Another Apple launch has been and gone, and there are some teething problems as users adjust to the latest and greatest updates. One of the issues that seems to be bugging people is iOS 11 battery drain.

Reportedly, within about a minute of Apple’s iOS 11 release, it was already installed on more devices than the latest version of Android. And it’s easy to see why people were eager to install it.

iOS 11 boasts some impressive new features, enhancements, and importantly – security patches. But here’s the downside.

Some iPhone and iPad users are reporting installation problems, slow speed, issues with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and one that caught our eye specifically – faster battery drain.



Why are iOS 11 users running on empty?

Battery drain is a common iOS problem that usually pops up immediately after a major iOS upgrade release. This is partly due to Spotlight re-indexing and other behind the scenes shuffling. New functionality in iOS 11 could also be draining the life out of your phone faster.

We also suspect it is a case of Apple fans wanting to test out all the shiny new features right off the bat. We all know it’s hard to resist.

Your individual battery stamina will also vary depending on what you have installed on your device and what model you have. So not everybody is experiencing the same frustration. However, we were able to draw some general conclusions on how bad this reported iOS 11 battery drain actually is.

iOS 10 vs iOS 11 battery drain in numbers

It’s important for businesses to keep their mobile devices running on the latest OS version to protect them from threats. So when we heard that people were downgrading back to iOS 10.3.3 or reluctant to upgrade to 1OS 11 in the first place, we wanted to see why.

We looked at a subset of 50,000 moderate to heavy iPhone and iPad users in our network running iOS 10 and iOS 11 to compare the average battery decay rate over the past three days.



Assuming the same device started with the battery at 100%, this chart shows how long it takes to get to 0% for each version. The current estimate is 240 mins for iOS 10 and 96 mins for iOS 11.

In other words, we can assume the average decay rate for iOS 10 is 0.006958 percent per second and for iOS 11 it’s 0.01739 percent per second.

How is the iOS 11 uptake looking so far?

Looking at our global network of enterprise mobile devices, 4.3% of iOS 10.3.3 users upgraded to iOS 11 within 24 hours of the release.

Further, of all Apple devices in our network, only 2.98% are running iOS 11. This leaves a huge percentage of users running out of date software exposing themselves and their organizations to risk.

If you find the battery drain on iOS 11 too much to tolerate, you might start thinking about a switching back to iOS 10.3.3. While this may be tempting, we strongly advise against it.

The more up to date your software, the more protected you are from hackers attempting to exploit your device and infiltrate your personal and corporate data.

Stayin’ alive

There are a couple of steps you can take that might extend your battery life as you wait for battery life to improve.

The first is limiting the number of apps that can refresh in the background (Settings > General > Background App Refresh) and limiting the number of apps that can access your location in the background (Settings > Privacy > Location Services).

If that doesn’t make much difference, low power mode may be your best option until Apple pushes out new updates that will hopefully address excessive battery drain.

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