The iPhone 15 Professional and Professional Max each have implausible battery life. It’s roughly the identical because the iPhone 14 Professional and Professional Max from final 12 months (simply barely longer in our testing), however that makes them a number of the longest-lasting high-end smartphones you should buy.
However the non-Professional iPhones usually have longer battery life. We all know that the upper refresh charge of 120Hz ProMotion shows can have a major influence on battery life which is one purpose why Apple promotes the iPhone 15 Plus as having the longest battery life within the lineup.
So naturally I puzzled: when you stopped your iPhone 15 Professional from going as much as 120Hz, would it not make the battery last more? After a number of days of testing, I can affirm that it does assist, however not sufficient to be value it, with one exception: gaming.
Apple doesn’t present a method to disable ProMotion the iPhone Professional fashions. The show merely dynamically adjusts refresh charge from 1 to 120Hz making changes on the fly as decided by the system.
However you can use a setting in Accessibility to restrict refresh charge to 60Hz, which can forestall the show from ramping as much as these battery-draining excessive refresh charges. After all, it additionally means you don’t get the graceful scrolling and animations of ProMotion, so that you’re giving up one of many key options for which you purchase a “Professional” iPhone. Maybe if the battery life is significantly better, it is going to be value it?
Foundry
To restrict your iPhone 15 Professional (or iPhone 14 Professional) to 60Hz, open Settings, select Accessibility, then select Movement. Scroll down and allow the choice that claims Restrict Body Fee.
Does it make a distinction?
After all, what I actually need to know is whether or not or not this makes an actual distinction battery life. If you happen to might get an additional hour of screen-on time with Restrict Body Fee enabled, it might be value giving up the additional smoothness for some customers.
I ran my normal battery benchmark on each the iPhone 15 Professional and iPhone 15 Professional Max with this setting enabled and disabled. This consists of operating the Geekbench 4 battery life check with the show calibrated to 200 nits, with auto-brightness and True Tone disabled.
It appears like this setting does have an effect, albeit a minor one. In two exams per cellphone, I persistently noticed a battery life enchancment of round 5 %. That one thing, nevertheless it’s not the type of change that makes you need to surrender the 120Hz smoothness for.
It’s laborious to know what the refresh charge is through the Geekbench 4 check, which exhibits a comparatively static display screen throughout all the benchmark, so I attempted a number of different exams. I scrolled via Instagram and reddit repeatedly, with only a few pauses and the brightness cranked as much as about 70 %. After 20 minutes, the battery indicator nonetheless learn 100%. After half-hour, nonetheless 100%. Someplace between the 30 and 35 minute mark, the battery meter lastly ticked all the way down to 99.
That outcome was according to or with out the Restrict Body Fee accessibility setting activated. No less than relating to apps the place you scroll via textual content and pictures, it seems that the dynamic nature of the body charge has extra to do with something than whether or not the utmost is 60Hz or 120Hz. If there’s a distinction, once more, it’s slightly minor.
The place it actually issues: premium video games
Many cellular video games don’t help ProMotion, however a number of of them do. Shooters Name of Obligation: Cellular and PUBG Cellular help excessive refresh charges, as do video games like Brawl Stars, League of Legends: Wild Rift, Genshin Affect, Alto’s Odyssey, and extra. In most of those titles it’s important to open the in-game choices to pick out a particular 120fps or excessive body charge mode.
It’s nearly unattainable to make persistently benchmark the distinction in battery life throughout reside gameplay–there are simply too many variables. Nonetheless, in taking part in a number of of those video games with the excessive body charge choices enabled for 20 minutes at a time, I observed loads much less battery drain after I had Restrict Body Fee enabled. Battery drain varies wildly from one sport to the following, nevertheless it wasn’t unusual to have the battery final twice as lengthy with Restrict Body Fee choice enabled.
However then, sport builders already know this. That’s is why it’s nearly at all times an choice, and normally not the default setting. In truth, many video games even provide 30fps limits of their sport settings, sometimes known as “Energy saving mode” or “Battery life mode,” even when the sport doesn’t help ProMotion in any respect.
It’s not simply the show makes use of extra vitality when a sport runs at greater body charges, however the processor as properly. This drains your battery loads sooner.
Our suggestion
We advocate that almost all customers seeking to merely restrict battery drain on their iPhone 13 Professional, 14 Professional, or 15 Professional ought to most likely not allow the Restrict Body Fee accessibility setting. The distinction in battery life in most apps is minimal and never well worth the tradeoff in smoothness.
In video games, nonetheless, limiting body charge has a huge effect, and it ought to be the very first thing you look at when you’re involved with battery life. However that is greatest achieved inside the sport’s visible settings, which frequently present way more choices than only a 60fps restrict.