iPhone Battery

iPhone Battery: a reader asks…

I have an iPhone 14Pro, and with the latest iOS update (26.5), my battery life has gone to pot. I know it’s kind of old, but the Battery Health applet still shows I have 87% of maximum capacity. Before the update, my battery lasted pretty much all day. Now I’m getting maybe 4-6 hours, and it’s down to 20%. Is there something I can do to improve things?

I’m assuming you updated iOS just a day or so ago. If that’s the case, then there may be a ton of background tasks your iPhone must do over the first few days (up to a week) after a major iOS update, and that’s going to affect battery life. You simply need to practice patience and give it some time to settle down. Also, after an iOS update, many/all of the apps you’ve added to your iPhone may need to be updated, and you likely have background App Updates enabled. This is also a temporary situation, and things should settle down in a few days.

It is also possible that the update enabled some features that use more power. Chief among these are: Background app Refresh and Notifications. Yes, a lot of power is also used in the Display & Brightness, but unless you’ve changed that, it’s more likely that something else was enabled that is chewing up battery power.

Background App Refresh keeps apps that are running in the background updated. Some of these may be useful enough to leave on, such as Mail (and other email apps) and Messages (and other messaging apps). But you may want to go down the list of apps (tap Settings > scroll to the bottom and tap Apps) and check each one to make sure the three sliders at the bottom are off: Live Activities, Background App Refresh, and Cellular Data. Those sliders should be turned on only for specific needs you may have, such as if you need to access the app when you’re not on Wi-Fi (turn on Cellular Data), you want the app to show you updated widgets on the Home Screen or Dynamic Island (turn on Live Activities), or you want the app to always have the latest information (Background App Refresh).

For Background App Refresh, there’s a different setting location where you can handle them en masse or individually. That’s at Settings > General > scroll down to Background App Refresh. There, you can set it to work only when you’re on Wi-Fi (not Cellular), turn it off completely, or turn it on or off for individual apps.

One thing to avoid: There are recommendations out there to reset all settings (reset your iPhone), but I’d not do that, as it erases all your Wi-Fi passwords and can wipe them from your iCloud saved data as well. Totally not worth it in my opinion.

There are other minor settings changes you could make, but they offer only marginal improvements and often make your iPhone run more slowly. One last thing. iOS 26.5 brought new features, and it’s possible you’re using your iPhone more than you used to – that can also affect battery life. Just sayin…