Every iPhone launches with a marquee feature. For the iPhone 16, it’s Apple Intelligence. Unfortunately, Apple AI has felt half-baked since its launch. While it has improved some, disabling it improved my phone’s battery life noticeably.
Apple Intelligence Is Hard on the Battery
To ensure artificial intelligence is effective, having it run on-device with the occasional server hand-off is essential—and the approach many device makers have taken. This helps keep responses quick, effective, and detail-rich when needed.
However, the on-device aspect requires your phone to run over time. Not to mention, it even needs additional high-power hardware. That’s why Apple bumped the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus with the A18 processor—which we praised in our iPhone 16 Plus review—and 8GB of RAM to support AI-based features.
Using Apple Intelligence brings roughly an additional 3GB of data containing generative models into your storage. These files are then constantly accessed to provide AI-based results. The simplest example of this—and perhaps the most effective one so far for me—is Notification Summaries.
The feature condenses every notification into bite-sized text blocks. It can read images and describe them or parse multiple long texts into a one or two-line description. It’s useful, but not at the cost of longer battery life.
Turning off Apple Intelligence improved my iPhone’s battery endurance by roughly 25%. I went from needing two full charge cycles every day to a charge cycle and a half.
Running your phone from 0 to 100% counts as one charge cycle.
The screenshots below show two days—one when I had the feature enabled and another when I didn’t. To see the biggest differences, pay attention to the colored bars and then the battery percentage and screen-on-time axes on the right.
The first screenshot shows the battery with the feature turned on, and the second is with Apple Intelligence turned off. I got roughly the same amount of time using the camera on either day. However, when Apple Intelligence was turned off, I used about 20% less power.
I tested these setting changes over a string of days throughout January 2025. The first screenshot is from then, whereas the second is from this week.
Do I Miss Apple Intelligence?
As I wrote earlier, the biggest use of AI on the iPhone has been notification summaries. While many reported these as hit or miss, they’ve been accurate for me nine out of ten times.
But I use my phone to record videos for my social media pages, and having it powered and ready to go is something I’d rather see than the dreaded red battery symbol at 10% charge. So, no I haven’t really missed Apple Intelligence.
Its direct impact on my phone’s user experience has been minimal. In fact, the biggest thing I probably miss from Apple Intelligence is the new Siri animation.
Battery endurance improvements have been steadily been rising in recent years, though most can be chalked up to software updates that bring optimizations. Still, turning off Apple Intelligence is a simple switch you can readily use if you need a few extra hours on your iPhone.
