Where is this magical iPhone 6 Plus battery life?

I was wondering the same, but after heavy research and looking into the usage times of other users, found that it really depends on how you use your iPhone. If you only occasionally browse the web, stream music and watch a few videos, and you're permanently connected to WiFi you can easily surpass 2 days (just use the device occasionally and only for a short period and see it for yourself). Normally my iPhone 6 Plus would be at 30-40% by the end of the day (after 14 hours), but after doing exactly this my phone reached 36% after 37 hours (despite having background refresh on and location on, with average brightness). I'm fairly certain that it will still last me with my current usage pattern until late afternoon tomorrow (so in total around 60 hours). Shocking, given that it usually doesn't! Now, I'm a very heavy user otherwise. I like to use my phone, play games, watch videos, stream music, browse, check the weather, etc. so I find myself often reaching to it (at least once an hour). Ironic, given that if you would have asked me up until now I would have denied being a "heavy" user.

Also, do not underestimate other factors such as your overall connection to a cell phone tower, your provider, and also the apps you tend to use more frequently.

I did research this topic on the net further and found that my usage and standby matches that of others (I saw standby anywhere between 24h to 66h). However, one person did indeed have a faulty battery, where it showed usage time 5 min, standby around 6 hours and 37%. In this case, it was obvious the user had a faulty battery but was able to get the phone exchanged. Based on what I read, your battery and that of other average users should have marginal differences in the first few years. Only towards the end does a battery really degrade in the ability to retain a charge (and sure some users may go for an extra year whereas your battery needs exchange). Given the iPhone 6 plus being on the market for less than a year, I doubt you're in that position. One expert on the Internet who used to work in a Genius bar suggests fully charging your iPhone and removing it from the charger and not using it for 10 minutes. If after the 10 minutes your phone has less than 1 minute usage, you're good. Otherwise you may want to schedule a Genius bar appointment. Alternatively, you can turn off: app background refresh, location, push email, and so on.

Apple just released iOS 8.3. I'm downloading it now. I really hope it fixes the battery problem. However I strongly doubt it will as nothing at all about the battery was mentioned in the release notes.

So here are the results of my two tests! In the first screenshot you'll see that I'm at usage=12hours10minutes and standby=2days12hours (60hours) with 3% battery remaining (in my opinion that comes close to the magical iphone 6 plus battery life). In my second test with heavier use, using the same iPhone 6 Plus, I'm at usage=8hours1minute and standby=23hours9minutes with 8% remaining (please ignore for this second test the fact that it was plugged in for a few seconds). In the first test I did a lot with the phone, I listened to music, placed calls and streamed video (on the first day, it doesn't show in the last 24 hours). However, when I did pick it up, I used it for short time periods. In the second test I didn't care, I often reached to the phone and was browsing heavily with it for extended time periods. Also, I watched a lot more YouTube videos and played a game ("Alto") and also watched the news (ReutersTV).

Anyhow, I hope you can see why some people state that their phone lasts them for a day or longer and others find themselves with little juice left at the end of the day. It all depends how you use your phone. I also wouldn't assume that my neighbour's car, which happens to be identical to mine, must have a better engine or larger gas tank because I fuel more often than he does. It just means that I drive more with my car. Likewise, even if we do drive the same time, he might be using the highway more than I do, thus getting higher milage per gallon. Although their is no such thing as an "identical" car (i.e. his tank might still have 0.01% more capacity than mine), it is entirely negligible. Now if my tank were to have a hole, it would clearly be defective. However, in this scenario it would be a substantial performance loss and you would notice (like the earlier poster who had used around 30% of his battery for a 5 minute use and 6-8 hour standby).

whenever I turn off my screen, not my phone just the screen, the battery continues to be used, the usage times increase! It is not normal because my iPad does not do this nor does my iPhone 4 which has push notifications, email and background refresh which I turned off on my 6 plus so what is going on? Is it a faulty battery?

I think it's normal, because your phone still needs power to connect to the cell phone tower. However, if you ever came across the Scotty Loveless blog (or any article making reference to him), you can test this by fully charging your phone and then removing it from the charger and not touching it for 10 minutes. If after 10 minutes it states usage=1 min and standby=10 min, you should be fine. Otherwise you may want to make a Genius bar appointment. Also, apart from the usage going up, does your battery not last through the day? Do you use the phone a lot? Some people expect to be able to play a high performance game with their phone for 2 hours, watch a movie and browse for 2 hours and still have 50% at the end of the day (which is just simply unrealistic given current battery technology).

HI Sir, I am not too sure it is normal because once it went from 0-15 minutes when I unplugged it a 12 am and woke up at 9am so I never used it and it was on Flight Mode. Plus none of my other devices do this at all. My iPhone 6 Plus has never lasted me a full day or two as some others have, I get fake usage times since it gives me an extra 3-7 minutes of usage which makes my stand-by shocking as well. My battery started skipping numbers such as 45 - 42 or 11-7 but I did a recalibiration charge and that all stopped . It is my fault since it overheats under moderate use but I think it is because in the first month of using the device I used it from 100-0 every day instead of charging it regularly and not letting it go below 25%. Apple said my device is fine but they must be blind, I used to get 13 hours of usage on heavy usage and it not increasing the usage times in the background but now with less usage and it increasing the usage in the background I only get 8-9 hours.

also at its peak I used to get 51-78 minutes on 100% on pure screen on time , now I get about 30 including the added cheat usage tomes from the bakground. So I know for sure my battery is faulty but Apple just do not want to believe it.

The one thing about Li-Ion batteries is that they do not like being emptied all the way to 0% as they can enter a so-called deep discharge state. However, my guess is this must be done over a prolonged time period, and also the phone itself would have to be longer empty before charge. The heat thing is a bigger concern, as heat is the one thing that permanently damages a Li-Ion battery (unlike cold) according to the apple website (https://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/). However, unless you constantly get "warning messages" regarding hot temperatures (were your iPhone shuts down) or you actually left your phone in a hot car throughout the day, this probably doesn't apply either.

From the sounds of it, you're a very heavy user! Regarding the 15 minutes "usage time" after 9 hours, there might be a number of reasons that may cause your usage timer to increase. First, I do think the phone still operates and does a few "checks", including making sure the time progresses, any alarm is checked, checking possibly your location (unless you turned this off), and so on. I think 15 minutes sounds "reasonable", but I didn't try it myself and have no idea if it is or not (can someone else verify this?). Your iPhone essentially is a little computer and unless you turn it off, is never completely "off".

I once surveyed about 20 different reported usage/standby/percentages and plotted those on a graph. For those data points, the average "usage" time was anywhere between 9 hours to 12 hours. However, what I also observed was that the heavier users (i.e. those that had very high "usage" times in the first 12 hours, like 7 hours or more ) had low percentages (1-20%) by the end of the day. Virtually all of the longer "usage" times were from people that also had equally long stand-by times. If you think about this for a moment, that should also make much sense. Whereas you are doing heavy processing with your phone, those "light" users with high usage and high standby times barely touch their phone and the usual background processes would also consume less battery (but still add to the usage timer).

Do the following, ensure your background refresh is turned off, push is off, mail is set to manual fetch (not 15 minute), and then do not touch your phone. See how long you can manage, and you might be quite surprised. I'm sure you'll easily surpass the 2 day mark 😉 Again, I wouldn't care so much about what mileage other people get out of their phone. Your usage pattern is unique, and besides, you'll replace it anyway in a few years (so make good use of it).

I Have tried most of what you have suggested, I agree I am a heavy user, however I have lessened my usage since I use my iPhone 4 as well but I used to get more hours of usage before I began to use the iPhone 4 as well as a daily driver. Thank you anyway Objectmaster. I will try again but I just remember how my battery used to perform before compared to now and I know it is no where as effecient as it was nor have I increased my amount of usage, infact I have decreased it. Never mind, thanks for the help though.

Battery life is still bad with the new recentry released 8.4 update.

Just several hours of use on my IPhone 6 plus took me from a full 100 percent all the down to my current 32 percent.

Terrible. Absolutely terrible.

The biggest battery drainer of all is the brightness. The battery drains like crazy ultra fast if the brightness is turned up. Or even if it's just half way. This is beyond ridiculous. Apple really needs to fix this. I'm really fed up with having to completely turn down the brightness all the way in order to squeeze a few extra minutes worth of battery life. Can't see a **** thing properly with lowered, reduced brightness.

Sean Rubin wrote:

Just several hours of use on my IPhone 6 plus took me from a full 100 percent all the down to my current 32 percent.

Several is a pretty broad word. Is that 3 hours, 5 hours, 7 hours? What is the highest Usage and Standby times you can get? I find on my iPhone 6 I can get 6-7 hours of Usage on a single charge and 1+1/2 days of Standby time.

Like around 3 hours. (browsing the Internet, watching YouTube videos, sometimes listening to streaming music from the new Apple music service).

Usage currently says 40 minutes - Stand by time curently says 2 hours.

But of course the biggest battery drainer of all, for me anyway, is the brightness.

TThe same thing happens with my 6s. I took it to the Genius Bar to figure out why the battery dies after three hours of little use. I had already turned off background app refresh, location services, and all push notifications, but the battery was still unreliable. The "genius" tech's solution? To charge the phone. He did not want to hear that the issue wasn't me not charging the phone, but that the phone couldn't hold a charge more than 3-4 hours. If I need to have a phone constantly on a charger, I would use a landline. I contacted chat support on two occasions, the second time was after resetting the phone to factory settings and starting from scratch with no improvement in battery life. They said that from there end, it looked like the phone was perfectly fine, but did acknowledge that the battery did appear to be draining quickly as I gave them updates every three minutes of what the battery percentage was.

I Was lucky enough that my cell carrier exchanged the phone for me (same mode), but the new one isn't much better. It sits on my desk and gets hot for no reason. No apps are in the background, I didn't restore any backup, and battery still drains within 4-5 hours.

Apple - this is the first huge disappointment I have had from you guys, and I want my money back too. I have no use for a worthless phone.

I found removing junk like apps, photos and videos drastically improved the battery life. No idea why, but it works quite well. I can go a FULL WEEK I one charge, while using it for texting, SMS (not iMessage) and basic web browsing. Disconnecting all email links you have tied into the phones "Mail" app. Turning off the "voice over LTE" helps a lot as well. Basically "dumb down" your phone; everything does have an outcome on your phones power. Why is this? Because the more stuff on the phone means there is more work on the processer. More work requires more energy (battery). iMessage and voice over LTE requires more power to the phones radios (there's two) which connect to the cell towers. Voice over LTE and iMessage connect to the Internet which, believe it or not, does use quite a bit of power. Lastly, switch off the wifi and Bluetooth, these power hungry luxuries aren't worth having on unless you're using them in my opinion. Hope this bit helps!

Like many others I think the battery is still rubbish or more particularly the software controll it. My iphone 6plus shuts down suddenly as apparently no battery left. I plug in to the charger and it shows 13% and ten mins later over 30% . I have no idea if the battery is faulty or just the software. Is there a way of an average consumer checking????

Settings > Battery

Turn "Low Power Mode" ON. Test for 24 hours or so. If it does NOT make a difference, you have a possible hardware issue. Contact Apple. If it DOES make a difference, you have a tedious search (in Settings) ahead of you to find the cause for the drain.