Some iPhone 16 owners are experiencing massive battery drain on iOS 18

Apple’s iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro boast much-improved battery life, but for some users, the opposite has been the case.

According to a pretty large number of posts on Apple’s official forums and Reddit (via MacRumors), battery life has been pretty abysmal for some iPhone 16 and 16 Pro owners running iOS 18. The complaints actually started earlier, while iOS 18 was still in beta, but the issue apparently hasn’t been fixed, bringing a new wave of dissatisfied users now that iOS 18 is widely available.

Most users who experienced the issue say their phones have simply drained very fast while being idle, or while doing fairly undemanding tasks like playing music. “Listened to music for the first 2.5 hours of my day (with less than 45 minutes screen time) and realized my battery was at 68 percent,” said one user on Reddit. “I’m comparing my activity to my previous iPhone 14 I have to my girlfriend. She is at 78 percent while I’m at 45 percent. Something not going right here,” said another.

It’s worth noting, however, that some users aren’t experiencing these problems, and some (but not all) said that upgrading to the iOS 18.1 beta remedied the issue.

Fortunately, this type of bug is quite common with new iOS releases; we’ve seen similar issues resolved after a software update. Now it’s up to Apple to look into this one and fix it.