iOS 18.2 was draining my iPhone’s battery until I turned the feature off

Can’t help but notice how much worse my iPhone’s battery life has gotten since then. Upgrade to iOS 18; it’s getting worse with iOS 18.1 and 18.2. It was a rare day when my battery was still above 40% at lunchtime, and the power bank became a constant companion in my life.

The situation was bad (night or day), battery consumption was much higher than anything I remember, and even Low Power Mode didn’t help much.

It’s time to investigate the matter.

Also: iOS 18.2 update causes iPhone battery life complaints – what to know

However, I am not optimistic about finding a solution or even an alternative. Recently, the only remedy for such problems is to wait for Apple to patch the bug. But since I’ve watched this problem get worse and worse over the past few months, I’m holding my breath.

So I decided to investigate. For any battery drain issues, the first place I always look is under the Battery screen in Settings. This section is a treasure trove of information, not only related to the battery but also related to running applications and power consumption. Two graphs are shown here: Battery level, which shows how the charge changes over a 15-minute period; and Activity, which uses a bar graph to illustrate which apps are active and using battery power over a period of hours. You can tap the bars to dig deeper into what was happening on your iPhone during that time period.

But aside from increased use of the Home & Lock screen (basically, any lock screen activity, such as notifications or widgets), nothing was out of the ordinary. I tried turning off the iPhone’s always-on display – the settings to do this are in Settings > Display & Brightness > Always-On Display – but to no avail.

The problem still persists.

After a bit more investigation, testing, settings tweaking, and a lot of frustration, I found the culprit: Apple is smart. With Apple Intelligence turned on (the setting can be found in Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri), I found it impossible to get through a day without recharging. However, when it was turned off, my battery life returned to its previous level.

Also: iOS 18.2 with Apple AI is available for iPhone. How to download it (and which models support it)

And here’s the kicker: I don’t even use Apple Intelligence. I enabled it for testing purposes, but it was almost removed when I moved on to other things. I found Apple Intelligence to be quite poor, but I didn’t expect it to drain the battery so significantly when not in active use.

Looks like this problem is not limited to my hardware, as far as I’m concerned Many similar reports. Furthermore, it doesn’t appear to be restricted to iPhones; Apple Intelligence is also blamed by some Excessive battery consumption on MacBook.

I found this effect to be repeatable — on my iPhone and to a lesser extent. My iPad. Turn on Apple Intelligence, battery drops like a stone; Turn it off and everything is back to normal.

Also: What is AI? Everything you need to know about artificial intelligence

It is as reliable as clockwork. This tweak also seems to cause the excessive battery consumption I saw on iOS 18.3 beta.

If you’ve noticed particularly poor battery life since switching to iOS 18 and you’ve turned on Apple Intelligence, that could be the culprit. I say “may” because this could be one of those “mileage will vary” situations. However, if you don’t find Apple Intelligence really useful, you won’t lose anything by turning it off.