iOS17 - Battery Drain Worse Than Recent Beta
Has anyone else seen a dramatic drop in battery life after updating to the final release of iOS 17?
My 12 Pro was doing fine on the last few beta releases and the battery life has tanked in the last week or so. I’m not doing anything different, so I wanted to see if other beta users saw the same change after updating.
Isn’t this the same with every major iOS release? The OS needs to rebuild its caches, and that tends to impact on battery life, for a time, and then everything goes back to normal…
Yes, every single major release, we have to repeat ourselves on this. Tiresome!
Genuine question: Would the caching/reindexing have been different between the later beta releases and the final release? Would those incremental beta releases not have triggered the process each time? If not, then this explanation makes sense, though the one thing that doesn’t make sense is that I’m still seeing lower life after a full week.
Regardless, it seems like a nuke and pave is probably in order to see if that corrects the issue.
I don’t think there’s any difference between the beta and the final release in this regard (generally, the official release has the same build number than the latest release candidate).
From what I understand, the process can take a lot of time, as it happens in the background, when the phone is not actively used. And for power users that install .0 versions day one (which is really not a thing to do, but that’s not the point here), I imagine they will dig everything they can from these new versions, leaving less time for background processes to be run.
The final public beta and the release version are exactly the same build.
My phone feels about the same but watchOS 10 wrecked my Apple Watch. I used to end the day at 30-40% and now it’s barely hanging on by 7pm
I noticed the same on my Series 4, which, as old as it is, used to last me through the day with about 30% left by 8pm. I had to turn on the low power mode yesterday at noon with around 60% and then it died by 7pm
I’ve seen the same with my series 6. I would usually end the day around 35% and now it is under 10%
My series 5 had had a big drop in battery life, too. I hope they figure it out because I do like the update.
Same here. Not sure I’ll update to a new Apple Watch though. Coros is looking really nice and affordable.
14 Pro Max; resisted beta until mid/late August; upgraded to 21A329 a little bit back; no noticeable battery drains on both beta and current version here.
Perhaps some settings got botched during one of the earlier betas and problem just started to surface in final? Try a backup and restore to see if that’d resolve it?
My battery life has been bad since 16.x Barely 2 hours sot I already reseted the phone Until now it is even worse on 17.0
Hope .1 does help
Back it up, and dfu restore the phone, then restore from back up. Probably something corrupted. I havent had any real issue on the same model.
Reset all settings.
Ive had horrible battery life in my 14 pro since 16.6.1. Just installed 17 yesterday and it still seems at least as bad.
Haven’t noticed any difference. I’m on a XS max
Maybe I'm entirely wrong: isn't this the forced obsolescence that Apple is famous for? If it isn't, could someone explain to me why?
Not at all trying to be obtuse, but this is exactly what is meant by "forced obsolescence".
Maybe I'm entirely wrong: isn't this the forced obsolescence that Apple is famous for?
Apple does not and never has practiced forced obsolescence. In fact, quite the opposite, as iOS is supported in iPhones for much longer than any version of Android ever is.
The "famous" story is about Apple keeping your phone alive by (necessarily) throttling the CPU when your battery was worn out, so that it wouldn't shut down due to lack of power.
If they did anything wrong, it was not explaining this well enough.
It’s not really forced obsolescence unless they intentionally made it perform worse on older phones, or stopped supporting older devices entirely.
The most reasonable explanation is that iOS 17 was designed first and foremost to take advantage of the advances in the 3nm a17 chip, while supporting older chips as a secondary benefit.
It’s not optimized for older devices at launch because it’s designed for the new devices, and will be updated and patched as time goes on. Staying in iOS 16 on an older device until a few minor versions into iOS 17 will likely see better battery life on older devices.
I’ve been on a base 12 for 3 years, battery health at 88%, and iOS 17 is perfectly usable for me. I’ve been on the beta since the first public release. Battery life is a little worse, sure but still perfectly usable with no noticeable performance hits. I’m giving it to my dad when my 15 pro max gets here and it will likely last him another 3 or more years, probably needing a battery replacement in a year or so though.
unless they intentionally made it perform worse on older phones
What I'm suggesting is that this is exactly why performance got worse after the beta. It's a pattern seen from Apple for a long time.
There is nothing intrinsic about a smaller manufacturing process that transfers into software, unless they've secretly added new instructions to the set. What it does mean is that the new chips should be more power efficient, which means in turn that the same software on new hardware should already translate into battery life gains. What we see instead is software "tuned" for the new version to minimize gains on one side and suggest to existing customers that they need an upgrade.
I’m certainly suspicious of them intentionally not fixing some performance bugs until later to encourage people to upgrade now that the new phones are launching.
The fact that the battery drain has gotten worse with the final iOS 17.0 version is what really made me suspicious and why I wanted to see what others have experienced.
The joke is on them (or, really, me) because I have a 15 pro arriving tomorrow anyways.
The fact that the battery drain has gotten worse with the final iOS 17.0 version is what really made me suspicious and why I wanted to see what others have experienced.
Yeah, exactly my point. I'm not saying they break things or make them unusable. But it does seem clear that they detune software to get a mix of slightly better performance on the next gen (below what the hardware improvements suggest) and significantly worse-than-possible performance on older devices to try and force upgrades.