The BBC’s Technology Editor, Zoe Kleinman, has been testing out the latest Apple smartphone.
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The iPhone 14 Pro has added new camera technology and safety features.
The new Always-on display function on the iPhone 14 Pro has been a long time coming. After all, Android phones have had a similar feature for about a decade now.
Apple, however, has its own explanation about why it took so long and it has a lot to do with the efficiency of the display and minimizing the power draw of an Always-on display. With a new display technology, the iPhone 14 Pro is able to drop its refresh rate down to just 1Hz, 60 times lower than a traditional screen and that is the magic ingredient that Apple has been waiting on to optimize the power draw.
But has it really done so? And how much battery does the Always-on display on the iPhone 14 Pro consume?
How much battery does it drain in a day?
Apple does not provide any official estimate of the effect the Always-on display feature has on battery life, so we ventured to test this on our own.
For this test, we had the following conditions:
- Test was run on iPhone 14 Pro
- Always-on display battery drain measured over 8-hour interval (9 am to 5 pm)
- Phone was without an active SIM card for the duration of the test
- Phone was not used at all during the test
- Phone was set up with a few basic and one social media app active (Instagram)
We measured the battery consumption over two days: one day the phone had the Always-on function enabled, the next day – it was turned off, and on both days we started the test with a 100% battery level.
So here is what we found.
Always-on display battery drain test results:
- First day (Always-on display enabled, 9am to 5pm) — at the end of the test period battery was down from 100% to 94%
- Second day (Always-on display disabled, 9am to 5pm) — at the end of the test period battery was still at 100%
Since Apple is known to artificially prolong the 100% reading on iPhones, we suspect realistically the iPhone lost about 1% of the battery during the second run (when Always-on was disabled).
This is interesting! It turns out that on the iPhone 14 Pro, the Always-on function would drain 6% of your battery for an 8-hour period. Considering that A) most people use their phone throughout the day, so the Always-on display (AOD) function is not a factor, and B) AOD also turns off when the phone is in your pocket, we think 8 hours is a good estimation of an average use of AOD.
There is one caveat to this result: Apple is known to artificially prolong the time your phone stays at 100% for whatever reason, so the 6% difference might not be truly exact in this case. We have not had the time to re-run the test with the phone starting at a different battery level, but if we account for 1% variability, the actual battery drain for an 8-hour use of the Always-on display function might be around 5%.
Obviously, this is true for the iPhone 14 Pro. The iPhone 14 Pro Max with its larger battery might be able to offset that a little bit. We are yet to test the 14 Pro Max, but if we were to place a bet right now, we would guess that Always-on display on it might drain about 4% of the battery over a similar test period.