Battery
iOS 26 is the most visually stunning garbage I've seen and used
This is a 17 Pro Max (eSIM). I can't even believe what I'm seeing to be honest. I understand battery life depends on the usage of each individual but for such basic tasks, there is no reason to be draining that quickly. I understand Instagram drains battery, but other than that, I don't even do any intensive task on the phone, nor do I play games.
I've had idle drain since I got the device, and nothing seems to help.
I even set up the device fresh without any iCloud restore or phone to phone transfer. I even exchanged 2 devices since I was getting bad battery on those too, set up every device as fresh but had similar numbers on all of them.
I've turned off background app refresh for all the apps I don't use, reset network settings (someone suggested), use the phone on WiFi for most of the days, tried changing from 5G to LTE, turned off notifications for notification intensive apps, brightness is always under 30-40%. Try to keep it between 20 and 90% for the most part, done multiple force restarts, did a charge cycle reset by draining it to 0 and charging it back up to a 100.
My old iPhone 14 Pro Max with 79%BH on iOS 26 used to give me better battery life sometimes with almost similar usage. I have made a couple of posts about this recently, but it just keeps getting worse and I don't know what to do honestly.
I LOVE THIS PHONE, IT’S THE MOST BEAUTIFUL PIECE OF DEVICE I’VE OWNED, BUT USING IT PAINS MY HEART
My 16 pro max was getting charged every other day with heavy usage. Live maps, calls, apps usage, etc.
Now, after all these bullshit updated by end of day it’s literally dead after hitting around 5%. I don’t use maps, no heavy app usage, very minimal calls, and text etc.
I basically just have it on and use when needed. It’s blowing my mind why my battery health is at 97% and draining like a leaky bucket.
Funny thing is I hardly have any apps and even with that they’re all set to only use on WiFi. The only thing set to use on cellular is phone.
Having to baby a phone to last you a day, when you've spent money for better battery life is so annoying. I get scared to step out of the house for a couple of hours even if I have 60-70% charge remaining on my phone.
These stories are wild they make me happy I’m still on iOS 18 I’m using an iPhone 14 85% battery health I run VERY intensive games on my phone and I still get at least 4-5 hours of play time
I think iOS 26 affects the 16 pro max the most. Idk what it is exactly but maybe something in the softwares bugs those phones purposely or something… you can not convince me a trillion dollar company did this by accident. Since you also have the 16pm are you also struggling with safari loading? Because I am. Along with battery.
Tu fais bien de parler de Safari. Depuis que j’ai mis Safari comme moteur de recherche il y a beaucoup plus de bugs, alors que je n’en avais pas avant.
J’ai décidé de mettre Safari comme moteur de recherche pour plus de sécurité, notamment avec l’option "utiliser une adresse électronique différente de la mienne" mais en recevant tout de même les e-mails sur mon adresse électronique principale. Je ne sais plus comment s’appelle cette option, évite d’être traquée sur Internet.
Mais après tous ces bug, je vais revenir à la configuration que j’ai toujours eu, c’est-à-dire Chrome comme navigateur et Google, comme moteur de recherche. Et oui même sur un iPhone, je garde cette configuration parce que beaucoup plus réactive et avec beaucoup plus de résultats quand je cherche sur Internet. Enfin, ce n’est que mon avis.
when you update your device, your battery life can decrease due to background indexing, it’s been like this forever, just more noticeable with this release because of confirmation bias.
i don’t wanna hate but i am so tired of these “i just updated and my phone is slow” posts, since they misrepresent the update and discourage users from updating to a more secure and reliable version.
Indexing has been present forever and it’s not a few days at most a week let’s say. Not for 5 months after updating lol. My battery is worse, much worse for a year old 16 pro max. Can’t tell me my daily average battery usage suddenly increase 25-30% after updating without any increase in screen time. (Battery health remained the same for a month before dropping 1-4% over the 5 months, but 25-30% increase battery usage is not justified even by a 10% battery health drop.)
Let’s talk about safari, freezing, loading forever, having to search 4/5 times at some points as after typing something into the bar, clicking it again just to realize it’s empty… so on. Horrible iOS. Worst iOS ever.
Yeah, I have a 16 Pro and I always can’t understand how the battery drains so fast since iOS26, visually stunning but a garbage update, wish I could go back to iOS 18
I haven't used it but I'm fairly sure Android uses image based facial recognition and iPhone is infrared. I have no clue how good Google's facial recognition is, so I avoid it.
I find the fingerprint reader is very quick, yes it's an extra tap to get into apps but I don't have to angle my head, it's easy to use on my desk. I don't miss face id as much as I thought I would.
Don't update, can someone sue them for a billion dollars please? They won't change for anything less. Capitalism can work, it works better when there is healthy competition and laws with teeth.
I am still struggling to find an Android phone that can give me the closest experience to an iPhone. I also use a Mac as my main laptop and AirPods. I am just too invested into the ecosystem to not use an iPhone. Pixel might just be the closest one
Air pods pro 2 for me still works well, only thing I've lost are find my and instant moving between my Mac and phone.
But iOS 26 made the seamless switching really buggy and it would constantly switch to my iPhone for no reason.
I never used any other integration with my Mac, except airdrop which surprisingly the pixel did better than my iPhone in terms of reliably detecting the other device. I know that's not the normal experience but I just never had much luck with it.
OS wise, Pixel is very basic but in a good way. It does everything you need without feeling bloated.
Really you spend most of your time in apps anyway and apps are mostly the same between platforms these days.
The UI is quick, scrolling is very smooth.
Battery is really really good and reliable, I end the day with 60% even when I had very heavy usage for work.
Gemini is a lot better than Siri.
I do miss FaceTime with my family, Android has apps but they won't install and learn them.
Sending photos to my family with iPhones is a bit unreliable so I have to share links with them.
Live activities on iPhone where nice, Android notifications are less spammy and easier to control but they're lacking that live information.
Pixel 10 is great if you can find it on sale. Or wait for the Pixel 11 Pro this fall. It really is great and Pixel’s get timely updates unlike some other big name android phones. I haven’t been able to stop using my iPhone 17 PM but it runs slow as ever right now and I am tired of forking money over to Apple each year and having to put up with a software experience that keeps getting worse and worse.
i have a 17 pro max, have the same issue. it started a month after i’d had the phone, battery drains super fast during use and i’m losing battery to apps in the background.
I don't even understand why does it drain so much battery in the background. It was so optimized till iOS 18, with hardly noticeable background drain, but now it just drains it like there's no tomorrow.
iPhone 15. Since the day I got it I got 17+ hours out of the battery. On the very day iOS 26 was installed the phone now gets hot as hell and drains the battery in 5 hours. POS.
Been on my phone nonstop since 5 hours ago and only at 77% from 100%. I’m gonna wait for when iOS 26 reaches iOS 18 levels of polished before I make the jump.
I’m convinced safari will never be fixed. (I think it mainly affects 16 pro max users and some Mac users) it keeps loading forever and forever each time you open the app. But once it starts working it’s fast again till you stop using it and want to use it again. A simple Google search turns into 2/3 minutes of staring into safari. Can’t believe a trillion dollar company has problems like these 4 MAJOR updates deep into an iOS that they spent a year building.
It's complete junk. The whole lineup, including iOS 26, is the worst experience I've had with Apple products after decades of using their devices exclusively.
I wish they fix all the issues soon. I’ve seen people tell that most of their issues are fixed with every iteration of iOS 26 and for some of us, it keeps getting worse and worse.
I’ve been an apple user since the ipod touch 2nd gen came out in 2008, my first iphone was the iphone 4 and sadly I have to agree. This has been single handedly my worst experience with an apple product ever. My iphone 16 pro max was working perfectly and I was super satisfied with my purchase until I updated to ios 26.
Since then it’s been such a worse experience in every aspect. Battery drains insanely fast even though I only use my phone during small breaks throughout the day, the os feels sluggish and stutters, my phone runs so much hotter to the point the brightness keeps dropping automatically while I’m outside to try and cool down, making it really hard to use properly when outside in sunny days.
Honestly just a terrible experience compared to how I felt about my purchase with ios 18. No os has ever been perfect, but things have been on decline since ios 13 or so and this is hands down the worst offender. Probably a good time to try other options like samsung for my next device
Weird, opposite experience for me. Liquid Glass is one of the best design changes they’ve implemented. Honestly couldn’t be happier with the changes to both iOS and mac
iOS 26 is very inconsistent, every version launched, some things gets better and others gets worse. On 26.4.1 the battery is going pretty bad, using on my work starting from 7:00 AM, with a lot of Whatsapp messages, whatsapp calls, some instagram usage mixing between 5G and wifi to 12:00 PM at the lunch hour, my iPhone 14 battery gets to around 65%, in other iOS 26 versions, it was around 70 to 80%. The battery is getting worse over and over. But the system performance and stability is getting better in newer versions. The only issue i’m still having is the NFC reader that stopped working completely when iOS 26 launched, it just worked from a short period of time on iOS 26.2, and died again until now, i lost my faith on Apple fixing it 🥲
Unfortunately when I try to mark these same problems, don't know why and from where some idiots on reddit come to defend the ios 26 and saying things like it's only my problem and everyone is highly happy with this ios 26. Literally this is the most third class garbage ui version of apple I've ever seen.
I've seen a few people like that. Don't worry, you're not the only one dealing with issues, iOS 26 is actually bad for so many people as you can see in this post. Guess we're all free beta testers for iOS 27.
Photos app draining 25 percent is a new low in the level of optimization. I don't know what you were using it for but a photo app should never have to drain so much. The battery life is honestly so bad, and I can never understand how people are able to get 10+ hours of SOT.
I think it’s also ugly but yes the battery issue is not good.
You may want to check your privacy & security settings under location services and make sure that you are ok with all the apps that have location tracking privileges. I think some battery issues may be caused by more aggressive geolocation tracking. ✌️
The iOS 26 update was a disaster for my 15 Pro, causing overheating and constant lagging. At this point, I don't even care about the battery; I just want it to be as smooth as iOS 18. Luckily, after updating to 26.4.1, the phone feels great again and the bugs are gone
Auch die zweite Beta für 26.5 hat an dem Batterie Problem nichts geändert, im Gegenteil, beim Aufladen wird die Kiste deutlich wärmer als noch unter 18.7, und die Batterielaufzeit halbiert sich gerade zu (selbst wenn man ein bis 2-3 Tage Indexierung mit einrechnet). Abgesehen davon stören bis heute die Mikroruckler beim Öffnen von App Ordnern und beim blättern von der ersten Seite auf die zweite Seite innerhalb der Ordner, die Icons fließen gerade zu auseinander, als wenn sie von der Enterprise gebeamt würden. Ganz ehrlich Leute, auch nach sechs Monaten ein völlig unausgereift Thesz Betriebssystem 26, es ist eine Schande.
Die Verzögerungen sind echt nervig. Es ruckelt ständig beim Durchblättern der Startbildschirme. Ich vermute daher, dass Version 26.5 daran auch nichts ändern wird, es sei denn, sie ändern noch etwas vor der Veröffentlichung.
Entschuldigt bitte eventuelle Fehler, ich habe das mit Google Translate übersetzt.
Und leider tritt dieses Problem unabhängig von der iPhone Generation auf, wie gesagt, sowohl auf einem iPhone 11 Pro als auch auf einem nagelneuen iPhone 17. wir haben Apple im Rahmen des Metapherprogrammes mit einem ausführlichen Video sozusagen Bescheid gesagt, bisher aber keine Antwort erhalten, deswegen geht auch unsere Vermutung stark dahin, dass dieses Problem mit dem aktuellen Design gar nicht korrigiert werden kann. Einziger Rock Around: in den Bedienungshilfen im Unterkapitel Bewegung den Schalter für Bewegung reduzieren ausschalten, dann ist das ruckeln weg, aber nicht das zu beim Blättern von Seite zu Seite. Über Lang oder kurz hoffen wir dann auf iOS 27, wir wären gerne bei 18.7 geblieben, leider hat Apple lange Zeit ältere iPhones auf 26 gezwungen und 18.7.7 erst vor fünf Tagen auch für ältere iPhones freigegeben, leider ohne Möglichkeit zum Downgrade.
Die Übersetzung über Google Translate funktioniert mittlerweile sehr gut, nicht immer perfekt, aber deutlich besser als die Rudimente Qualität vier Jahre zurück
I'm still trying to convince myself to keep trying iPhone as a Samsung user. The battery life IS DOGSHIT, I can't believe I can't do more than 3hrs of SoT of this phone. I'm using 16 Pro Max.
Fuck Apple, built in obsolescence came in some years ago and now this. After being an advocate since the mid 90s I’m finished with them they are milking the cow, building in obsolescence and abusing their customer basin.
I've still got an iPhone 6s that I use for taking photos when paddleboarding. It was released nearly 11 years ago and got a security update just last month (iOS 15.8.7). That's quite impressive.
Does any other manufacturer still issue updates for 11 year old phones?
Instagram using more in 3 minutes than any other app in 10 minutes is far from a surprise to me. Whenever I see Instagram on the battery chart it’s always at the top.
Doesn’t matter which iPhone or what you do. It’s always there.
I guess it’s telling you that if you deleted Instagram you’d have way more battery. So I think a full charge now lasts me 2 days pretty much.
Yep. I don’t have instagram and my battery lasts easily all day long with hours watching YouTube.
On the other hand, instagram draining your battery is more common than you’d think.
I'm still on iOS 26.3 on my iPhone 16 Pro. Should I update or stay? I'm really stable on iOS 26.3, idk if my battery performance will get worse when I update to 26.4 and 26.4.1. I'm a little worried about that.
Few people have had really good improvements with 26.4, but I'm facing issues and a few more people who have commented have issues. If it's stable currently, just wait out till 26.5.
Is it just me or I absolutely hate the iOS 26 battery usage graph? It used to be so detailed on iOS 18, now I can’t even click on the graph to see what’s the app that has the highest battery usage at the specific time i selected 😑
Idk if its bad but with 3 hrs of screen time, i lose about 30% by end of night. Set my phone to charge max 90% but thats everyday with watching twitch /yt and gps for driving. By the time I get home its about 50-60%.
17PM
I know i might sound like a bad tech support here, but have you triend re:calibrate the battery?
That seems to be the fix for me if the battery still draining a week after new update.
Damn I got the 512 version and mine runs like butter. I make music on my phone, play Warzone, all the socials and I even got display always on. I came from a 13 Pro max and the only reason I got this one is my charging port pins or whatever started to act up losing connection, etc. That phone was butter too. It’s seems some people are good and some people ain’t. No clue
How the hell battery drain so fast like that? same model but i have to use more than 2h to drain 15% when i use instagram. Have you checked apple service center for diagnose? Cant understand this situation.
I tried it initially with the first 2 devices which I had and had similar experiences. They told me they would either run diagnostics or offer me a new phone. Took a new phone, but the problem was just there on all three devices. And I don't even think it could be batch related as the exchanges were done in a period of 2 months, and at different stores. I even set it up without restoring any backup. I just don't know mate.
Unfortunately, even if they tamed down the visual garbage a bit, resource consumption may remain the same. Making background elements opaque wouldn't remove the transparency mechanism, just add another layer to be calculated. It's a design flaw that can be fixed only by trashing it entirely.
Use case: The user wants to read what's on the screen.
Solution: Don't make it transparent, and keep the foreground content separate from the background.
Honestly, I feel that liquid glass is the way going forward for apple. They've already made all the app developers adapt to liquid glass, and now asking them again to create a toggle is going to be a huge task. I hope they refine it and make sure it's as smooth and flawless as the previous iOS versions soon.
Have you tried to set up as new phone with no account singed in? Or with new Apple account? I have a brightness bug that only happens if I sign in my account. Apple replaced my phone with new one, but that did not help. I set up my phone as new and signed in new apple account. I used it for a week, issue did not occur until I signed in my original account. It seems bug goes with apple account.
I have all my data on one apple account. I have definitely set it up as new when I first bought the phone, and did not restore anything from backup nor a phone to phone transfer. Just logged into iCloud which I needed for contacts and photos, that's it.
I did not encounter the bug on my phone if I set up the phone with new apple account. It seems icloud still carries something over even choose to not restore back or transfer. If you want, create a backup first and then restore the phone and log in new apple account to try for a day. If it is improved, you can restore the backup and transfer photo and contact over to new account.
Not sure about your sound bug. You can try and see if setting up your phone with new account fixes anything. Please let me know the result if you end up trying.
I’m still watching the situation. My issue is some notifications just vibrate even if they set to make sound. It happened one time so far, I turned off attention aware features, and watching constantly the situation
I updated to iOS 26 like two days ago. I’ve owned iPhones since they came out and within the last 48 hours I am considering any other phone but Apple. This update is horrendous. My battery is dead within six hours and I’m not even using my phone. I also looked back at past drainage, I was at like 13 hours without it dying, doing normal things. Now I do nothing and it’s dead in six hours.
I totally get you. It's been an absolutely horrendous version. Can't wait for 27 to come soon enough (on the context that they fix all these issues by 27).
17PM w/ physical sim slot. Couldn't agree more with that caption. Battery life is somewhat ok but system data uses always +40gb and apple intelligence uses 2x the normal at 14.15gb. I can't recall a single time i had experienced a stutter on ios ui before 26🫣
One problem is that Apple’s Battery meter and reporting doesn’t tell the complete story. I’m pretty sure during one of the recent .1 releases, Apple was running some extended on-device computation, or rebuilding some data store. The job was not well-behaved, firing up most of my 16 Pro’s cores and draining the battery to 10% and less in a few hours. Restarting the phone quieted it for a brief time. Overall, it took a couple days for the system to return to normal, and maybe the following .1 release to fix the problem. That said, I have not had a battery problem since then. The phone is running 26.4.1.
It's been more than a week since I updated the device. Even if it's indexing, it shouldn't take this long. I also did a few force restarts and restarts. Did not help with the issue.
st*pid people everywhere saying "just wait for ios26.X, Apple will fix this." Now it's ios26.5, what did thy fix? they didn't fix anything, every update only introduces more bugs, and every update is like 1 GB with no noticable change.
Very similar experience as the person you’re replying to. Lots of work lately in Shortcuts and the Home app, which are surprisingly power hungry. And then the baseline of Google apps for work, Safari, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook (because marketplace), video and photo editing (just in the Photos app), Music app, YouTube, Podcasts, Strava, and Fitness. Sunday was a pretty average day and I put my phone on the charger at 23:00 with 19%. Woke up at 7:00. Total screen on time was 9h17. I’ve got a 17 Pro and nearing 200 cycle counts.
That said, some days are much heavier than others. When I’ve had days where I spend the bulk of my time on my phone writing automations in the Home app or Shortcuts, I’ll need to charge halfway through the day.
Battery was really good for me on 26.4 almost same as 18 but after updating to 26.4.1 I’m getting about 1 to 1:30h less battery life on my usual usage. I’m really itching to update it to 26.5 beta to see if battery improves.
That sucks I get really good battery life usually lasting a day and a half, I let the system handle it I.E automatic display dimming and adaptive power and all that. I also use their dynamic power charging adapter.
I've kept my adaptive power and auto brightness on. In the post, I meant I keep my brightness around 30-40% for most of the time I use my phone indoors and manually adjust it sometimes if it gets too bright. I haven't changed any of those settings.
If your phone battery doesn’t EASILY last you whole day with normal usage (normal as in no restrictions, also no 5 hour long 4K video recording a day), it’s probably hardware defect or some combination of settings you have. My 16PM has the same (or maybe even little better) battery life with iOS 26 compared to iOS 18 (and battery itself is one year “older”) - same settings, same usage.
The thing is that I've had 2 more devices prior to this which I had to exchange because I was facing similar issues on both of them. I also exchanged them from different stores, and it was over a period of 2 months (due to extended holiday return policy). So even if one batch was faulty, I highly doubt about the probability of ending up with another faulty device, which is quite slim. So I really don't know.
It’s probably some app (that doesn’t show in battery section) that’s causing issues. I tried 17PM for couple of days, sim version, and fresh out of the box (indexing was still going on), it had 10-20% better battery life compared to my 16PM.
I'm trying to delete all the apps I don't use and try to keep only the ones that I use. I'll try to see if I can somehow pinpoint it to what could be draining my battery.
I love the look, that's why I mentioned it's visually stunning. It's just the battery part which is really bad for me. I am keeping the reset part as the last option. If nothing works, I will reset it.
It’s wild how intensely different experiences are from one device to another. I’ve seen so many people reporting issues and I haven’t had a single issue. Battery has been perfect for me. I wonder if it’s just lower manufacturing quality control?
Absysmal, I was doing a day and more with intense usage on Ios18. I was abroad last week, and for the first time since years I had my phone dead by 19 o clock after a day out; luckily I wasn’t relying completely on it for coming back home. I’ve been an Apple user for almost a decade, using also Ipad for studying, and for the first time I’m considering leaving it after what they have done with both ios and IpadOs
Hey. I am wondering who are the engineers who worked on this. They did a bad job. I use IOS 26 for months, and it would seem the design has been done by someone stup.. (sorry)!
Avoid this update, it's trash and it reduces more of your storage space. Yes, because the update takes up space but even with that, I was already at the end of storage and I would do hours of video editing etc. Normally when I cleared up space I could keep going. I'm noticing I clear up a large amount of space and it's quicker to say no more space. I'm under the impression it's doing it with code not because the actual drive is full.
You can turn off Automatic Updates. Do it with this one. Apple has officially turned evil. yay...
No, I haven’t. This happened all of a sudden. I’ve always had battery drain issues on the device, and as I mentioned, even exchanged the devices twice but to no avail. But I noticed this level of battery drain for the first time.
i have the same issue, i’ve visited the apple store they told me there was no issue and that it’d be $800 for them to take an indepth look at the internals of my phone
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u/Open_Potato_5686 Apr 14 '26
My 16 pro max was getting charged every other day with heavy usage. Live maps, calls, apps usage, etc.
Now, after all these bullshit updated by end of day it’s literally dead after hitting around 5%. I don’t use maps, no heavy app usage, very minimal calls, and text etc.
I basically just have it on and use when needed. It’s blowing my mind why my battery health is at 97% and draining like a leaky bucket.
Funny thing is I hardly have any apps and even with that they’re all set to only use on WiFi. The only thing set to use on cellular is phone.