Updated “iPhone for backpacking” article

Great article even before the update! Your article inspired me to take my iPhone 4 on the pct and it worked wonderfully with your tips. I'm pretty sad as I just upgraded to an iPhone 6 (unlocked version 124g..) and I would love to figure out why the battery drain is the way it is.

Have you checked your usage statistics? You can see what is using your battery in general>Usage>battery usage.

Richard, I assume you are talking about the unlocked phone vs the others (as opposed to yours specifically)? If so, I agree, since I also have the unlocked 6, but to be honest, I have been pretty happy with overall battery life… Especially the first few months. I will admit though that about 4 months in, I noticed a drop in battery life, but it's still not to bad.

Paul, according to the article, the unlocked phone has a higher baseline daily drain vs the others. From the article:

"ATT or Verizon or T-Mobile iPhone 6 or 6-plus: baseline daily drain is 1-3%.

ATT or Verizon iPhone 5 or 5S or 5C: baseline daily drain is 2-6%.

iPhone 6 model A1586 (which is sold unlocked): baseline daily drain is 3-8%. This phone had higher drain than any of the other iPhone-sixes that were tested. Laurie ran 29 different overnight tests on her phone, using a wide variety of configurations (in signal range or not, with ATT or Verizon or no SIM, on the counter or in motion in a pocket), and the ten-hour drain was usually 2-3%, ranging from 1 and 4%, with no discernable pattern. It remains a mystery why this unlocked model in all its configurations had more battery drain than the other models of sixes that were tested. Perhaps it is something in this particular model, or perhaps it is this one particular phone."

Richard's comment about his iPhone 6 are a bit unexpected. Of a dozen people who ran overnight tests with iPhone 6, all but one had overnight drain of 0-1%.

For info to be helpful I need some very specific data. I'd love to hear from more iphone6 users.

What model is the phone? Settings->General->About->Model. There are several models of unlocked phone, so just saying it is unlocked is not enough info.

Any iPhone six user who is willing:
Airplane Mode = ON.
WIFI = OFF.
Bluetooth = OFF.
AirDrop = OFF.
Note battery percentage and time.
Put phone on counter for at least 8 hours, the longer the better.
Note battery percentage and time again.

Report the model of the phone (actual model number and also description), percentage at start and finish, and number of hours.

If you're inspired, run the test multiple nights.

Thanks, Amy

Hey Amy,

I'm sorry for the conufusion. What I mean to say, was that I don't understand why my iPhone 6 unlocked has a worse battery drain than other 6 models. Mine is a MGA42LL/A.

I will try my model some point this week and let you know what I find.

One thing that may be confounding these tests is the accuracy of the indicated battery percentage.

When I got my brand new iPhone 6, it appeared to have a huge drain in the first hour. I went right back to the store, and the Apple rep told me that the indicated percentage is derived from the small voltage change as the battery discharges, and that with slight variations between instances of battery, and indeed through the life of any given battery, the phone software "learns" the battery characteristics through charge cycles to derives a more accurate reading. Sure enough, the apparent drain was not real, and the indicated percentage became much more accurate after a couple of charge cycles.

Having said that, I'm still not sure that I trust the accuracy of the indicated percentage. My phone (with identical usage pattern) drains much more slowly from 100%>90% than from 10%>0%. To my mind, percentage charge should be **defined** to mean that the percent drain speed is identical from any initial charge state.