iOS 13 eats away at battery life, but iOS 14 offers hope

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iOS 13 battery life eroded. But iOS 14 offers better.
Reversing a trend, iOS 14 battery life could be noticeably longer than iOS 13.
Photo: Ed Hardy/Cult of Mac

Tests done on a range of iPhone models running the just-released iOS 13.6 reveal that it slightly reduces the battery life of all these handsets when compared to the previous version. And, generally speaking, that has held true for the last six iOS 13 updates.

But there’s good news. Tests with an early iOS 14 beta showed this upcoming version brings a significant increase to battery life.

Battery life slipped with iOS 13

Apple released iOS 13.6 to the public on Wednesday, and YouTube channel iAppleBytes installed it on an iPhone 11, a 2020 version of the iPhone SE, and older models going back to the iPhone 6S and the original SE. The channel then ran the Geekbench 4 battery test on all of them. Across the board, battery life dropped slightly.

And the same has been generally true for half a dozen recent versions. There have been a few exceptions where updates improved the time between recharges for some iOS models. But for all of them, iOS 13.3.1 got a better battery score than iOS 13.6.

Watch iAppleBytes’ video to see the testing:

iOS 14 saves the day?

But there’s a chance Apple is about to reverse this trend. iAppleBytes also recently ran the Geekbench 4 battery test on a pair of iPhones running iOS 14 Beta 1.

When compared with iOS 13.6, the battery life of an iPhone SE 2020 increased by just under half an hour with the pre-release version. And the same is true for an iPhone 11 running the first beta of iOS 14.

Fore the most part, early betas don’t emphasize battery life. They are about adding and debugging new features. Even so, the next iPhone operating system is already showing that it’ll bring longer times between recharges.

Watch this test by iAppleBytes:

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