iOS 26 vs iOS 18 BATTERY Test on iPhone 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11

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Upgrade regret? Downgrade iOS 26 back to iOS 18—fast & safe: https://event.wondershare.com/api/s/34U

The iOS 26 to iOS 18 downgrade method shown in the video still works.

In this thorough test, we compare the battery performance of iOS 26 to iOS 18 on every supported standard tier iPhone generation.

The iOS 26 test was conducted on iOS 26.0 (23A341), and the iOS 18 test was conducted on iOS 18.6.2 (22G100).

Corrections:
– The final screen on time I overlayed for the iPhone 16 on iOS 18 was 10 minutes off – it’s actually 15:16. My apologies!
– The iPhone 14 actually lasted slightly longer on iOS 26 than iOS 18.

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50 Comments

  1. At first I think IOS 26 like the wallpaper or other stuff are lowkey cool but Idk should I update my iPhone 14 Plus to IOS 26 because after watching this the battery is opposite to others

  2. My 14 Pro was hurting on 26.0, but with 26.2 out, it seems to be lasting longer and running cooler.

  3. iPhone 13 Pro Max user here. iOS 26 is so much worse than 18.7… I have at least 15-20% less battery by the end of the day.
    iOS26.1 is my last hope…

  4. As someone who works in technology… i gotta say this is the BEST comparrison and vid on this i've ever seen someone do on this kinda stuff. bravo man sub'd

    I'll be waiting for the 26.1 vid 🙂 notifications on for ya

  5. iOS 26 DESTROYED my 15 plus battery life. I mean absolutely destroyed it. I went from ending long nights with 50% to just leaving work in the afternoon with my battery in the 20s.

  6. Absolute bs video didn’t conduct the test right and slammed us with an add in the middle of the video

  7. my iphone 11 blow up (battery) bcs of ios 26… it was laggy under 40% and it was much faster dead than with ios 18. and then after few days the battery by itself was overheat while just using it and blew up out of nowhere. i would recommend to wait with iphone 11 on ios 26.

    ps: sorry for my english

  8. Liquid Glass has had a terrible rollout. Especially on macOS it’s absolute crap. A regression in all dimensions. On iOS it also has issues but not as bad, especially 26.1 beta 3.
    This was a marketing driven initiative that looked good on paper but was poorly executed.

  9. Imagine if Ford released a firmware update to their F-150 ECUs that did nothing but constantly rev everyone's engines at stoplights, because, "it just sounds so cool man!" Imagine it used 25% of your fuel, annoyed people, and there was no way to opt out. That's effectively what Apple has done to iPhone with Liquid Glass.

  10. Должны дать возможность людям всего мира возможность понижать верию ios 17, 18, кто хочет сам решит на какой ему удобней, запрет понижения в целях безопастности это бред, посмотрите сколько людей пользуются старыми телефонами и все нормально, тот же xiaomi и samsung не запрещает этого делать

  11. I think you should make this a series, comparing each new iOS version with the previous. There is a channel called iAppleBytes which does this but your version is better

  12. ugh I bought my phone used and my only option was to get 26 I was wondering why my iPhone 14 was draining more with an 88% health life versus my iPhone 12 mini with a 78% battery health life. Still a better phone than the 12 because I have a lot more memory but it'll be good enough to hold me over for two years 🙄 I tried to use my iPhone 12 during the day at home with Wi-Fi to conserve battery

  13. great work .i completely relate with this and ios 26 is shit . my next phone is not iphone. sure.

  14. so you basically tested it on the freshly updated iOS 26? isn’t iOS usually doing a bunch of background stuff for like 1–2 days after an update? that might’ve added to the drain. that’s why I usually wait a day or two before judging the battery. but honestly, for me it still feels the same maybe just around 1–3% difference tops.

  15. I confirm and it’s mainly related to the new Liquid Glass design as demonstrated on other videos. That’s no surprise, by definition a glass effect needs realtime adaptation to the background and effect calculation.
    I personally disabled the transparency (« reduce transparency option in accessibility) and it made a huge difference.

    I really don’t understand why Apple chose this design, it’s a flawed design by definition as it requires real time calculation and so more power and pose readability issues in numerous cases. A good UI design is not just a good looking UI, but first and foremost a design that « just works » to use the words Apple marketing did to describe the Macintosh experience.

    Liquid Glass not only doesn’t not « just works », as it pose issues for readability, but also is not at all energy efficient… which is a shame in 2025 considering that we should normally try to reduce and optimize our energy consumption whenever possible for a sustainable future…

    But sadly the tech world don’t give a shit apparently, they continue to increase energy consumption and requirements with AI, always more resources consuming software (being OSes like Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, …, the web or many other software). This sucks.

  16. Shocking that a brand new software version is less optimized than a software version with a year of optimization! I’m on an iPhone 11 and I haven’t noticed any real difference in my experience with battery life.

  17. Hard to say, my days are not the same, 20% more or less at the end of the day are common, 5% are not noticeable

  18. so far ios 26 on my 14 pro is pretty horrible. I mean its a nice upgrade and all but battery is way worse en it has quite some bugs too

  19. DON'T UPDATE ITS A BUGGY PILE OF SHITE 26 was horrendous, 26.0.1 makes the problems even worse. Apps crash, battery life sucks, the UI is glitchy and it's incredibly unstable. STAY ON 18