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

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

Posted on Sep 21, 2024 9:24 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Sep 24, 2024 9:15 PM

My phone used to drain battery rapidly even when it was idle, and I couldn’t figure out why. A friend recommended this guide 11 Proven Steps to fix iPhone 16 Pro Max Battery Drain Issue. I followed their tips, turning off few features that I didn’t need to be running in background, especially background apps like the weather and map widgets. Now, I’m seeing a noticeable improvement in my battery life! You should try them aswell.

185 replies

Sep 26, 2024 9:06 PM in response to HeartsbaneCut

So I posted in this thread sharing my experience with the iPhone 16 Pro. I still have the Pro but I also bought a Pro Max now. The Pro Max is behaving exactly the same as the Pro. The two phones have roughly 30% difference in battery capacity - that is, the Pro Max lasts about 30% more, but and get this, under my pattern of usage, it is basically identical to the Pro.


The Pro goes off the charger around 7am, and by 8:30pm the battery is in the gutter, near 0%. The Pro Max survives the day, but only because out of the box it has 30% more battery. At 8:30pm it’s basically at 30%. So yeah, the Pro Max will last me a full day without issues, but let’s not kid ourselves, the suppose battery tests touting the most incredible, impressive battery life ever since any phone ever, not really true.


It’s basically the same thing as all times before. The small phone is much more pocketable and practical to use, but the battery won’t last a day. The large phone is too unwieldy, but it will grind out the day, just barely. (I say barely because even the Pro Max won’t actually pull off 7am to midnight for me.)

Sep 27, 2024 5:18 AM in response to HeartsbaneCut

Same here… I have iPhone 16 Pro (256 GB) for one week now. Yesterday I told someone how good the battery life is. It was. It held up for more than a day. Maybe 1,25 days. Today I charged overnight (I have set the 80% limit from the beginning) and noticed during my lunch break that I was already below 20%… mostly used by insta and safari, but no uncommon or extremely heavy usage.


I disabled some settings now (e.g. journaling, since I don't have that app anyways and some Siri stuff and background updates), but that should not be the solution for a brand new and "best battery ever" phone.

Sep 27, 2024 7:11 AM in response to HeartsbaneCut

I had high expectations for battery life for 16 Pro Max, because of the reviews, but unfortunately it is seems worsen than in 3 yrs old iPhone 13 Pro Max.

Made a mistake, should just keep that phone and not to spend lots of money.


This is sixth day of usage, so there should not be any indexing etc left. There was some in first two days, like photos.


Basically 1,5 hours of random usage (X, Instagram, FB, threads, browser, safari) consumes 30 percent of battery.


Sep 27, 2024 11:06 AM in response to dhorgas

I literally feel the same- I was using my iPhone 14 Pro Max with 85% battery life and it held up all day and was maybe 20-25% by bed time- this phone iPhone 16 pro is awful for battery life - and I’m actually hating the swap and want to go back to my old one - iv never felt like this with a new apple product/ pretty gutted to say the least x

Sep 27, 2024 6:07 PM in response to HeartsbaneCut

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.

Sep 27, 2024 6:35 PM in response to HeartsbaneCut

Same situation. Had the 14 max pro and it lasted all day, streaming etc by the end of the day it would have 30%, all day for me meant 6am till 10pm. I am afraid to even look at my mail let alone streaming on this new iPhone 16 pro max. Still with in the return period may go to 15 if this is how it’s going to be if the tips I followed for closing background apps etc, don’t solve the battery drain

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

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