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How is your battery life in iOS 11.1 on your device compared to previous releases?

  • Much better than 11.0.x, but still not as good as it was in iOS 10.x.x

    Votes: 27 12.1%
  • Slightly better than in 11.0.x, but still not as good as it was in iOS 10.x.x

    Votes: 56 25.0%
  • No different than in iOS 11.0.x

    Votes: 68 30.4%
  • Better than it has ever been before

    Votes: 25 11.2%
  • The worst it has ever been (worse than iOS 11.0.x and 10)

    Votes: 48 21.4%

  • Total voters
    224

dk001

macrumors demi-god
Oct 3, 2014
10,688
15,038
Sage, Lightning, and Mountains
Not sure. It is different.
Just sitting doing nada it appears to be better. Yet I can do a few things for about a half hour and see it drop 10%.
IMG_7940.jpg
Actual use was about 20 minutes.

Need to give it a couple of days till I can tell.
[doublepost=1509576065][/doublepost]
Is everyone who's claiming their battery life is worse actually doing anything resembling scientific measurements, or are you just using your device more because of the new iOS?

Good question if a bit disingenuous.
If you use it throughout the day and average around 40% left by dinner then update and your needing to charge by lunch you can pretty much figure it is worse. If you have been using for an hour and it has been dropping 20% an hour you can pretty much figure it is worse.

Some of these posts try to go the measurement route and it is informative.
However if you are looking for the repeatable scientific measuring and comparison, no, you will find little of that.
You really don't have the tools readily available.
 
Last edited:

mibrdvnthl

macrumors newbie
Nov 1, 2017
1
1
Unfortunately 11.1 did not help battery life for me. When I originally contacted Apple Support about it on 11.0.x, they said reset to factory defaults, do not restore the backup (i.e. run with only the default Apple apps), and without any contacts or pictures. Try it for 3 days and see if it helps. Yeah I'm pretty sure if I don't use any apps or call anyone my battery may last longer. Sigh. Disappointing.
 
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jrdatrackstar1223

macrumors regular
Oct 31, 2017
215
98
Brownsburg, IN
So far battery is better for me after restoring as new. I have installed 2 “must have” apps (GroupMe and Planning Center Services) so the battery drain wasn’t those apps.

I will restore my backup and see if the battery life is the same as it is now (which I would be very happy with). I pray it does because so far I am very happy.


This screenshot is my SE with only 2 apps like I said and I JUST turned background app refresh to WiFi only before taking that picture so it may have been even better like 10.3.3 before changing that setting.

EDIT: Definitely better, maybe even better than 10.3.3 somehow. I am at 79% with 2 hrs 25 mins usage. At this rate I’ll definitely hit 4 hours at 50% like I used to. Now to find the all that was the culprit...
 

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jrdatrackstar1223

macrumors regular
Oct 31, 2017
215
98
Brownsburg, IN
Just restored my backup from the beta 5 (same build as the official). Will see if battery remains good after I unplug, will update with results. If battery is back to bad, I'll have to restore as new again and find the culprit one app at a time....

Sigh...this is so tedious and shouldn't have to be done....
 

Razeus

macrumors 603
Jul 11, 2008
5,348
2,030
Apple never said anything about this being a battery life fix in IOS 11, but it's clear this OS version is pure junk.
 

FumbleDuck

macrumors member
Jan 9, 2015
54
1
6s updated from 10.3.3 to 11.1. Battery life is about the same so far but then I close all apps after using them and have background refresh and location services off for everything.
YouTube and reddit apps chew through battery if left in the background so I close everything now. Currently running at 65% after a full work day.
I haven’t even performed a factory reset yet (probably over the weekend) which I believe is necessary after every major update.
Overall 11 feels exactly the same as 10.
 

Aydy

macrumors 6502a
Nov 22, 2015
627
452
Initially after updating to 11.1 immediately followed with “Reset All Settings” battery for me was much improved. Unfortunately it was short lived and 2nd and subsequent charges have resulted in very quick/fast discharge. IDK what’s going on...Bacground app refresh, location, mobile data all set to off.

One thing I did notice was that usually I can sit on 100% for around 30-40 minutes of usage before dropping to 99% but since 11.1 I am only averaging around 17 minutes usage before the drop occurs.
 

QCassidy352

macrumors G5
Mar 20, 2003
12,032
6,061
Bay Area
I did not have 11 prior to 11.1, but on my iPhone 7, battery is now worse than 10.3 but not bad. I think I plugged it in at 4% last night after 8.5 hours use/16 hours standby. On 10.3 it probably would’ve been more like 20% left at that point.
 

jagar_unix

macrumors newbie
Nov 6, 2017
1
0
I did not have 11 prior to 11.1, but on my iPhone 7, battery is now worse than 10.3 but not bad. I think I plugged it in at 4% last night after 8.5 hours use/16 hours standby. On 10.3 it probably would’ve been more like 20% left at that point.

Both my wife iPhone 6 and my iPhone 6 plus started having serious battery issues after upgrading to 11.0.1. I upgraded to 11.0.3 but still very short battery life. I talked with a colleague at lunch who has a 7 and he also noticed much shorter battery life after upgrading to 11.0.1.

I just updated my 6P to 11.1, let's see how that goes...

I am surprised Apple has not been able to fix the battery issues so far...
 

kingvwardhana

macrumors newbie
Aug 31, 2017
17
8
Battery life is ruined on my 7 Plus. I am on 11.2 and phone is heating up and battery is dropping 1% a minute below 50%. Really abysmal. Don’t know how to fix it.
Exact same thing happened with me, 7+ no longer feels a premium phone after installed with ios 11.x.x
 
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Yebubbleman

macrumors 603
Original poster
May 20, 2010
5,831
2,420
Los Angeles, CA
One of my problems with this theory (though totally valid) is that I shouldn’t have to do this every time an update freaking comes out. For the sake of making sure my issues haven’t been app related I will try this, but this is totally crazy to have to do considering literally everything has been the same since iOS 10.3.3.

The only culprit I MAY suspect is YouTube, but again, that never caused this bad a drain on 10.3.3...

My personal theory is that, especially with the jettisoning of 32-bit support (as well as the parts of the OS that were 32-bit), that anyone who upgraded to iOS 11, let alone those that did so with 32-bit apps still installed, faced a whole host of issues (battery drain, more sluggishness than is usual for a new and upgraded-to whole version of iOS), whereas those that did clean installs and then re-downloaded their apps afresh from the App store, probably didn't have many of the issues. If my theory is correct, then Apple, being a marketing/PR-focused company would have no way to disclose that, with this release and unlike any release previous, people need to do DFU restores to experience iOS 11.x without issue, without shooting themselves epically in the foot.

This would explain why the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X don't have these issues. I'd be curious to see if any still-sold older iOS device (iPhone SE, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7 Plus; iPad 5th Gen, iPad mini 4, either size of iPad Pro; 6th Gen iPod touch) that comes with iOS 11.x.x preloaded also doesn't have these issues, as it would probably further lend credence to my theory.

Upgrading whole version number versions of iOS has never been pretty; I never do it because the results are almost always slower than doing a DFU restore and then manually reloading apps and data (which 95% of apps and services will accommodate just fine). And, I completely agree with you; it SHOULDN'T be that way.

Another day, another bizarre skewed poll in the MR forums.

The poll is to start a discussion to potentially figure out a commonality to the issues. Apple is not going to be open about these issues and how widespread they are, so we might as well help each other figure out what's going on and how to maneuver around it. Because they certainly aren't helping us.

So far battery is better for me after restoring as new. I have installed 2 “must have” apps (GroupMe and Planning Center Services) so the battery drain wasn’t those apps.

I will restore my backup and see if the battery life is the same as it is now (which I would be very happy with). I pray it does because so far I am very happy.


This screenshot is my SE with only 2 apps like I said and I JUST turned background app refresh to WiFi only before taking that picture so it may have been even better like 10.3.3 before changing that setting.

EDIT: Definitely better, maybe even better than 10.3.3 somehow. I am at 79% with 2 hrs 25 mins usage. At this rate I’ll definitely hit 4 hours at 50% like I used to. Now to find the all that was the culprit...

This is after your restore? Or is this still with your clean wipe and install?

Just restored my backup from the beta 5 (same build as the official). Will see if battery remains good after I unplug, will update with results. If battery is back to bad, I'll have to restore as new again and find the culprit one app at a time....

Sigh...this is so tedious and shouldn't have to be done....

You won't find an argument there. Like I said, if the jettisoning of 32-bit support (and then subsequent upgrades) are the cause of this, then it's a real problem that is (a) likely to be specific to this particular iOS upgrade and (b) likely something Apple will never come fully clean about because it would cause insane amounts of justified backlash.

Unfortunately 11.1 did not help battery life for me. When I originally contacted Apple Support about it on 11.0.x, they said reset to factory defaults, do not restore the backup (i.e. run with only the default Apple apps), and without any contacts or pictures. Try it for 3 days and see if it helps. Yeah I'm pretty sure if I don't use any apps or call anyone my battery may last longer. Sigh. Disappointing.

Again, the issue might be backups from setups that predated iOS 11. Or said setups themselves. If you try setting up everything as though your device came with 11 preloaded and everything is fine, then it's not the OS that's the problem but, rather, the upgrade process to it. Either way, it's still extremely bad form for Apple.
 

dk001

macrumors demi-god
Oct 3, 2014
10,688
15,038
Sage, Lightning, and Mountains
My personal theory is that, especially with the jettisoning of 32-bit support (as well as the parts of the OS that were 32-bit), that anyone who upgraded to iOS 11, let alone those that did so with 32-bit apps still installed, faced a whole host of issues (battery drain, more sluggishness than is usual for a new and upgraded-to whole version of iOS), whereas those that did clean installs and then re-downloaded their apps afresh from the App store, probably didn't have many of the issues. If my theory is correct, then Apple, being a marketing/PR-focused company would have no way to disclose that, with this release and unlike any release previous, people need to do DFU restores to experience iOS 11.x without issue, without shooting themselves epically in the foot.

This would explain why the iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X don't have these issues. I'd be curious to see if any still-sold older iOS device (iPhone SE, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, 7 Plus; iPad 5th Gen, iPad mini 4, either size of iPad Pro; 6th Gen iPod touch) that comes with iOS 11.x.x preloaded also doesn't have these issues, as it would probably further lend credence to my theory.

Upgrading whole version number versions of iOS has never been pretty; I never do it because the results are almost always slower than doing a DFU restore and then manually reloading apps and data (which 95% of apps and services will accommodate just fine). And, I completely agree with you; it SHOULDN'T be that way.
.

After upgrading my 7+ to 11, I ran into multiple issues the worst being app and springboard crashes. I have removed all 32-bit apps and did an OTA. Working with Apple, I eventually did a factory reset and manually reloaded my apps and any other needed data. It fixed 80%+ of the crashes but the battery life was still poor.

As it progressed from 11.0.1 to 11.1, I continued to see improvement in theses two areas. I would say 95%+ of the crash issues are fixed. However, battery life has currently plateaued at about 75% of what I was getting under 10.3.3.
Still have a number of issues, most annoying rather than crippling. I have been forced to going back to sipping power when I can during the day and resurrect my charging brick for travel.

One item of note; my IPP 12.9 G2 has also displayed a lower battery life compared to 10.3.3. For me this issue is more than just my iPhone.
 

jibber4568

macrumors member
Apr 4, 2011
30
14
I've been going through a whole host of issues with Apple engineers recently in order to to try and resolve them.

My battery drain has been crazy on every version of iOS11. One thing they mentioned to me today is that all versions of iOS11 have issues with Auto Brightness causing excessive drain (pretty bad considering they decided to hide the otion to turn it off as it's apparently no longer needed).

No idea if it's going to help in anyway yet but certainly worth trying if you're still having issues. Option to turn off is inside Accessability.
 
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Nisaja

macrumors 6502a
Sep 20, 2016
753
262
On iOS 10, I used to get 10 hours of screen on time with my 7 Plus. After updating to iOS 11, I’m lucky to get 8. Doesn’t matter which iOS 11 version I have, it never gets above 8 hours. Done a restore and set up as new. So it’s practically a “fresh” phone. No luck. It’s down by 2 hours. Pretty pathetic.

However, my 8 Plus is getting 10 hours of usage. Same as my 7 Plus when it was on iOS 10. How ironic.
 
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newellj

macrumors G3
Oct 15, 2014
8,127
3,030
East of Eden
I updated an iPhone 7, Air 2 and Mini 4 that had 32 bit apps installed and being used and had zero battery changes. The two iPads subsequently went back onto 10.3.3, again with no changes in battery life. So I don't think just having 32 bit apps is the mystery factor.
 

Yebubbleman

macrumors 603
Original poster
May 20, 2010
5,831
2,420
Los Angeles, CA
I updated an iPhone 7, Air 2 and Mini 4 that had 32 bit apps installed and being used and had zero battery changes. The two iPads subsequently went back onto 10.3.3, again with no changes in battery life. So I don't think just having 32 bit apps is the mystery factor.

Do you think that, perhaps, in addition to having 32-bit-only apps, and still probably pertinent to their transition from 32-bit and 64-bit to just 64-bit in the OS's runtime libraries for the apps, that there's a problem with their upgrade process from pre-iOS-11 versions of iOS? I've heard some people do wipes and not have it totally fix the issues, but I haven't heard people doing DFU restores and it not totally fixing the issues. Not because people claim that DFU restores fix the issues, but rather because I haven't heard many people explicitly state that they were doing DFU restores at all.

Obviously, if enough people DFU restore and it does nothing, there goes that theory.
 

newellj

macrumors G3
Oct 15, 2014
8,127
3,030
East of Eden
:) Couldn't say. I used to upgrade with DFU upgrades but got tired of losing things like iMessage histories. And to be honest I never could tell the difference anyway. I did recently blast an iPod Touch that was acting up with a DFU installation but it didn't solve the (different) problem. So...can't help! :)

I think a lot of us (me, for example) think that iOS upgrades and updates should 'just work' because of Apple's theoretically rigidly controlled hardware/OS/apps ecosystem. But that doesn't seem to work out in real life, and over the years it seems to have become less and less true as everything gets more complicated. iOS 11 seems to have become a real hash.
 
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Nisaja

macrumors 6502a
Sep 20, 2016
753
262
Do you think that, perhaps, in addition to having 32-bit-only apps, and still probably pertinent to their transition from 32-bit and 64-bit to just 64-bit in the OS's runtime libraries for the apps, that there's a problem with their upgrade process from pre-iOS-11 versions of iOS? I've heard some people do wipes and not have it totally fix the issues, but I haven't heard people doing DFU restores and it not totally fixing the issues. Not because people claim that DFU restores fix the issues, but rather because I haven't heard many people explicitly state that they were doing DFU restores at all.

Obviously, if enough people DFU restore and it does nothing, there goes that theory.

I have done many things to solve the battery issue on my 7 Plus. One of those was a DFU restore and setting it up as new. No luck. I’m still getting 2 hours less usage than what I got on iOS 10.

iOS 11 broke my phone.
 
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chomelchizo

macrumors newbie
Jun 13, 2017
12
6
I consider IOS 11 a downgrade. It certainly didn’t improve the functionality of my iPhone 7 Plus. My iPhone’s battery drains phenomenally fast. With 10, I used to get almost two days of use. Now, I can barely make it through half a day.
 

Radon87000

macrumors 604
Nov 29, 2013
7,775
6,251
I consider IOS 11 a downgrade. It certainly didn’t improve the functionality of my iPhone 7 Plus. My iPhone’s battery drains phenomenally fast. With 10, I used to get almost two days of use. Now, I can barely make it through half a day.
Same here mate. This is a clear instance of planned obsolescence. The battery wear is gonna be horrendous
 
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Nisaja

macrumors 6502a
Sep 20, 2016
753
262
I had the same problem. A restore and setting up as new fixed it up to some extent. Check if you have any apps using a lot of CPU power.

System Status Lite: hw monitor by Techethttps://itunes.apple.com/lk/app/system-status-lite-hw-monitor/id407752428?mt=8

Install this app and check the CPU usage. At idle, it should be less than 10%. My phone used to hover around the 20% mark. After a hard reset it’s down to 7%. I got an extra hour of battery life. Now my usage time is only down by 1 hour compared to iOS 10. Getting somewhere.
 

chomelchizo

macrumors newbie
Jun 13, 2017
12
6
Same here mate. This is a clear instance of planned obsolescence. The battery wear is gonna be horrendous

Yup, and Apple’s brilliant alternatives are more expensive phones that have the same decreased battery performance as mine and double the shatter-prone-surface.
 
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C DM

macrumors Sandy Bridge
Oct 17, 2011
51,392
19,459
Yup, and Apple’s brilliant alternatives are more expensive phones that have the same decreased battery performance as mine and double the shatter-prone-surface.
That's surely some worthwhile conspiracy on their part then.
 
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