When Apple released iOS 16.2, many iPhone users started complaining about battery drain issues. My wife, for one, is among those users. Since she updated her iPhone 12 Pro Max to iOS 16.2, she started complaining that her iPhone’s battery drained faster than before updating.

To help my wife and all of you to resolve the iOS 16.2 battery drain issues below are suggested fixes to the issue. Since some of these tips would mean disabling some of the new features of iOS 16.2, it’s up to you to decide which tips you are going to follow, if you’re not planning to do them all. But I hope that one or several of these tips resolve your iOS 16.2 battery drain problem.

More often than not, many iPhone problems can be caused by system errors. The quickest way to resolve these is to simply reboot your iPhone. In case you forgot how to restart/reboot your iPhone, simply press and hold the Volume Up + Volume Down + Side Buttons until the Power Slider appears. Swipe the slider to the left. To turn your device on, simply press and hold the side button and release it until the Apple logo appears.

If rebooting your iPhone doesn’t resolve your iOS 16.2 battery drain issue totally or at all, some installed apps might be using more energy than they should. Thankfully, you can check what’s consuming your iPhone battery by simply going to Settings > Battery. Here you will find information about your iPhone battery usage.

These details include battery activity and battery usage by app. You can even view the percentage of battery usage and usage of each app while in use or running in the background.

Sometimes, an issue with an Apple Watch paired with your iPhone may drain your battery too quickly. In this case, it will be best to un-pair and re-pair the devices.

If you need to unpair and then re-pair your Apple Watch, follow these steps.

Lock Screen Widgets may be one of the coolest features introduced with iOS 16, but unfortunately, it’s also one of the reasons why your iPhone’s battery might quickly drain. That’s because those widgets need to refresh in the background to provide you with the latest information. If these widgets are so important to you and you can’t remove them all, try to minimize them at least. To remove a widget from your iPhone lock screen, simply tap and hold on the Lock Screen, then choose Customize > Lock Screen > Press the “i icon” to remove the widget.

It’s always a good practice to make sure that the apps installed on your iPhone are updated. Not doing so may cause some of these apps to act up and eventually cause the iOS 16.2 battery drain issue. If you haven’t set your iPhone to update apps automatically, you may check for updates manually. Simply go to the App Store > Tap on your account and scroll down to see available app updates.

If not managed correctly, Background App Refresh could cause your iPhone to drain its battery faster than you can imagine. You can turn this off completely or set apps to refresh when connected to Wi-Fi & Mobile data. Simply go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh > Off.

However, turning Background App Refresh off means crippling one of your iPhone’s important features, so I would suggest to just enabling it for apps that are essential to you.

If you don’t use Waze or other location-based apps on your iPhone, it would be wise to switch off Location Services to save battery juice. Simply go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services. From here you can set specific location services settings per app. How you set this service may affect how your iPhone consumes battery.

Low Power Mode is a popular iPhone 16 feature simply because it’s very useful if you’re going out and you know that you won’t have access to a charger. Once enabled, it automatically turns off and affects several functionalities of your iPhone to conserve battery. These include:

To enable low power mode, simply go to Settings > Battery > Low Power Mode. Alternatively, you may go to Settings > Control Center > Customize Controls > Low Power Mode. To toggle it on/off, go to Control Center and simply tap on the battery icon.

While videos auto-playing in the App Store may be useful at times, the same is not true with auto-playing videos in Safari which could get annoying. However, both of them consume a considerable amount of iPhone battery juice. So, it would be best to turn them off.

To turn off video auto-playing in the App Store, go to Settings > App Store > Video Autoplay > Off.

To turn off video auto-playing in Safari, go to Settings > Accessibility > Per-App Settings > Add App > Safari. Once done, tap Safari > Auto-Video Previews > Off.

When I got my iPhone 13 Pro Max, I got so excited about its ProMotion display. It’s way better than my previous iPhone 12. But then I realize that it’s also consuming considerable battery juice from my iPhone. In short, I had to turn it off from time to time. To disable this feature, go to Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Toggle Off Reduce Motion.

For those who don’t mind using their iPhone with a dark background, switching to Dark Mode could prolong your iPhone’s battery life. To do this, go to Settings > Display & Brightness > Appearance > Dark.

Enabling Auto-Brightness could also help preserve your iPhone’s battery. In addition, it improves your iPhone’s display performance in the long run. Apple enabled this feature by default. But in case you might have disabled it, you can re-enable it by going to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Auto-Brightness.

I recommend this step as a last resort on how to fix iOS 16.2 battery drain issue. I never really liked factory resetting my iPhone. As much as possible, I would avoid doing so because it could mean that my unit is defective from the start. But if all the tips I enumerated above did not solve your iPhone’s battery issue, then consider doing this method. Who knows, it might solve the issue after all.

It should be noted that most of these tips apply to most iPhone models still available today. there are some specific fixes for iOS 16.2 battery drain issues specific to the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. These include disabling Always On Display and Dynamic Island. Both of these features may also affect your iPhone’s battery.

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