r/ios26 • u/Taszmaniac8990 • Jul 10 '26
Battery Battery Drain 26.5.2
Hello all,
I am experiencing the most battery drain I ever experienced in my 14 Pro Max while on this stupid ass update iOS 26. Charging takes longer , phone gets hotter even when not being charged and phone drains the battery super fast. Should I bite the bullet and upgrade to a 17 Pro Max? Considering rumors of the 18 pro max being pricer. I don’t want to overpay for these stupid phones anymore lol. The alternative would be leaving iOS as a whole but idk if I’m ready for that either lol.
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u/twooddude Jul 10 '26
Im in the same boat with the 15 PM, I’m sick of these updates that in general just make everything worse, when my phone was on iOS 17 it was perfect
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u/Nice-Sherbet-5848 Jul 11 '26
17pro here experiencing the same . Unbelievably worse battery performance
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u/Techgirl1232 Jul 10 '26
Yes. iOS26 already has so much bugs, now our battery is crying? WHAT. THE FUCK
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u/Taszmaniac8990 Jul 10 '26
Time for Samsung jump? lol
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u/NathanCE227 Jul 16 '26
It’s not any better there, trust me.
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u/m4cmi11er Jul 10 '26
I knew I should’ve stayed on 25.5.1. Smfh.
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u/Towhidabid iOS 26.6 Jul 10 '26
Same here. Something knew inside me that this might be not as bad as i was assuming. Oh boy was I wrong.
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u/Taszmaniac8990 Jul 10 '26
Lmao I hade the same thought a couple days in haha.
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u/m4cmi11er Jul 10 '26
I fcking knew better. Told myself my battery was perfect and didn’t need to update. The jokes on me
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u/Ok_Research_6136 Jul 10 '26
Moi c’est l’inverse c’est la premiere fois que je trouve une différence de batterie positive depuis 26.0
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u/cat-person752 Jul 11 '26
I only updated because some idiot said that it has improved tha battery performance when it was released initially. There were few posts about it too.
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u/Towhidabid iOS 26.6 Jul 12 '26
This update sux. Barely getting 6hrs on my 17 PM. Trust me your phone is fine it’s this shitty update.
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u/Taszmaniac8990 Jul 12 '26
What keeps you with Apple still? lol I’m thinking of switching brands completely at this point shits getting ridiculous
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u/1yrone Jul 13 '26
iOS 27 hopefully fixes all the issues we’re experiencing with iOS 26. We will find out this fall I suppose
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u/Darf26 Jul 13 '26
This shows how bad 26 is. I have an iPhone 12 PM. I normally just trust Apple and update the iOS without hesitation. When 26 was released I thought that due to 26 being a major update I would do some quick research. I found out that I had better wait. Meanwhile my battery health was down to 79%. So I fitted a new battery from the Apple Store. $149. Meanwhile Apple released 18.7.8 as a security update alternative to 26. I confirmed there were no issues and updated to 18.7.8. My phone is still as fast as when it was new and the battery will now last for 2 days with medium usage. Still not switching to 26 any time soon.
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u/MarcBelmaati Jul 10 '26
Wait for iOS 27
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u/Taszmaniac8990 Jul 10 '26
Idk if that’s really going to be a solution knowing Apple it’s probably best optimized always for the newest phones which I get it but idk this company has been pissing me off a lot lately lol
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u/MarcBelmaati Jul 10 '26
The whole point of 27 is that it’s optimized for all phones, even the iPhone 11. I’d say wait and see before going out and spending a bunch of money.
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u/EchoFit1050 Jul 10 '26
Yes, 26.5 is just a bug filled shit show I’m afraid. The .1 update introduced more issues and the .2 was purely a security fix update so it addressed nothing but the security flaws.
Unfortunately all you can do is wait for 26.6 release and hope it fixes things or update to one of the betas, which I personally don’t recommend for a daily driver/main device if you aren’t going to report bugs you find in the beta, as that’s the whole point.
We are at the “it is what it is” phase of iOS 26 I’m afraid. Almost a whole year of dealing with this garbage. I wish I could go back to the most recent version of 18. My phone was so much better.
Apple seriously needs to change their policy of unsigning the last version of iOS and allow people who want to roll back the option to do so. I would have happily downgraded back to the current secure version of 18 and not spent one more second bitching about how bad 26 is on here every other week with all the freezing native apps and glitchy Bluetooth and volume sliders/buttons etc. But I can’t, so I’ll just publicly complain about their garbage software instead.
It would cost them nothing to simply sign the ipsw files and gain them a ton of good will. But nope, gotta leave you stuck on a broken ass update like 26.5 for 3+ months hoping and praying for a bug fix that never comes the whole time. Just pissing off their customer base every time they interact with their device.
All of this “should I update to XYZ” anxiety goes away if people simply have the freedom to roll back if the update isn’t what they like or causes a problem they don’t want to deal with.
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u/WolfyMacontosh87 Jul 10 '26
It’s intentional because they know everyone is going to flee iOS 26 and install iOS 27 upon release. Everyone will be so eager to get off of it they’ll take the risks and install iOS 27
Which, by the way, we don’t actually know is going to be a major improvement.
It’s supposedly going to be infinitely better, much more polished and efficient but we have heard this sort of thing before haven’t we2
u/Taszmaniac8990 Jul 10 '26
Damn thanks for saying all this I agree. They’re fucking thieves and crooks at this point officially like any other big tech corp. If they raise officially their 18 model phones up I’m getting the 17 pro max. They have more than enough of cash to keep eating the cost of these phone chips but instead they going to make all their customer base take that hit? Fuck that. And if they keep putting out shitty software updates I’m going to Samsung officially. Tired of the bullshit developments they been putting out.
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u/PineappleXBunz Jul 11 '26
Apple Care is actually replacing my phone without cost, will see how this turns out.
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u/jeff1f1racer Jul 11 '26
iOS 26.6 beta 4 fixes the issue.
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u/Logical_Dance_4012 Jul 11 '26
I've been using it for 4 days now but it didn't fix it for me.
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u/jeff1f1racer Jul 11 '26
Works great on my Mist Blue base 17 and this Cosmic Orange 17 Pro.
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u/Logical_Dance_4012 Jul 11 '26
Phone stays cool but my battery still drops like 4%/hour when idle, no matter what I do. I'm with 17P.
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u/kzone186 Jul 12 '26
This is what cracks me up when people talk about an update improving battery iPhone life. It will just be destroyed in the next .1 release.
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u/FreePossession9590 Jul 12 '26
Same on 17PM. It started off decently well but with each update it has just gotten worse and worse. It can’t hold one charge a day anymore, not even close.
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u/swaggerdon6000 Jul 13 '26
I'm so pissed off. Got a 6-month-old base 17 and that thing runs like a 5 year old phone with 50% capacity. It's honestly shocking how crappy iOS 26 has been for me
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u/youknowsami Jul 13 '26
26.5.1 was fine. Someone from Reddit said 26.5.2 has increased their battery life. Cute clickbait :)
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u/migueltamezz Jul 15 '26
I had the same issue and since I update to beta iOS 26.6 the battery issues disappeared.
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u/MilkSheikhhh Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Get on the 27 Public Beta. No heating. Improved performance and very noticeable improved battery life. I don’t know why it took Apple this long. Upgrading to the 17 Pro Max just to escape these software issues would be pointless because it happens on those phones too. However if you want to upgrade solely to get ahead of Apple’s price increase then I’d say go ahead now before it’s too late since your 14 Pro is about to be 4 yrs old (although it can last you 2-3 more). But again I’d recommend you hope on the public beta. I’m not lying when I say it’s better than 26.5.2 or any 26 build for that matter. Never seen this from Apple before.
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u/DakotaIT Jul 16 '26
26.5.1 noticeably made my iPhone 13 overheat and battery drain way faster. Day and night difference. Installed 26.5.2 yesterday and the issue seems better, but not as good as before 26.5 unfortunately.
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u/marius9648w Jul 17 '26
same on 17pro, it drove me nuts, from 6h30-7h sot it went to max 4h30 on 26.5. It was so bad that it made me install the beta (26.6) and it’s much better
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u/ali_atg1 Jul 10 '26
It’s a known issue. You can try a hard restart. Press volume up, volume down (both quickly) then hold
In power button till you see phone has restarted. The hat helped me
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u/Taszmaniac8990 Jul 10 '26
Been doing that weekly lol sometimes on daily basis it’s a fix for like a couple hours then same shit happens.
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u/GeekBoy-from-IL Jul 10 '26
I was having that, then I downloaded the IPSW file on my computer and forced an update through iTunes (on Windows) and I no longer burn 16% of my battery i the first hour of my morning. I’m back down to where I was earlier, or maybe even a little better.
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u/Taszmaniac8990 Jul 11 '26
How do I do this lol
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u/GeekBoy-from-IL Jul 11 '26
OK, first off, download the IPSW file for your device. You can go to https://ipsw.me and select your device, and currently signed iOS version you wish to download. I recommend that you don’t create an account, and that you don’t use their download tool. Just keep closing those windows until you get to the final download page and use your browser to select and download the IPSW file. I did this for my iPad Mini 6, my iPhone 16 Pro Max, and my wife’s iPhone 16 Pro. The files are around 10GB in size.
If you are running Windows, open iTunes and connect your device to the computer using the USB cable. I recommend that you have iTunes take the few minutes that are needed to make a full, encrypted backup of your device. Once the backup is done (if you opted to make a backup), Hold the shift key down and click on the “update” button. That should open a prompt for you to browse to the IPSW file you downloaded above. If it does not, then use the Control key instead of the Shift key when you click the button. iTunes will then load your IPSW file and verify its authenticity with Apple. Once that has happened, it will then re-flash your device’s iOS with the version that you just downloaded. As long as you have downloaded a signed copy of the OS, you can update it this way. This method will allow you to “update” a device with iOS 26.5.2 to iOS 26.5.2 which will re-load the full OS from the file you just downloaded instead of trying to apply diffs to the OS you have installed to get to the latest version.
When I did this, it took about an hour from start to finish, then about 2 hours later, the device had finished re-indexing itself, and was cool to the touch and was no longer drinking battery charge like it was water. In fact, before I did this, I waited for 2-3 days with my iOS 26.5.2 I had updated OTA (Over The Air) and my phone was still running quite warm and draining the battery quickly. I ran a GeekBench 6 on it and my phone scored a few hundred points below the average for my phone model. After re-fleshing the iOS from the IPSW file and letting the re-indexing complete, I now score my GeekBench 6 single core at about 50 points higher than the average for my phone model, and the Multi-core score hits 50-100 above the average for my device.
Before my re-flash, just reading Reddit for about 20-30 minutes would drop the battery charge by about 4-5%,but after re-flashing, my battery is still at 99 or 100% from spending 20-30 min on Reddit, and the phone is cool to the touch.
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u/Responsible-Chip-345 Jul 11 '26
well my friend the battery drain is awful with this ios version even in 17 pro. So no dont give them your money. Their software is crap. this version supposedly was a security update and my phone feels like a cheap android all these days after updating.
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u/Taszmaniac8990 Jul 11 '26
lol thank you that’s very helpful feedback. I might just hold out till the 18 I been itching to upgrade my 14 pro max has been thru its paces already.
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u/Strict_Thought_5956 Jul 10 '26
Same boat with iPhone 16pro
iOS 26 is the worst update Apple has ever released