Apple overhauls the iPhone's Battery Settings page with an Adaptive Power Mode that will automatically reduce screen brightness or slow down some activities to prolong battery life.
Apple's iOS 26 is out now, and the Liquid Glass UI overhaul might be overshadowing some interesting updates to Battery Settings.
First, when you plug your iPhone in to charge, the lock screen now tells you how long it will take to charge your device to 100%. If you have Optimized Battery Charging enabled, it will show you the time required to reach 80%. The charging indicator won't be shown instantly. The lock screen first displays the date and day, and then replaces the same field with the new data.
Apple has also redesigned the Battery Settings page in iOS 26 to offer improved battery usage statistics and a new feature to extend battery life.
When you enter Settings > Battery, you now see your current battery percentage at the top. If you have plugged your iPhone in to charge, the same menu will show the time required to charge your battery to full. The option to enable Low Power Mode has been pushed further down on iPhone 14 or earlier and shifted to a new Power Mode section on iPhone 15 or newer.
Next on the page are updated battery usage statistics for the week. Instead of hours, you'll see a line marking the average, with orange and blue bars indicating whether each day's usage is above or below it. If you find this data vague (I did), you can tap the View All Battery Usage button at the bottom of the chart to see daily screen-on time and app usage.
On the new page, you see two charts. The first chart is the same one you saw on the previous page, while the second one gives you 24-hour data for each day, with green bars showing when you charged your iPhone. You also get to see daily screen-on and screen-off hours. To move across days, tap the bars on the top chart. Scrolling down shows battery usage by apps, in both time and percentage, arranged in descending order.
iPhone's New Adaptive Power Mode
Apple also added a new Adaptive Power Mode to help extend your battery's life. The company describes the feature as something that "uses on-device intelligence to predict when you'll need extra battery life based on your recent usage patterns and then adjusts as needed to help your battery last longer that day."
When the feature is enabled, it will make performance adjustments, lower screen brightness by 3%, limit background activity, and automatically enable Lower Power Mode when the charge drops below 20%. Android's Adaptive Battery feature pretty much does the same thing.
The catch is that Adaptive Power Mode only works on Apple Intelligence-powered phones, so you'll need an iPhone 15 Pro or later. It is enabled by default on the iPhone 17 series. On other eligible phones, you need to enable it manually by going to Settings > Battery > Power Mode and enabling Adaptive Power Mode.
Apple's iOS 26 brings many more interesting changes to the iPhone software. It began rolling out to all users this week. You can download and install it right now on iPhone 11 or later and iPhone SE 2 or later via Settings > General > Software Update.
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