Apple’s OS upgrades have been notorious for guzzling battery life and iOS 11 has already received the usual flak from users complaining of faster battery drainage on iPhones and iPads after the upgrade. Now, a new report from security research firm Wandera suggests that iOS 11 can cause iPads and iPhones to experience severe battery drainage; twice as fast as those running on iOS 10.
To arrive at this conclusion, Wandera looked at a subset of 50,000 moderate to heavy iPhone and iPad users running iOS 10 and iOS 11. The study determined how fast iOS 11 drains battery life on iPhones and iPads from 100 percent to 0 percent. “The current estimate is 240 mins for iOS 10 and 96 mins for iOS 11,” the study found.
This gives iOS 10 a decay rate of 0.006958 percent per second and 0.01739 percent per second for iOS 11, notes the study.
Apple released the final build of iOS 11 on September 19 and the OS upgrade was reportedly installed more times than Android Oreo within the first minute of its release. The software upgrade brings a host of new functions to iPads and iPhones, including the ability to interact with augmented reality apps built using Apple's ARKit framework.
iOS 11 could potentially cause battery drain on the new iPhones as well, given that they feature Animoji and Face ID which rely heavily on the camera, one of the main causes of battery drainage. An iFixit teardown recently revealed that the iPhone 8 has a smaller 1,821mAh battery compared to the iPhone 7’s 1,960mAh battery. This is not very encouraging news for those planning to buy the new devices. However, we will only be able to judge battery life on the new iPhones once we review them thoroughly.
Those running iOS 11 on older iPhones and iPads can try limit the number of apps being refreshed in the background to save some battery life. Alternatively, Apple’s low battery mode can also be used to save some precious time before your devices conk off.