Paul Morris·

iOS 11 Vs iOS 10.3.3 / iOS 10 Battery Life Comparison

Here’s detailed iOS 11 Vs iOS 10.3.3 / iOS 10 battery life comparison side-by-side on various compatible devices.

The imminent introduction of iOS 11 has everyone excited. Sure, we have developers and public testers who have been interacting with the platform since June of this year, but the general iPhone and iPad-owning public haven’t gotten involved in those pre-release seeds have been waiting patiently for this day to come. Well, it’s here, which means users are just an update away to access to all of iOS 11’s features, but what about performance and battery life? Does iOS 11 have any surprises in store for users?

If it is anything to do with testing performance, seeing how long a battery lasts, or just wondering how easy it is to destroy a new device by dropping it or hitting it with an axe, then you can guarantee that YouTube has you covered. And yes, this time is no different. YouTuber iAppleBytes has put together an iOS 11 battery performance test video with the aim of seeing how the battery in Apple’s iOS devices perform when running iOS 11 compared to the latest public release, iOS 10.3.3.

The concept here is very simple; iOS 11 and iOS 10.3.3 are loaded onto iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6s (TMSC), charged up to 100%, and ran through the extremely popular Geekbench 3 battery performance test. That test is designed to run a series of battery draining tests over a prolonged period of time until it actually drains the battery down to zero. That should give a fairly decent indication of how the batteries perform on each device running each version of Apple’s firmware.

The results of the tests show what a lot of people would actually be hoping. The newer devices running iOS 11, which in this instance were iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s, managed to last longer under the stress of the test than the devices running iOS 10.3.3. With that said, the oldest device under test, Apple’s iPhone 5s, was more performant on iOS 10.3.3 from a power management perspective than on iOS 11.

This gives us a fairly decent indication of what to expect when we get iOS 11 onto our own devices, but it’s not massively scientific. Of course, the actual performance will depend on the device being used, what’s installed on that device and the processes running, and how the user actually interacts with it.

That said, in our own experience, we compared an iPhone 7 Plus running iOS 10.3.3 with iOS 11 and found the latter version of Apple’s mobile operating system to be wearing out the battery significantly compared to iOS 10.3.3.

iOS 10.3.3 on iPhone 7 Plus (left) vs iOS 11 on iPhone 7 Plus (right)

That said, it is important to note that the iOS 11 update installed on this particular iPhone 7 Plus was an OTA update, and in fact, not a clean install. It is likely that a clean installation would make a significant and positive difference.

How it iOS 11 battery fairing on your device? Sound off in the comments below.

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