A week after the release of iOS 16.4, tests show that the new version significantly reduces the battery lives of a wide variety of iPhone models.
This has happened in the past for iOS releases and later updates have fixed the battery drain.
iPhone battery lives drop running iOS 16.4
Conspiracy theorists believe that every iOS update reduces battery life. There’s plenty of data to refute that — iOS 16 brought a significant increase for every Apple handset released in the past few years.
But the iPhone update released March 27 does the opposite, according to real-world tests done by the YouTube channel iAppleBytes.
When Geekbench battery tests were done on a iPhone 13, iPhone 12, iPhone 11, iPhone XR and iPhone 8 running iOS 16.4, all of their scores went down and some of these models saw a double-digit decline in scores when compared to iOS 16.3.1. The battery score for the iPhone 13 dropped 11%, for example. iPhone 12 went down 12%.
As someone running the new version on an iPhone 14 Plus, I’ve also noticed my device has drained more quickly than usual.
Hold off, if you can
Anyone who has not yet installed iOS 16.4 might seriously consider skipping it. Unconfirmed reports indicate that iOS 16.4.1 will be out soon, and it might take care of this battery drain.
Watch the full iAppleBytes video for more details.
