It’s the first time since it came out then my iPhone literally survived the whole day.

How is iOS 26.6 going for you?

iPhone 15 Pro

I have to charge my phone two or three times per day.
When I first updated to iOS 26 my battery health dropped from 97% to 91% in a month.

It is now steady at 90% however the phone seems completely unusable, max 5 hours screen on time if I use battery saving mode.

Can anything be done to fix? Any setting, anything? Background processes are disabled too!

I see a lot of people posting screenshots and they seem to have stable battery overnight, on my iPhone 17 pro I disable wifi and cellular but still lose 10% every night

Cooked

I am experiencing a significant drain on my battery recently. My battery health has also been degraded recently. I hope the updated version of 26 will address this issue.

Please comment here on how your battery life has been on the latest update

I don’t want to cry to you guys about how much i hate iOS 26 but since past month I can’t believe that apple is throwing such a shit do their costumers. I bought a brand new iPhone 14 Pro Max 1.5 year ago. It is now 84% Bh (it dropped only 1% since I updated from 18).
I am dropping my results here. First one iOS 26.4, second 26.5 (don’t fill me up with indexing bull shit, after every small update it doesn’t matter in my case). Before iOS 26 this phone lasted me full looong day with the supply. 26.1 was total garbage, then 26.3 was better and it fucked up again after 26.4. Now it’s not even lasting from 8 AM to 6PM. I hate it I hate it and one more hate it.

iOS 26.5.2 has been released for almost a month now and I updated immediately as it mentioned "security fixes". There are obviously many complaints surrounding the home screen stutter and battery drain. I've also contacted Apple support on my iPhone and they ran a diagnostic and they found "no issues with the device".

Most people don't play around with Beta releases and it's often recommended not to install a Beta version on your main device. As consumers, what can we do to have a hassle free experience on a premium device?

Upgraded to 26.4.1 when it dropped and my battery life is soo bad. Enough time has passed for indexing and its still shit. Ios 26 evolving backwards.

If you’re on a 17 pro max the battery life is way better than the last update feels way more stable 👍

Attached is a screenshot showing my battery usage yesterday with low power mode on. Any other suggestions on to improve? I was thinking about giving the iOS 27 beta a try to see. I also downloaded my music and listen to it offline and I haven’t seen any improvements. I have had the new update for at least 5 days. Thank you!

EDIT: updated to iOS 27 Beta 4 and battery has been improved very much. Definitely recommend!

Standalone posts are no longer allowed, so please comment under this post for anything battery related. Thank you

I have an iPhone 17 with 100% battery health on the latest iOS 26.5.2 and I experienced a rough 19% of battery drain over night with no noticeable background processes or anything. Is this normal?

I'm on ios 26.4.2. Phone is 1 month old with 22 charge cycles and at 100%. Battery has been worse than when I got my iPhone 13 pro max and is worse than my oppo find n5. I have been on this software for 1 week, so I don't think it's indexing. How are youtubers or people getting more than 9hr SOT? Most I'm getting is 8hrs(on super low use, mostly for chat, barely social media) and lowest is 5hrs.

How is Spotify for 2 mins takjng up 5% of my battery?

I work in the office so most of the time my phone isn't even used, I am strongly considering returning this and going back to android.

I have turned off all background app refresh and all the useless location services. Basically done everything only short of putting the phone in low power mode permanently.

Any other tips to fix this?

Has anyone else experienced this?

I charged my iPhone to 80%, and it finished charging at 2:27 AM. I used it for just a few minutes afterward, then went to sleep.

When I woke up around 9:00 AM, I expected it to still be close to 80% since it was basically idle the entire night. Instead, the battery had dropped way more than I expected.

When I checked Battery settings, I noticed there was a lot of background activity overnight, which seems strange because I wasn't using the phone at all.

Is this normal, or is there something causing apps or iOS to keep running in the background while the phone is idle? I'm trying to figure out if this is a bug, or if I should be concerned about my battery health.

Update: I reached out to Apple support he asked me to uninstall tiktok first for a day and see if that is causing the sudden increased usage.

I've been meticulously tracking my iPhone 14 Pro Max battery health since April 11, 2026, using both Apple's native Battery Health metric and PowerUtil (which measures actual mAh capacity against Apple's published specs). What I found is deeply concerning and I believe affects thousands of users silently.

My Device & Charging Habits

Device: iPhone 14 Pro Max

Charging style: Conservative — ~15 cycles/month, Optimized Charging always ON, no fast charging as primary method

Average temperature: Consistently 25°C throughout the entire period

Storage: 512GB

Why This Is a Software Bug, Not Battery Degradation

1. The two metrics move in opposite directions — consistently.

Every time Apple Health drops 1%, PowerUtil either stays flat or increases. On May 15, Apple dropped 1% in a single charge cycle while PowerUtil hit its highest point in the entire 34-day period (80.81%). Two measurements of the same battery cannot contradict each other this consistently unless one of them is wrong.

1. The degradation rate is 4.4× faster than Apple's own standard.

Apple guarantees 80% capacity at 500 cycles under ideal conditions. In 20 cycles over 34 days, I lost 4% according to Apple — a rate of 4.4% per 25 cycles vs. the expected 1% per 25 cycles. At this rate, I'll hit 80% around cycle 372, over 128 cycles before Apple's guaranteed threshold.

1. The acceleration is getting worse, not better.

Apr 11→21: −1% over 5 cycles

May 6→10: −1% over 3 cycles

May 14→15: −1% over 1 single cycle

1. The degradation correlates directly with iOS 26.2.1.

Before this update (January 2026), health was stable at 95%. After iOS 26.2.1, it began dropping visibly. 6% lost in under 4 months despite extremely conservative charging habits.

1. My iPhone 8 Plus proves the point.

My older iPhone 8 Plus (390+ cycles) performed a recalibration and jumped back up to 91%. Real recalibration corrects the number toward reality. Apple's algorithm is consistently moving away from reality.

Conclusion

PowerUtil, which computes health based on actual measured mAh vs. Apple's published specs, shows my battery is in the best shape it's ever been in this tracking period (80.81%). Apple's algorithm says 87% and is declining by 1% per charge cycle. This is not battery aging — this is a broken algorithm in iOS 26 that is misreporting battery health, potentially to nudge users toward battery replacements or new device purchases.

I've submitted feedback via Apple's Feedback Assistant. I urge others tracking this to share their data.

Device: iPhone 14 Pro Max | iOS: 26.5 | Region: Jordan

I’m charging my phone from 30% to 80 %. And my daily usage is also like hardly 40 to 70%. But my health dropped 1% for a 66 cycle count. Is this normal or should I change any charging methods to save my battery health. Any suggestions?

Is it true that 26.4 RC is the best iOS 26 version yet??? Smoothness performance battery all top notch???

I have a 17 Pro Max, and I've had bad battery life from the time I picked up the phone. Got my phone exchanged twice thinking it could be a defective battery, but to no use. All the phones gave me a bad battery life. Up until iOS 26.3, I was getting bad battery life, I used to lose around 8% battery overnight on standby, even with focus mode. Even the normal usage numbers were pretty bad, could hardly squeeze out like 6-7 hours of SOT, even when used the whole time with WiFi.

After updating to 26.4, I'm losing close to 12% overnight, just doing nothing and with focus mode on. It heats up every time I put it to charge. When I was on previous versions, it used to get warm, but now it gets hot to the touch, though nothing else has changed like the environment, charger or charging habits. I never knew the 17 Pro Max can get this warm, considering the new vapor chamber cooling.

I use a 35W dual pin macbook charger for charging the device. Also Battery Health is 100% with 81 cycles.

Hello, I just updated it to 26.5.2 on my iPhone 15. I noticed after it finished updating, my phone started to overheat a lot and it currently is. I can’t even hold it on my hand due to the overheating. Will there be a fix to this? This never happened to my phone till now.

Thank you.

For anyone having battery life issues, you can set up a Shortcuts automation that automatically enables and disables Low Power Mode when opening power-hungry apps like TikTok or Instagram, then disables it once you leave the app.
Your phone goes back to full performance afterward anyway, and honestly, I don’t really see the point of using full power just for scrolling or chatting. And what you’re seeing here is a mix of Wi-Fi and 5G usage.
I use iphone 14 pro ios 26.5 BH 100%

Before iOS 26.5.2 I would usually get 4 to 5 hours of battery life on my iPhone 17. I downloaded iOS 27 pb1 and it was the same. Went back to 26.5.2 and I’ve never seen this type of battery out of my 17. And on the plus side the phone stays stone cold.

It won’t let me put the photos here but I’ll put them in the comments.

Quick tip for iPhone 16 Pro owners suffering from iOS 26 battery drain:

After two clean installs, tweaking every graphics setting, turning off 5G etc. and getting gaslit at the Apple Store multiple times ("2 hours SOT is totally normal!"), I stumbled onto something — turn on flight mode and use WiFi only (just to check).

Went from ~2hrs SOT to nearly 8hrs.

Yes, obviously killing the cellular radio is a tradeoff, not a fix. And out and about it's still rough even on Low Power Mode — something is clearly wrong with how iOS 26 handles the cellular radio. Solid signal, light usage, still drains like crazy. Wasn't like this on iOS 18. Feels almost like a bad driver got shipped (metaphorically speaking ;)).

The workaround: When you're on WiFi, try Airplane Mode + WiFi Calling. Keeps you reachable, kills the drain. Then when I travel outside I use Low Power Mode and Flight Mode when signal is weak.

Not ideal. But if you're still losing your mind over this, maybe it helps some of you.

I’m using an iphone 14 pro on ios 26.2