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Comment by overcast | Hacker News Reader

The biggest change was ramping up processor instantly, and then back down to maximize performance. So for launching an app / scrolling, CPU reaches highest state, until that portion is over, and immediately get back to efficiency setting for preserving battery life. Previously CPU time would ramp up slowly.

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It's probably paranoia, but I feel like my 5S battery is draining faster since the update.

That being said, the performance upgrade is well worth it.

It's not, my 6S did the same thing with intensive apps, like Instagram. With IG it's probably ALWAYS ramped up constantly scrolling, playing , downloading. They definitely sacrificed battery life for speed in older phones. My XS lasts like two days though.

What the heck are you doing to get 2 days from your XS? I barely get one!

really just business stuff with instagram / email / text!

My XS Max gets ~1.5 days with fairly regular-heavy usage.

Don't keep it open all the time?

Why would it be paranoia? Waking up the CPU faster and maximizing its performance will definitely drain the battery faster.

I assume the iOS12 update includes a combination of more aggressive waking and maximizing of performance along with a reverting of what they did previously to old phones when they lowered their performance to maintain the battery life of the degraded battery. If you remember there was quite a bit of scandal about this earlier this year.

My guess is your old iPhone's battery will also last half as much as it did originally within months. Yes, it's a factor of the new changes, but let's not forget it's primarily a factor of Apple using batteries that lose a significant percentage of their capacity after 2 years in the iPhones, and then hiding much of that by slowing your iPhone down. Maybe Apple should put higher quality batteries in their phones - just saying.

> let's not forget it's primarily a factor of Apple using batteries that lose a significant percentage of their capacity after 2 years in the iPhones

As far as I can tell this simply isn't true. My iPhone SE is at 89% of maximum capacity after 2.5 years of very regular use. It's standing up pretty well.

I think in general a lot of batteries in mobile devices for a couple years dropped off dramatically if charging to full regularly (ex: on the charger all night every night). My Nexus 4 and Nexus 6P were really bad here... my Pixel 2XL has been pretty good on battery life still after about a year now.

I think it was mostly immature technology adopted relatively early. There have been advances in battery tech, and it takes time to work kinks out.

>Yes, it's a factor of the new changes, but let's not forget it's primarily a factor of Apple using batteries that lose a significant percentage of their capacity after 2 years in the iPhones, and then hiding much of that by slowing your iPhone down.

Compared to what available and suitable miraculous technology?

It's definitely not. On my 6s, once it gets below 40% or so, it's prone to rapid drain (2-5% all at once) and random shutdowns. None of which happened on ios 11.

If you're using an 5S still, it's time to update that battery. By now it's what, 5 years old?

My 6S battery was maybe only a few months old(replaced), had same issue with crazy battery drain on IOS12, particularly with Instagram.

I thought so too, but I noticed that the update also increased the display brightness considerably. So maybe that's what's causing the slightly faster battery drain.

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