Shop E Store Low power mode on iPhone is not a new feature. In fact, it was featured on iOS 9 in 2015. But sometimes I see someone on the web complaining about their brand new iPhone running slowly. What do some of these cases have in common? A screenshot or video showing low power mode is turned on. Please explain in detail how this feature affects the performance of your iPhone.
How does low power mode work on your iPhone?
As the name suggests, Apple has created a low power mode that helps users extend the battery life of their iPhones in situations where chargers are known to spend a lot of time nearby. When activated, low power mode reduces power consumption by powering off multiple software and hardware features together.
iOS will prompt users to enable low power mode when the battery reaches 20%, but this feature can be enabled manually at any time.
Here’s how Apple explains the feature:
Low Power Mode reduces the amount of power your iPhone or iPad uses when the battery is low. When Low Power Mode is turned on, it lasts longer before you need to charge your iPhone or iPad, but it may take some time to update or complete. Also, some tasks may not work until low power mode is turned off or you charge your iPhone or iPad to 80% or more.
You can check if low power mode is activated by looking at the battery icon in the status bar. If yellow, the device is in low power mode.
But what does Low Power Mode change on iPhone? Apple has an official listing on its website.
- Turn off or reduce 5G usage (depending on iPhone model)
- Set autolock to 30 seconds
- Reduces display brightness and limits refresh rate to 60Hz on promotional devices
- Always on and displayed on compatible iPhones
- Reduce visual effects
- Pause background activities (download, iCloud sync, backup, email fetch, etc.)
Will my iPhone be slow? yes
But there are things that Apple doesn’t tell you. The list doesn’t mention anything about performance, but low power mode slows down the device when activated.
To be clear, the chips within the iPhone have multiple performance and efficiency cores. In general usage, the iPhone can use all chip cores at the same time, prioritizing performance cores when editing videos or playing games. When low power mode is on, the iPhone significantly reduces the use of performance cores, primarily relying on efficiency cores.
In benchmark tests used to score performance of different devices, this is the score of the A18 Pro chip on the iPhone 16 Pro Max when the low power mode is off (higher, better).
- Single core: 3341
- Multi-core: 8270
Currently, the same test runs in Geekbench 6.
- Single core: 1384
- Multicore: 4093
Essentially, the device runs in half of performance with this mode turned on. As a result, you will probably notice that your phone is slow depending on the task you are doing. This may seem obvious to some, but some people are really surprised when they hear about it.
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But at least keeping the low power mode constantly means the battery will be much longer, right? Well, that depends. Multiple tests have shown that low power mode is effective in reducing battery consumption in standby mode when using mobile phones actively.
In that case, you should only use the low power mode if you actually need it. Please note that low power modes are also available on iPads, Macs and Apple Watch.
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