iOS 11 Is Killing Your iPhone and iPad Battery Life Michael Kwan September 22, 2017 News Each new version of a mobile operating system promises all sorts of improvements and new features. This is just as true with Google Android as it is with Apple iOS, but we all know how fragmented Android can be and how fast iOS adoption can be. As excited as you might have been to get on the latest software for your iPhone or iPad, it looks like iOS 11 comes at the serious cost of cutting your battery life in half. A report put together by the folks at Wandera compared the battery drain on devices running on iOS 10 against those running on iOS 11. They looked at “a subset of 50,000 moderate to heavy iPhone and iPad users” for the purposes of this comparison, as these would be the folks most interested in battery life anyhow. If you’re a lighter user, you’ll probably still make it through a regular day without too much of a struggle. Based on comparing the decay pattern for these users over the course of three days, they came to the conclusion that iDevices running on iOS 10 lasted an average estimate of about 240 minutes before running dry. By comparison, iDevices running on iOS 11 didn’t even make it to the 100 minute mark, running out of juice after just 96 minutes. This means that the iOS 11 devices are only getting about 40% of what their iOS 10 counterparts are getting. While they can’t specifically pinpoint one cause or another, Wandera does have a few suspicions for why battery drain is so much worse with the newer OS. Spotlight re-indexing can be a big draw immediately after a major upgrade, for instance, and they’re also thinking that Animoji and Face ID are probably chewing through the battery too, as the latter relies so heavily on the camera, as well as other resources. The A11 Bionic GPU could also be a bit of a battery hog. Battery life may improve over time as Apple collects more data and pushes out further refinements to the software. Chances are that the numbers will also improve as the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X start getting into more hands… but at least you’ll have the convenience of wireless charging now! Share This With The World!
