According to complaints on Reddit, Apple Support communities, and MacRumors forums, some iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro users experienced rapid battery drain. Most of the reports come from iPhone 16 users, but older iPhones running iOS 18 are also experiencing issues.

MacRumors has been running a thread about iOS 18 battery life complaints since beta testing, but with the release of the final version of iOS 18 and the launch of the iPhone 16, a new wave of complaints came. iPhone 16 owners who experienced this situation noticed that the battery drained significantly even when the iPhone was not used.

The battery charge of the iPhone 16 Pro drops from 100% to almost 60% in the middle of the day, even when the smartphone is not actively used. Definitely a fix, should have kept my 15 pro! T1aaj

My iPhone 16 Pro Max is dying very quickly. When I sold it I upgraded from the 15 Pro Max to iOS 18 and 99% battery. While Apple claims longer battery life for the iPhone 16, I was excited to find out how much more battery life I would get. Answer? I now have half the time between charges compared to my year-old 15 Pro Max. It’s really disappointing. All settings are generally the same, including disabled background refresh, 60 Hz maximum screen refresh rate, and data blocking on 4G. I received my 16 Pro Max on launch day, so it’s been 19 days; all early indexing and other background setups should be fully completed by now. JulianL

In some cases, most of the battery drain occurs in standby mode when the iPhone is not in use; This suggests that background activity may be causing problems for some users.

The 16 Pro’s sleep standby battery life is terrible (not connected to my Apple Watch). It’s running in the background like crazy. But guess what, I turned off AOD (it shouldn’t be off when in sleep mode anyway) and enabled frame limiting in custom properties (not in low power mode) to disable ProMotion, boom, background randomness disappeared! But battery drain was not eliminated, it was discharged by 11%, from 70% to 59% in 4 hours and 20 minutes. huanbrother

Clearly, there’s a problem on Apple’s end. Battery consumption in standby mode is excessive. I unplugged my phone at 9am this morning and it only stayed at 95% (my battery limit) for 20 minutes before it started to drop rapidly. I lost a percentage every five minutes until I finally picked it up to use. It seems to have stabilized somewhat now, but this behavior really surprised me. kirbysmartdawg

I upgraded from iPhone 12 to the new 16 Pro. I upgraded mainly due to battery and speaker issues, but I noticed that even though the iPhone 16 has the “best battery” and longer battery life, it still drains about 10-15% of its charge overnight while sitting on the bedside table. OK-Interest-6561

A user on Reddit experimented with the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro and claimed that he used both equally. While the battery charge dropped to 58% on the iPhone 16 Pro, this rate was 85% on the iPhone 14 Pro.