Why is my iPhone 16 Pro Max battery draining so fast?

Yes I am experiencing the same.

How do you open a ticket with apple? never had to do one before but this poor battery life situation is unacceptable.

Me too. My 80% 11 Pro Max lasts longer than my brand new 16 Pro. Wtf is going on Apple? Be transparent and address this issue. SMH

I am also facing issue with iphone 16 pro, battery is draining very fast. my iphone 14 was better than this. if i get the option to return iphone 16 i will surly return it. very bad experience.

i also changed some setting to save battery Eg: Stopped all app running in background. chosen dark theme, always on display is off and more.

i done understand why battery is draining so fast and what is the use of these features if we are disabling them.

My wife and I see the same drain with our two 16 Pro Maxes. Given that the battery improvement was the main reason we upgraded our 15 Pro Maxes, it’s more than a little disappointing to see this. Others have given tips on how to lessen battery drain, but while useful to some, if I hear of improved battery life, I expect it with my current use pattern, not with a modified one - otherwise I could have just applied those tips on the old phone and get the same battery improvements.

Initially I thought the drain was the usual

initial one when things get re-installed in the background or some initial AI training, but it’s still draining to around 30% every day (vs 50% for the 15 Pro Max) after 5 days.

I bet it has something to do with all the background tracking of Apple intelligence. It may be collecting data for the “contexts”, and the extra program load may be draining the battery quicker than previous models without the hardware/software. It is the first generation with AI, and AI requires much more hardware to calculate.

My 16 Pro Max is lucky to get 8 hours. Apple and testers say somewhere around 18 1/2 hours of screen on time is what people should be getting. I guess that’s if you have a battery booster pack hooked up from Home Depot.

On the launch day of the 16 Pro max I went and gave my 13 Pro Max to my daughter. It had 84% battery health left after 3 years and still out performed this 16 Pro Max for battery time. I got a new battery installed at the Apple Store for my daughter and…. Wait for it… she’s getting easily 1 1/2 days between charges on the 13 Pro Max now on iOS18!!

The 13 Pro Max is certainly one of the best iPhones ever released.

I’m sure Apple will address this issue as this is their flagship phone and you can’t irritate high end customers more than they already have given the fact they shipped the 16 Pro & Max without Ai.

Apple should bring back an Ai version of Steve Jobs to run the company.

While this is true, I already took that into consideration. First, I installed the same iOS 18 upgrade on my iPhone 15 Pro Max - but its battery drain was back to pretty much normal after a few days (the update tasks you refer to typically only last a few days). But my iPhone 16 Pro Max - now almost 3 weeks later, still regularly dips into the 30% range by end of day (vs. 50+% on the iPhone 15 Pro Max - under same usage conditions).

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.

Look at this drain, this is doing barely nothing a few scrolls here and there. Online to apple support and it dropped 20% within an hour. They ran diagnostics and said it’s running ok… ummm?

I came here, because my brand new iPhone 16 pro has a far worse batterylife than my many years old iPhone 12!

it drains to 48% in less than half a day?!

I started using my ip16 pro straight out of the box at 1500 and my phone got to 20% at around 2100 and kept it on charger overnight. Today is my second day using it and it only ran me 12 hours ish before I got to 20% again :((

Unfortunately crazy battery drain happening for me as well on iPhone 16 pro. Still not solution. 

I tried everything. I’m NOT new on iOS and I didn’t find any solution yet. Please avoid common comments please. There is no app working in the background acting wired. It’s just some sort of process working in the background and draining battery even when not using iPhone. Specially when not using it.

Background activity off. Most of the commons draining tasks off.

I’m comparing my activity to my previous iPhone 14 I have to my girlfriend. She is at 78% while I’m at 45%. Something not going right here.

Restored one time and solved nothing. I would like to avoid restoring everything and not using iCloud backup to be honest.

Anyone going crazy and disappointed like me? Seems no one is talking about that. And without a case there will be no a solution or a feedback from those engineers supposed to fix it.

But if it is an iOS issue, didn’t Apple release an iOS update last year, soon after the iPhone 15 came out, solving the issue and improving battery life? I didn’t get the 15, it’s just what I read online 🤔

I got my 16 pro max on launch day (arrived sept 20th) and was just sure that the battery would be better than my 13 pro max which had 85% battery health left. I completely understand that the initial set up would drain down some battery and it did. But since then, I have turned off nearly everything that everyone says to turn off because some of those things are cool, but it still drains SUPER fast. I got all day out of my 13 pro max with 30 or 40% to spare most of the time and I have 2 phone lines on it. 1 for personal, and the 2nd for work.

That being said... I did a controlled test last night. I have my phone set to only charge to 90%. So I charged it to 90% and then laid it on my nightstand and turned on "do not disturb" and woke up the next morning and it had drained down to 78%. It makes no sense. I still haven't sent back my 13 pro max because I'm not too sure about whether I'm going to keep this phone or not after these battery issues. I want to think it's just some sort of software bug, but I honestly can't tell at this point. I wish someone from Apple would address this and say that there is a battery drain issue and they are aware and it will be addressed with 18.0.1 or something. To say the least, I'm frustrated.

Now, on the other hand, I also bought the apple watch ultra 2 in black (switched from the apple watch 8 45mm) at the same time and that battery life is UNREAL. It's amazing. 10/10. would recommend.

[Edited by Moderator]