iOS 13.7 Battery Drain Test on iPhone 11, iPhone XR, iPhone 7, and iPhone SE

Apple released iOS 13.7 update earlier this week with the new Exposure Notification Express system that allows public health authorities to quickly offer contact-tracing in their region without having to spend months developing an app. There were no other changes in iOS 13.7 but does it bring about any battery life improvements? After all, the last few iOS 13 builds had led to a noticeable decline in the battery performance of the iPhones.

Unfortunately, iOS 13.7 only seems to make matters worse in terms of battery drain for newer iPhones. In the battery drain test conducted by YouTuber iAppleBytes, the iPhone 11 lasted for 5 hours and 25 minutes in the Geekbench battery drain test which is notably lower than the 5 hours and 42 minutes the device managed while running iOS 13.6.1. Even the iOS 13.6.1 results are not that impressive as on iOS 13.6, the iPhone 11 had a screen-on time of 6 hours and 12 minutes. So, with just two iOS 13 updates, the iPhone 11 has seen a reduction of nearly an hour in the battery life benchmark.

On the other hand, older iPhones like the iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 saw a decent jump in their battery life on iOS 13.7. While they had lasted for 3 hours 7 minutes and 3 hours 9 minutes on iOS 13.6.1, their endurance jumped to 3 hours 38 minutes and 3 hours 26 minutes, respectively on iOS 13.7. The iPhone SE (2020) and the iPhone XR also saw a minor improvement in battery life numbers.