iPhone 6 battery test: a day in the life

By Anthony Caruana on Sep 25, 2014 8:47PM

How long does the iPhone 6 battery last? Here's what Anthony Caruana found using the phone for a day.

Apple's new iPhone 6 has hit the market with a larger battery than its predecessor. So what sort of battery life have we found so far?

The iPhone 6's Lithium Polymer battery is rated at 1810 mAH - that's 270 mAh more than the iPhone 5s. But the new iPhone boasts a larger and therefore more power hungry, display, NFC and new wireless radios.

Here's what we found over a 24-hour period.

Time	Activity	Charge (%)
7:00 AM	We used the iPhone 6 as an alarm clock. It was on charge overnight	100
8:40 AM	Checked some email over breakfast and then completed a 36 minute conference call using the iPhone 6 as a speakerphone	94
8:45 AM	5 minute call on speakerphone	92
8:51 AM	6 minute call using the iPhone 6 as a regular handset	91
9:50 AM	Connected the iPhone 6 to a computer for a few minutes to sync some content resulting in some recharging of the battery	95
10:30 AM	iPhone 6 was sitting idle, receiving notifications while sitting on the desk in the office	95
11:10 AM	We made a 10-minute call using Apple's new Continuity feature which allowed us to use our Mac (running a pre-release version of Apple's new operating system, called Yosemite) as a remote speaker phone	91
12:15 PM	We drove to a local café for a meeting and then did some random web browsing, checking email and looked at Facebook. This was our first time out for the day using 4G rather than WiFi. The iPhone was also connected, via Bluetooth, to the car's integrated audio system.	83
2:25 PM	Back in the office, with the iPhone 6 on WiFi collecting notifications and messages in the background	74
3:10 PM	Sitting idle on the desk while we worked. We headed out at about 5:00 PM for some personal commitments	72
7:00 PM	Over the next couple of hours, we were out and made several calls using our car's Bluetooth iPhone integration. All up, we were on the phone for 25 minutes over that period	45
8:40 PM	Out for dinner, used a little bit of social media and sent a few SMS messages	35
10:30 PM	Once we were home, we did some web browsing and caught up on a few emails and went to bed	19
7:00 AM	The next morning, we checked the battery level and found it was down to 6% even though the phone had been idle for about nine hours	6

Through the entire testing period we had cellular communications, WiFi and Bluetooth enabled. The Bluetooth was active much of the time as it was communicating with a fitness band we wear.

Based on our usage patterns, we can see how the iPhone 6 would get us through a typical day. It's worth noting that we didn’t use the GPS for navigation - a notoriously power hungry application. But, when we use this in the car, we always connect to a power source.