I have a mysterious problem with my iPhone 15 Pro Max | Digital trends

There’s a problem with the iPhone that I’d like Apple to fix, but I’m not entirely sure what it will take to do so. I don’t know if it’s a hardware or software problem or even if I’ll always notice if the problem is gone.

It’s battery life, but not necessarily how long the battery lasts on a charge. It’s more about the consistency of battery life, which is currently (and has been for some time) all over the place.

What is the issue?

Ever since the iPhone 15 Pro Max arrived in my hands, I’ve had a problem with battery life, but not all the time. When it’s working well, the battery lasts me about two days on a single charge, which I find perfectly acceptable, and if it always worked the same way, I wouldn’t be writing these words.

The problem is that NOT always perform the same way. Although my usage tends not to vary at all, there are periods of time when the iPhone’s battery life takes a sudden and inexplicable hum. It is noticeable because when it goes through these moments, it drops below 50% around the middle of the day. It’s so out of character it takes me by surprise. However, on other days, the battery may still register 80% by noon. Currently, my iPhone on iOS 17.5.1 is going through one of its best times, where the battery life is long and stable, but I’m afraid it won’t last.

I try to get to the bottom of the mystery when it happens and sometimes I’m successful, but other times I don’t come up with an explanation at all. I narrowed down an extended period of high battery usage in the GoPro app running in the background and taking up a lot of resources. However, I hadn’t used the GoPro app and only realized it was working when I checked the battery settings page for more information. When the iPhone 15 Pro Max battery has one of its moments, I check if the GoPro app is the cause, but it hasn’t been responsible since then, so it’s not always its fault.

It’s not just me

I’ve had discussions with Digital Trends mobile editor Joe Maring and staff writer Christine Romero-Chan about iPhone battery life, and I’m not alone in seeing this strange behavior. Worse, it varies from person to person and there is no clear common waste battery life time, so there is no way to find a single cause or type of use that causes the problem. We’ve all seen similar battery life issues in other iPhone models, and not just the iPhone 15 series, but it seems to be more prominent this year.

To summarize, it’s not just me, it’s not just the iPhone 15 Pro Max, it’s not always a single app, and it happens with different versions of iOS. It also does not always it happens This unpredictability is frustrating. More than once, I remember looking down at my phone while out and about and thinking, “Where did all the battery life go?” But I can also recall similar times when I’ve looked at the battery percentage and been pleasantly surprised by how much was left.

I use both an iPhone and an Android phone every day, but I rarely see any such difference in battery life with the Android phone. While some phones drain the battery faster than others, it’s almost always at a somewhat predictable rate, something the iPhone lacks.

Not sure what causes it

I don’t think the iPhone hardware is to blame for this strange and unpredictable problem. I’ve encountered it to varying degrees on several iPhone generations, so it doesn’t seem like an iPhone 15 problem that can potentially be cured with the release of the iPhone 16 series later this year. The GoPro app incident doesn’t convince me that it’s just an app issue because the same situation happens even when the GoPro app is not installed.

That leaves iOS as a likely culprit. Search the Apple Discussions online help board for “iOS battery drain” and there are dozens of threads reporting problems that are similar to mine — and ones that are also quite different. On Reddit, there are threads reporting both a dead battery and one IMPROVEMENT in battery life with iOS 17, showing unpredictability is not limited to my iPhone.

iOS seems to cause unexpected battery drain, and in my experience, apps can do the same. It’s not clear which of the two is the worst offender, or even if it’s just a coincidence that both affected battery life — a fact not helped by the iPhone’s battery life being good a month and weak the next month. Not being able to predict and therefore rely on iPhone battery life can make life difficult, and something needs to be done to make battery life more linear on a regular basis.

I want Apple to fix this

What do I want? I want it to stop, but I can’t be specific about what needs to change. I wish iOS 18 would settle battery life into a somewhat predictable pattern, and that the iPhone 16 series would provide two days of battery life on a single charge with moderate use. I wish developers would make sure their apps don’t contribute to any unexpected battery drain.

I would like all of these things, and for the next version of iOS and iPhone to end this cycle of not knowing from one day, week or month to the next what will push the iPhone’s battery life from a rock

Editors’ recommendations