Ever since iOS 16 was rolled out to the public, the new software has had a rocky start with users complaining about several bugs. This includes everything from the camera on the new iPhone 14 Pro “shaking” to over-zealous copy/paste permissions.
While most of the initial iOS 16 bugs have been ironed out by Apple, one key problem still seems to persist exactly two weeks after iOS 16 was launched — iPhone battery life drain.
Several users took to Twitter, Reddit and TikTok to complain about the iOS 16 update that seems to have affected their iPhone battery life. Users say their battery life on their iPhone has “significantly” declined after installing the new iOS 16 update.
Apple initially mentioned that the haptic keyboard feature on iOS 16 could be draining battery on iPhones. The Apple Support page for the feature even mentioned that "turning on keyboard haptics might affect the battery life of your iPhone”. But even after turning off the feature, people have reportedly been facing the same issue.
On the day the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro were released, Apple had an iOS 16.0.1 update ready that fixed initial kinks and then recently a second iOS 16.0.2 update was released to fix bugs like the camera shaking and copy/paste permissions on the iPhone 14 series. Unfortunately, the iOS 16.0.2 update didn’t seem to help the battery life issue for some owners.
Major iOS updates have been known to cause slowdown or battery life issues in the past. But this time the battery drain problem seems significant and appears to have impacted many users.
Is there a iOS 16 battery drain fix in sight?
Going by users’ complaints, it looks like affected iPhones include the iPhone XR right up to the iPhone 13 series, although there could be others.
Apple Support has been responding to some users asking them to try to restart their phone or if that doesn’t work they have said users should do a restore. We would also recommend trying switching off the haptic keyboard feedback feature under “Sounds & Haptics” in Settings.
Since iOS 16.0.2 has not solved the battery problem, we are hoping there will be another patch update (iOS 16.0.3) for the battery issue but have not seen any signs of it so far. The iOS 16.1 second beta is here, and while it contins a battery percentage icon change, there is no news on it improving the battery life for the iPhone. It did at least introduce a cool new feature to help prevent battery damage.
In case Apple does bring a battery life fix with iOS 16.1, we may not see it roll out until next month and it might just launch alongside iPad OS 16.1 and MacOS Ventura.
Other than the battery drain, Apple’s list of unresolved bugs includes a slow and slightly glitchy spotlight search, CarPlay issues impacting iPhone 14 Pro and some flickering display problem that seems to be affecting iPhone displays in low brightness. Hopefully these get a quick fix as well with Apple’s next OS update.
