After updating to iOS 18, iPhone battery percentage drops to 92%

tone11 wrote:

I beg to differ.... Before updating to IOS 18.0 & 18.01 my phone battery would drop to 10% of battery life every night or after 12-14 hours from a full charge (keep in mind that I have every possible battery drain feature turned off). Since I have updated to IOS 18, I'm having to charge up my phone by early afternoon or after 8-10 hours of use. Phone use is consistent. As there are other issues with this upgrade, the battery drain is primarily the main issue. It is unfortunate that we can't revert back to prior OS.

The post you responded to by lobsterghost1 was specifically talking about Battery Health and the post was absolutely correct. You are not talking about the Battery Health percentage found in Settings at all. What you are indicating is the battery discharge rate which is completely different.

There have been apps that have started to consume much more battery power and one of them is WhatsApp. This occurred after a recent up of WhatsApp and users started to notice it after that update on all iOS versions. Not sure if you have this one, but the first place to look are the Social Media apps. You can see which apps are consuming the most amount of energy in the Battery Settings. These apps are using background task for purposes other than what is needed for the app to function properly. Apple may be able to curtail some of these background tasks or the apps will be updated once the users start removing them from their devices.

There are a couple of approaches you can take:

• Remove these apps and compare the results.
• Probably the most effective approach is to reset the phone with a Mac/PC. Use your Apple ID when it is set up, but do not restore from a backup. Compare your battery discharge rate with a clean system and add the apps one at a time until you find the one that is giving you problems. As stated, WhatsApp has been one that was identified, but if you find another post it here. Users who have done this have found that there battery has lasted for a full day as expected.

The average battery health drop has been reported here many times as being about a 1% drop per month no matter what iOS version you are using. If you have had your iPhone 14 longer than 8 months, then you are far ahead of the average and should be very happy with your battery performance.

Batteries of iPhone 14 models and earlier are designed to retain 80 percent of their original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles under ideal conditions.

iPhone Battery and Performance - Apple Support

That is the expectation for the battery on the iPhone 14, no matter what version of iOS you are using. This support article was written before iOS 18 was even available.

sathya192 wrote:

Last IOS 17 version, My battery health percentage was 96%. After updating to IOS 18. I feel bad about myself. Every IOS release battery percentage drops drastically. After updated battery percentage shows 92%. Please mention these infos in updating feature list or known issue.

ok thanks for sharing.

How long have you owned your iPhone? On average, an iPhone loses about 1% per month. Battery Health decline is NOT linear, and Battery Health can remain constant, then drop a few points. iOS update have nothing to do with this. If you have owned your phone longer than 8 months, a Battery Health of 92% is good completely within spec. There's no reason to feel bad about yourself, especially, since Battery Health goes only one direction and that is DOWN.

What is your Battery Health percentage when viewed at Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging > Maximum Capacity?

Some users have experienced the faster discharge rate like you are experiencing and other than the reported WhatsApp issue, I have not seen a reliable solution. One user reported that they took their iPhone 16 to the Apple Store for diagnostics and they reset the phone using a computer and now they get full day use, but can't confirm if that would work for everyone. They had previously tried resetting on the phone, but according to them using a computer made the difference. This would suggest a problem with the on device update, but we are likely not going to know until Apple does their next point update.

I wouldn't consider 18% to be excessive when looking at app usage in the Battery settings as this is a proportionate number to all apps. The ones you want to look for will show "Background Activity" and when you tap on "Show Activity" that will show you how much time the app was consuming the battery. This is how WhatsApp was identified, because it was spending a lot of time doing Background Activity when the app was not being used.

tone11 wrote:

Maximum battery capacity is 85% for the iPhone 12 mini. I have all but a handful of background refresh apps turned off. And Safari, Messages, Phone, and one other seem to be the usual time consuming culprits. If I turned off background refresh off completely, this will preserve more battery life? But in doing this, would it affect the apps efficiency. Thank you Mac Jim

Turning off Background App Refresh has just a slight effect on battery performance. Apps are still usable with Background App Refresh turned off. You will just find that apps will need to load updated content when you launch the app instead of showing the updated content immediately.

Note that there are a couple of types of background activity that apps can perform. Background App Refresh is one of them that is used to update content. The other one you do not have any control over is a Background Task Scheduler. The app can schedule to "wake up" at scheduled times to perform tasks such as synchronizing data with their servers, updating a database, or respond to a Notification that came in. This is the one that has been linked to excessive battery consumption. The OS does have some control over these tasks and can kill them under certain conditions. We may find that the OS will become more restrictive on how much time they allow third party apps to perform these tasks

For example, Apple uses these scheduled tasks for apps like Photos to perform object and face detection in the background and the system also builds the Siri Suggestions in the background at certain times. Backups are scheduled to be performed and also to check for updates. These system processes are why users see a drastic drop in performance immediately after an update, but usually go away in less than 3 days. Some task are only allowed to run when plugged into power to conserve the battery.

I beg to differ.... Before updating to IOS 18.0 & 18.01 my phone battery would drop to 10% of battery life every night or after 12-14 hours from a full charge (keep in mind that I have every possible battery drain feature turned off). Since I have updated to IOS 18, I'm having to charge up my phone by early afternoon or after 8-10 hours of use. Phone use is consistent. As there are other issues with this upgrade, the battery drain is primarily the main issue. It is unfortunate that we can't revert back to prior OS.

Thank you Mac Jim. I assumed there was some correlation between battery health and battery discharge.

As far as Apps are concerned, I do not have WhatsApp or any other social media app. Looking at 'battery usage by app' over the course of 10 days, Safari clocks in highest at 18%. Not sure if this is considered a high level of drain, so I am at a loss.

Maximum battery capacity is 85% for the iPhone 12 mini. I have all but a handful of background refresh apps turned off. And Safari, Messages, Phone, and one other seem to be the usual time consuming culprits. If I turned off background refresh off completely, this will preserve more battery life? But in doing this, would it affect the apps efficiency. Thank you Mac Jim

It's been over 3 weeks since I've installed IOS 18. There has not been any improvement in battery discharge.

I would risk a manual reset with the hope that it helps, but having to redo all of my personal settings would a great chore, especially since I have most drain settings off. Hoping Apple addresses this problem again, as it did for a similar issue with older iPhones in the past....

In the meantime, I greatly appreciated the time you spent with me providing valuable information. Thank you.