iOS 26 introduces a new Adaptive Power mode to extend your iPhone’s battery under load. And Apple’s newest iPhones — iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air — will ship with this feature enabled by default.
On older iPhones, you must manually enable Adaptive Power to boost their runtime.
iPhone 17 and iPhone Air ship with this battery-extending feature
iOS 26 adds a new Adaptive Power mode for iPhones. It aims to extend your iPhone’s battery life under load to ensure it can make it through a day. The feature achieves this by “making small performance adjustments.” This includes lowering the display brightness by up to 3%, reducing the CPU clock speed and limiting background activity.
Adaptive Power differs from Low Power Mode, which takes more drastic steps to increase your iPhone’s battery life.
In a support document, Apple says that Adaptive Power “uses on-device intelligence to predict when you’ll need extra battery life based on your recent usage patterns and then adjusts as needed to help your battery last longer that day.” Plus, it will not throttle device performance when using the Camera or playing games. This ensures there’s no unintended slowdown under extreme load.
Adaptive Power is available on iPhone 15 Pro and newer models. But on these devices, the feature must be manually enabled. On the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone Air, Apple will enable the feature by default.
Adaptive Power should make the iPhone Air last longer
Out of all these devices, the iPhone Air should benefit the most from Adaptive Power mode due to its small battery capacity.
Whenever your iPhone switches to Adaptive Power Mode to extend battery life, you’ll receive a notification. You can turn on these notifications from Settings > Battery > Power mode.
It’s unclear whether Apple’s claim of longer iPhone 17 battery life factors in Adaptive Power Mode being enabled. If that’s the case, the longer runtime of the new iPhones suddenly looks less impressive.
Rajesh has been closely following and writing about the latest happenings in the world of mobile for nearly a decade now. While he prefers Android, he does not deny the superiority of Apple’s products and ecosystem.
