iOS 27 Might Bring A Battery Boost To Your Old iPhone

Following a report claiming that iOS 27 would be light on features – aside from the revamped Siri –Bloomberg's Mark Gurman writes in his Power On newsletter that killing bugs is a priority for Apple for a very important reason: improving battery life of iPhone models. According to Gurman, removing old code, rewriting features, and upgrading apps could lead to improved performance, which could boost battery life on iPhone models new and old.

While battery life issues don't appear to be a major problem on the latest iPhone models — other than the iPhone Air — they're also frequently cited as being the reason users are hesitant to update to a new version of iOS. Just recently, the company revealed that 74% of all iPhone models bought in the past four years are running iOS 26. Still, the adoption rate isn't as high as it has been in previous years, as many users believe updating their phone slows everything down, instead of offering new features and more stability.

Gurman says it's unclear if Apple will attempt to bring attention to the potential battery boost, or if it's something users will be left to unearth on their own. Besides that, cleaning up code, especially after the big UI revamp of iOS 26, also means a more polished experience for new Apple products.

Since Apple reportedly has a big hardware year ahead, including two never-seen-before products — the MacBook Pro with a touch screen and a foldable iPhone — the company needs to offer a smooth experience across its ecosystems, especially for customers willing to pay a pretty penny for these devices. With them, Apple will be further unifying the iOS-iPadOS experience and the iPadOS-macOS experience, as both the iPhone and Mac will likely take more features and inspiration from iPad's software.

For the iPhone Fold, Apple will likely introduce multitasking capabilities, like Split View, or even some sort of window tiling. It could even support the Apple Pencil, although there's no hard evidence of that just yet. On the other hand, the Mac will require better touch-based interactivity. Ultimately, Apple could offer a Stage Manager-like experience, where users might be able to turn it on or off depending on how they want to use their Mac. This could affect how some elements are displayed, and bug-free software will be key to ensuring customers aren't frustrated.

With iOS 26, Apple introduced a few new battery features, even though these features don't improve battery life for devices. Still, iOS now shows how long it will take until your battery gets to 80%, and there's even a battery menu that shows how much you used your phone compared to the same day last week as well how much time you spent in a specific app. Users have more data than ever about their consumption habits and what's been impacting their battery life.

Finally, Apple added a new Adaptive Mode, which lets your phone make performance adjustments to extend battery life, such as lowering the brightness of the display, delaying background updates, and even pro-actively turning on Low Power Mode at 20%. While it's unclear what other battery features Apple might add in iOS 27, if users can see the improvements immediately after updating, not only could this boost software update adoption, but it could also lead to increased interest in iPhone models with less impressive battery life, like the iPhone Air.