Do you feel like your battery life has worsened since upgrading to iOS 18? If so, you aren’t alone. Dozens of users are reporting excessive amounts of battery drain, specifically on the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro. But is there a fix? Unfortunately, not yet.
According to MacRumors, there’s a long-running thread with hundreds of posts from users lamenting their battery’s lack of joie de vivre. One user said their phone drops from 100% charge to 60% by midday, even though there was no heavy usage during that time. Another user reported a battery drain of around 1% every five minutes. Obviously, this isn’t a great look for Apple.
This isn’t the first time the iPhone has been criticized for its batteries. In 2022, we wrote about how the iPhone 14 had issues with battery life. In the end, the issue was blamed on iOS 16. Just a few months ago, Sonos also addressed a problem where its app was using a greater-than-average amount of energy.
In other words, it’s not unusual for a new OS update to cause some trouble with battery life, especially in the first 24 hours after installation, when the phone is re-indexing and checking everything. The problem arises when those issues don’t resolve themselves, like what the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro are apparently encountering.
There doesn’t seem to be an easy fix for this problem yet. One of the reasons is that battery drain is a particularly finicky problem to root out. Every person uses their phone in different ways, and there are always variables at play that can affect battery life.
Users have tried disabling features that might have a more significant impact on the battery, like the ProMotion 120Hz refresh rate, background app refresh, and more. The only promising leads so far are the iOS 18.0.1 update and iOS 18.1 beta, but even those fixes haven’t solved everyone’s problem.
