster, that’s true for both my macbook pro and phone), but it’s misleading since no one will be getting 33 hours in a real life scenario. Probably at most around 20 hours continuous use if optimizing settings and not using battery guzzler apps without too much brightness.
I hope apple fixes the issues soon, this is clearly not a hardware problem, it’s a software issue.
I’m also very disappointed with my battery life after a week of use.
down to 30% after 14 hours, I use 80% charge cap but this is also when spending about 1.5 hours at least charging in the car during the day and me sleeping for 5 hours where the phone wasn’t used at all. Screen is idling all the time (home and lock screen) even when I don’t use it or touch it for long periods of time, that’s barely any real drain though.
The real battery guzzler is safari. Since day one, it has been responsible for 45-70% of my total battery drain even though I just use it for searching a bit on google, looking up some info or buying some stuff (which is coupled with price checking, checking for best options available and so on) and maybe watching a short info video or two.
I just use it casually yet it drains an insane amount of battery for the light browsing I do. The other apps are less than 10%, almost all of them below 5%. But safari ends up at 50-60% usually, it’s like it’s cutting my battery almost in half.
considering trying another browser.
I turned off some features in the safari options like fetching pages pre-emptively when searching for things. I also installed adguard though that doesn’t seem to have helped much except make my experience better.
I’ve now made sure to stop a lot of apps from background refreshing when I don’t need them to, turned off location services for apps that don’t need it for my uses, also turned off the majority of the system services location tracking (used to have them off but apple turned them all on again, maybe with the ios update or perhaps due to changing my phone). I also turned off mobile data background refreshing and stuff like that so it only does it on wi-fi. For always on display, I turned off the wallpaper since I just want the information.
A lot of small battery drainers add up to a lot in the end.
I honestly expect that the battery draining is also due to ios 18 being new and there are probably some bugs and unoptimized parts, especially with the AI stuff, that needs to be fixed gradually.
Ordered a wireless charging powerbank to avoid ever having battery anxiety, easy to bring along since it doesn’t need cables. I will rarely need to use it though.
I’m still happy with my battery time overall, because I came from a iphone xs max, 6 years old. Still has good battery health at over 80% but thanks to new software, it would be drained of battery after a few hours of use. This one, even if used heavily, will last me all day even with the 80% battery limit. Unless I use it nonstop with safari of course. Without safari, I could use it nonstop and still have some battery left at the end of the day.
i just feel a bit tricked since they claimed 33 hours of video watching while I can just barely squeeze out a full day with 80% battery and at most moderate use. I realize they did their tests in super optimal conditions, probably with every kind of other process stalled that will be active in normal use and probably having pretty low brightness (if I wanted to use more brightness than around 40-50%, my battery would drain A LOT faster, that’s true for both my macbook pro and phone), but it’s misleading since no one will be getting 33 hours in a real life scenario. Probably at most around 20 hours continuous use if optimizing settings and not using battery guzzler apps without too much brightness.
I hope apple fixes the issues soon, this is clearly not a hardware problem, it’s a software issue.
After an iOS update, it's common to experience an increased battery drain as certain tasks related to the update continue in the background including indexing, you should only experience this increased battery drain for a few days before it goes back to normal.
⇢ If the battery in your iPhone drains too quickly - Apple Support
The phone should be plugged in every night. Use Optimized Charging and leave it plugged in until the morning. It is true the 50k photos is a lot and will definitely take more time to index than a user that has 1k. You will also find that when left plugged in all night, these background processes will complete much faster as they are on a low priority queue that will not continue to run on a low battery. Also at night, your phone is performing iCloud updates and checking/downloading new Software updates when it is plugged in.
If you have any Meta apps installed, you can bet it is doing something. Before you do anything, remove the apps and compare the results.
Take Instagram for example and view the information that it is harvesting about you. You can view this in the Privacy Policy of the App Store. Why does it need all this information for a photo app? Well, the app is free, but Meta makes its money by selling your information to advertisers. Add another app such as Facebook and those effects are doubled.
3 days is not long considering everything. The easiest thing to do would be to look in settings under battery to see what apps (or any) are using a lot of battery and if it seems abnormally high make sure you have the most recent update for that app…as well as reporting any concerns with the app developer in case they need to release a new update to address any issues with their app’s performance on the new iOS. If you have ruled out anything actually draining the battery abnormally and you have gone through your settings to make sure everything (including new setting options) are where they should be for your actual needs then the next step would be to contact Apple for troubleshooting so if there is an issue with the battery performance across the board Apple can be aware and work on a fix. Chances are that when the iPhone 13 first released the same complaints and concerns existed and flooded this forum. If you didn’t get the 13 until after bug fixes and everything occurred you were likely spared the early problems.
This topic comes up every single year (right up there with the topic of “the iPhone glass is worse than any other previous iPhone because I cracked mine when I dropped it on concrete without a case…but I dropped my old one on rocks all of the time and it still looks brand new” claims). Under normal circumstances battery drain will be faster than expected in the beginning from things like the device indexing over several days to the need for various apps to receive updates (sometimes multiple updates) to properly optimize for use with the new iOS. That is the norm. There is also sometimes the reality that with new features people are actually playing with their devices, settings, and new features a bit more in the beginning even though they may not feel like they are. Sometimes one of the incremental iOS updates that release in the initial days/weeks after the major release will address battery drain issues if Apple notices a problem that is outside of the normal battery drain expectations in the beginning. But if you are concerned and think it’s been more than enough time for things to have slowed down (and today being day 4 since launch…with some getting their devices late in the evening on Friday making actual use time closer to 3 days means that it really hasn’t been that long at all) reach out to Apple to see what they say and if a real issue exists. Also if you notice in settings that there are any apps that seem to be using an insane amount of battery check to make sure you have the latest update for it and report concerns to the app developer as they may need to release another update for that app.
My 16 pro max took 2 days to stabilize. Text messages kept saying “indexing”. The phone was warm etc… there’s a lot happening behind the scenes with data.
then probably on the 3rd day and after a couple of “up, down, hold power button” resets, I’m blown away on the battery. 11 hour screen time with 8% left in the tank.
Apple has just released iOS 18.0.1 with a fix to the increased battery drain!
Ok i am going to give this a few more days. The battery indexing doesnt only show in settings>battery. If you are like me with >50k photos and videos, I guess it really takes time to index these. If you go to search in the photos app and search for something, you’ll see it is still indexing despite me having my iPhone 16pro since launch date on Sep 20. i guess it really takes time to index all those photos and videos.
It is now Sep 28 and the battery drains faster than my iPhone 14 pro. I’ll update again in a week’s time maybe
I changed my app background whoever posted the 11 things proven to help.
IT HELPED ME 100%%%%
freaking fb and gmail was background refreshing ate 40% if the battery I shut that down and others down. No I have 60% by the end of the day and I am up at 6 am and working out on Zwift go to work as a doc on the phone all day and on call. Was about to go back to iPhone 14!! I followed someone else’s post on how stop the apls autorefreshing and it worked!
iPhone 16 pro max here got on release date too.
I don’t know how you guys are going through your battery, I charge it, as soon as it gets to 100% I take it off so normally it’s at 9pm-1am when and if I wake up in the middle of the night. From then to 1:15pm my phone is at 91%. I go to work and don’t use it much listen to music on the way to work, text people etc. After work obviously I will be on it more but even then from 1:15-9:15pm it goes to 63%. Some days I don’t even charge it going to bed I will wake up and charge it when I’m getting ready for work. From the iPhone 11 Pro Max to the 16 I would say this is a huge upgrade for me usually my 11 would have died by 4pm.
I would also go into settings >battery and see what background apps are running and the top ones I go and turn off background app refresh and that tends to help or delete to app if I don’t use it. Like for example I had temu on there (I know don’t hate) but I saw it was on in the background even when I didn’t go into it at all so I deleted the app. So much better now. I would also go to Apple and just check and see there has been times where I’ve gotten a product and the battery expanded during elevation changes etc.
First week with heavy battery drain but full reset yesterday and after restoring my icloud backup, the battery drain is back to normal.
Hello~ Click on below and work through the information there…
If the battery in your iPhone drains too quickly - Apple Support
Take care.
~Katana-San~
Update with my issue- I talked to apple support several times and their final attempt was to have me reset my phone to factory and restore from a backup. It actually worked wonders, I’m getting about the same battery life as I had with my 15 pro and 14 pro.
What is shown as using your battery in Settings -> Battery?
Why is my iPhone 16 Pro Max battery draining so fast?
