Battery Drain on iOS 26 and iOS 26.0.1.

crap292 wrote:

I spent a lot of money to buy the new iPhone 16 PM. At first, the battery worked well with iOS 18. However after the update to iOS 26, everything changed. It ruined my new phone, and now I don’t feel like I’m using a new device anymore. The battery is draining super fast even though the phone is new and the battery cycle count is only 45. I updated to version 26.1 today but the battery is still draining super fast. Why is Apple doing this to us and not fixing this major issue?

You are wondering why Apple is doing this to "us", and that does not seem to be the case as you have seen here that not everyone has experienced the battery drain and it has been reportedly widely from many third party sources that those who did have seen vast improvements with 26.1. There was a bug resolved with the use of Low Power mode that could explain why it was an issue to some and not others, but that is no longer the case with 26.1.

Post a screenshot of your battery usage at Settings > Battery that shows the green battery graph with the previous 24 hour option, along with the apps consuming the battery. Note also the ones below the apps for System usage of the battery, which may be an indication of the file indexing following the update and expected.

I have used 26.0.1 for quite a while now, around 6 weeks. While the first week was a nightmare when it came to battery usage, it slowly got better and after a while everything went back to normal.

Maybe the phone is doing some optimization over the first days and slowly improving performance? The rest of my family have had the same experience.

I assume everyone writing in this thread had just installed iOS 26 and immediatly gets mad. However, writing an update when everything is fine again is rarely done…we just write when something does not work as expected.

So my suggestion: Stay calm, use your phone normally and things will get better automatically after a week or so.

My iPhone 14 Pro Max battery drains by approximately 10 percent to 20 percent or more per hour on iOS 26.1, even with only moderate usage or when the screen is locked.

In addition, the maximum battery capacity has decreased by about 3 percent since updating to this iOS version. The battery was replaced less than one year ago and was previously at 99 percent.

It now feels like I get only about half the usage time per charge compared to when I was using iOS 18, and I now need to charge the phone several times per day.

There appear to be ongoing issues with iOS 26 that are significantly affecting battery performance on the iPhone 14 Pro Max and have not been addressed since the initial release.

I also have a brand new iPhone 15 Pro Max, am not new to Apple products, technology in general including software, Hardware, the differences, etc. I experienced the same issue and had the same complaint as the OP (original poster) and after doing the 26.0.1 update AND updating ALL of my third-party apps AND the force restart, I continued to have the same issue. For me, I went into my Battery Usage and realized that at some point I had turned battery optimization and AI habit learning to the off-toggle position. No doubt it was during a time when I needed my phone to be at 100% sooner than my habits had it programmed to reach full batter capacity or prior to the iOS 26 release with some 3rd party apps had not rolled out a bug-fix as they were waiting for iOS 26 to launch and then do a larger software update to optimize accordingly. When that was happening, my battery was draining from 100% to 33% in a matter of 2.5 hours with no apps open, background refresh turned off, etc etc so on and so forth.

Realizing this, I toggled the option on, back off and then back on again, got to my Home Screen and did another force restart. I gave my phone a solid 4 days and by the 5th day I stayed above 60% despite numerous hours-long conversations for work, an extremely heavy email in & out day and also heavy use of socials for that work day as well. if you're at your wits end, check something simple like this as you may have read it wrong, thought it was toggled on when it wasn't, a setting may have caused the phone to go rogue, etc. Believe it or not, it happens.

Our devices are indeed, SMART devices. They learn our habits, our usage, etc and we all know by now that keeping our phones plugged in constantly is actually NOT good for the battery. Try the above and see if that helps.

andrea_filice wrote:

https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/6028a191-4116-4e02-8c7d-9e0e04dbdba9

Meta needs to calm down, it's not possible that Instagram consumes 38% of my battery for a simple 2 hours. Whatsapp has 22% of use but anyway how does it in the background to have gone 1 hour and passes if I have never made a call or something like that

You are absolutely correct and even Google has called out Meta for battery draining on their devices. Meta has the worst track record for introducing bugs in their apps, and attempts to resolve it with another update that introduces a different bug. For example, Instagram was just updated 4 days ago with 12 updates in just the last month. It is clear very little in-house testing is being done and the users are really the bug testers.

The apps are free for you to download and use, but Meta is making billions off the data they are able to gather on you and that is also done on your device that is using the battery. They do this by building a Social Graph for everything you do on their platform, including information from others liked or commented on your post and those that you did to others. Processing is being done in the background on your device and any notification you receive will launch the app in the background to process the payload. That is simply their business model and it is no surprise that Meta owns WhatsApp as well.

It is no surprise that without those apps, you have exceptional battery life. Once you are able to identify the problem, it is up to you how you want to proceed. If you are unhappy with the Meta apps, contact them and express your disproval and if they are unwilling to offer any solution you find acceptable, then quit using those apps. It really is your choice what apps you have installed on your phone and the Developer of the app is responsible for how that app performs.

TTPDElmer wrote:

I did the update last night. I have not had any prior battery issues. I barely used my phone today due to being at work, but the battery percentage dropped like a ROCK. Not good.

For the first 24-48 hours after any iOS update, battery usage will be higher than usual as the phone rebuilds all its internal databases.

andrea_filice wrote:

Yes, but unfortunately here in Europe Meta apps (especially WhatsApp) are fundamental.

I've already tried to contact Meta by WhatsApp, but the only answer I got is that an Apple problem by a stupid AI agent.

I understand, unfortunately it does not change the fact that those apps are consuming the battery. When you can remove an App and have your battery return to normal, then add the App again to test and find the Battery Consumption return, then you can clearly identity the fault and I would be concerned that they are using AI to tell you it is not their fault when it has been reported on extensively.

When you see the exact same reports for the Meta Apps draining the battery in the Android/Samsung Support Sites, it is much more difficult to believe it is the result of a singe phone manufacturer. Also the fact that the same is true for their apps other than WhatsApp, such as Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram makes it more than just a coincidence.

While Google has publicly called out Meta for their apps draining the battery, Apple has remained silent, other than allowing users to see the apps that consume the battery and let them make the choice themselves to use the app or not. I would hope Apple could apply pressure on Meta, but could you imagine the uproar if those Apps were removed from the App Store. It also is not a violation of App Store Submission Guidelines where Apple could legally remove those apps.

The battery draining varies across users with those apps due to their own personal Social Graph that Meta uses to capture data. Each user has different data points such as their contacts, likes, posts and also includes others who have included them in their contacts, likes, posts. When using multiple Meta apps, those same data points multiply. This data is sold to advertisers, whether you know it or not. They may say it does not identify you specifically, but that data is still being gathered on your device and is how they made $2.7 billion dollars in the last quarter alone on apps that are free to download and use.

That is their business model and they don't have any incentive to reduce this activity that would result in lower profits, as long as they don't lose their customer base. Could they make a simple encrypted Messaging app that does not result in this significant battery drain? Absolutely, and there are others where that is not the case, such as Signal or Telegram.

iOS 26 and iPhone 17 series has broken a lot of things. CarPlay and battery being my primary concern. That being said doing a hard/force restart is worth a try. It’s an old trick for sorting out charging and drain issues sometimes after certain updates. I’ve been doing this since 2009 for iOS devices. The first thing you would observe after force restart is there would be a sudden drop in battery percentage at least by 4-10 percent once the device restarts. I think this is because the battery management has finally got in sync with the correct percentage of the battery and now the charged percentage will show correctly possibly changing the battery to its full capacity now which earlier could have been less. And yes there would be an improvement in battery management. Just a theory. But I have seen it working. Not so sure with iOS 26 though.

L_O_R_A wrote:

I’m ditching social media Apps on my new iPhone 17 that I got last week. I am accessing everything through a secured browser so far so good with that issue on Meta

Thanks for the update. The same thing has been seen time and time again that the battery problems go away when the app is removed, yet some still can't believe the app is the problem and continue to say it is Apple.

It is not the point that Apple would never have a bug in the OS that would cause battery drain and that certainly has been seen before, but when everyone complaining has the same Meta apps and the battery draining goes away when the app is removed, you have found your problem. Browser access is a great alternative until Meta figures out their app issues.

I do think Apple needs to press harder on alerting users of an Apps effect on the Battery. Even though it is clearly visible in the Battery Settings there is still more that can be done. In a couple of months, Google is going to start flagging the apps that consume excessive battery in their Play Store and I think Apple should do the same. I also don't think it would be out of line for a Notification to pop up on your device when a preset limit on battery use has been detected. Not sure if that would really change the minds of those who say they simply can't live without an app, so it must be Apples fault, but it may.

Battery stats are not updated immediately and are done on a background process similar to the way Steps are added in the Health app. In both cases the values are updates shortly afterwards when that background process has been completed, not done in real time. That would explain why you see a different value immediately after ending a FaceTime call.

To get a better idea on the rate of drop you are seeing, can you post the green battery graph with the last 24 hour option selected. I agree that a 30% drop seems excessive on a 1 hour call.

Following can be tried depending on your risk appetite. May not be advisable from safety point of view and depending on how essential are these features to you but could be done until the iPhone stabilises after updates:

1. Set all mail accounts to fetch manual. New mail only arrives when mail app is opened.
2. Turn off Siri learning for as many apps as possible that is not essential to you. You will have to go Siri settings. I have a feeling that the Apple Intelligence and Siri are using lot of phone resources to learn from your apps and phone usage behaviour.
3. Background activity still happens even if you set background refresh off. You can see that in battery % used for apps. It shows on screen % and background activity %. Close apps on your drawer once done.
4. Location services off for all non essential apps. It can be turned off completely as well until required during navigation but this is risky and not advised (I believe ‘find my phone’ will lose access unless lost mode is enabled from other associated devices) and definitely not for people who tend to misplace their phones. I’ve seen location services running every time I unlock my phone. This does drain battery.
5. Lastly 26.1 seems to have improved the battery management. Not sure though. Do not forget to update all apps and do a force restart before these measures.

Yes, some may ask why bother buying a smartphone then but maybe as a temporary measure to save your battery performance until it’s fixed.

Disclaimer: At your own risk please.

Followyoheart wrote:

1. Following can be tried depending on your risk appetite. May not be advisable from safety point of view and depending on how essential are these features to you but could be done until the iPhone stabilises after updates:

Set all mail accounts to fetch manual. New mail only arrives when mail app is opened.

2. Turn off Siri learning for as many apps as possible that is not essential to you. You will have to go Siri settings. I have a feeling that the Apple Intelligence and Siri are using lot of phone resources to learn from your apps and phone usage behaviour.

3. Background activity still happens even if you set background refresh off. You can see that in battery % used for apps. It shows on screen % and background activity %. Close apps on your drawer once done.

4. Location services off for all non essential apps. It can be turned off completely as well until required during navigation but this is risky and not advised (I believe ‘find my phone’ will lose access unless lost mode is enabled from other associated devices) and definitely not for people who tend to misplace their phones. I’ve seen location services running every time I unlock my phone. This does drain battery.

5. Lastly 26.1 seems to have improved the battery management. Not sure though. Do not forget to update all apps and do a force restart before these measures.

Yes, some may ask why bother buying a smartphone then but maybe as a temporary measure to save your battery performance until it’s fixed.

Disclaimer: At your own risk please.

Hello~ Have you tried this on your own device? Perhaps you should do so rather than post “Disclaimer: At your own risk please. “ Wow…

~Katana-San~

What makes you think I haven’t tried? The caution was there because everyone has different requirements. Some may want the mail to arrive as soon as possible because that might be most important for them, some may prefer automation most maybe because they are on road most of the times driving, some may have to keep their devices outside their workplace and hence cannot afford to turn location settings off. So it was just a caution to try out what suits you the best without jeopardising what is important to you. My screen shot of the experiment shows a 14% drop from full charge in 21 hours. Of course phone was idle mostly. But it was important to see how the charge drops without usage. It used to be 15-20% overnight under default settings. But still I am saying maybe my device has got stabilised now (as we all know devices takes time to settle down after certain updates) and there is a room for error in my assumptions. I think we can learn to give some credit to others as well.

After two months of this, having my phone run down completely every day in 6-8 hours, I finally caved, backed it all up, did a complete factory reset (except for eSIM), and restored from backup. Was avoiding this because it creates lots of knock-on work getting things working again, especially some 2FA that doesn't play nice with backups. Cost me about 4 hours including some IT support calls and I'm sure there's a long tail of stuff I haven't got to yet. But I am now getting through a full day with 30-40% battery left, like I was back before this saga began.

Kelster46 wrote:

Mine was updated today nothing but lag since and talk about battery drain I’m literally watching it go down in front of my eyes rapidly shocking I was on 99 percent and am on 11 within a very quick time and hardly any use please help This is shocking and to upgrade all apps how do I even do that all manually ?

Since you just updated today you are going to have to wait 3-5 days for the background processes to finish indexing files and performing object detection on your photos before you are able to make any battery usage comparisons. You should also expect extra heat being generated during this time and some lag on the screen when navigating.

About Apple software updates - Apple Support

Apps are updated independent of an iOS update and are done in the App Store. Most users have it set to update the apps automatically when they become available by the developer, but you can also update them manually.

How to manually update apps from the App Store - Apple Support