iOS 26: Adaptive Power Mode
Apple says that Adaptive Power Mode can make “small performance adjustments” when necessary to extend an iPhone’s battery life, including slightly lowering the display brightness or allowing some activities to “take a little longer.”
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Adaptive Power Mode is only available on the iPhone 15 Pro models and newer. This is because the AI-powered feature requires an iPhone that supports Apple Intelligence.
As described, it’s not really clear why these features have such high system requirements.
I do really like these different power modes that Apple has introduced over the last few years. I always run my Mac in High Power Mode when plugged in and Low Power Mode when on battery. I don’t miss much putting my watch in Low Power Mode when I know it’s going to be a long day, and then it lasts a surprisingly long time.
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I've just been staring at this post shaking my head trying to find the words.
I'm really glad I didn't get fooled into buying an iPhone 15. I don't think Apple has ever screwed over a single generation of iPhone so badly.
Whenever this comes up, the "but it does what it did when you bought it don't be entitled" brigade usually comes out.
But come on. Really tired of this whole Apple Intelligence word game Apple has been playing lately. It is whatever they need it to be or not be based on the subject at hand.
We heard about the amazing neural engine with its billions of whatevers for years. But no, only iPhone 15 Pro or better can use the brightness sensor to dim the screen, or use the qos system that's been built in for years.
I won't get the Adaptive Power Mode capability, but I almost always run my phone in Low Power Mode. I'm not a heavy phone user, and most of what I do with it certainly isn't important, but I figure extending the battery life helps extend device life, and that's even more valuable to a user like me who hopes to have a 13 mini as long as possible.
@Michael I run as you do. Plugged in = no stops, battery = low power mode. The exception: I turn off low power mode on battery when doing dev.
@Bart Apple Intelligence and its suggestions is the Clippy of the 2020s.
Apple's AI-powered features have a near 100% miss-rate in my experience. From what I can tell there's no learning at all taking place, or it's only inferring the wrong things from me.
I'd rather have developer APIs to control energy-related features. In typical Apple fashion, they'll probably develop a bunch of private API for this failed feature and never make it public. They're an awful caretaker of the platform these days.
@Hammer Back in the System 7 days, I don’t know whether Apple had APIs or developers just patched things, but there were actually multiple competing third-party power management utilities that were amazing. One was Guy [Kawasaki]’s Utilities for Mac (GUM), which was eventually bought by Symantec. The other was Connectix PowerBook Utilities (CPU).
Given all the ways Apple seems to misunderstand how people use their phones, I'll stick to low power mode, which I can toggle using my own intelligence, which works just fine on my iPhone 13 Pro.
My favourite feature of Low Power Mode on iOS and iPadOS is that it can be linked to a Focus Mode and activated automatically based on any criteria used to toggle a focus mode. I don't need my iPad checking emails or doing whatever else it does all night, so I’ve set the Sleep Focus mode to turn on Low Power Mode. This helps extend standby time greatly (and on the odd time I plug it in over night, LPM turns itself off at a certain threshold anyway, so photo indexing etc. still seems to occur)
The same applies to my "WFH" profile. I have a laptop in front of me, so I don't need my phone screen on and doing lots of things in the background. But, when I'm in the office and generally wandering around the building, and in meetings, I use a different "Office" profile, so Low Power Mode turns and I get all the features. It's automatic, based on location or time of day. It's really useful.
