How to Fix Bad iPhone X Battery Life

If your iPhone X battery life starts draining rapidly or if it’s no longer holding a solid charge, you don’t need to bring it into an Apple Store. At least not yet.

While many iPhone X users are enjoying the device’s battery life, others are experiencing abnormal battery drain. Severe battery drain is a common iPhone issue and it often pops up after Apple releases new software for its mobile devices.

While some iPhone X users are reporting abnormal battery loss on older versions of iOS 12, others have taken a hit after installing the iOS 12.1.4 update.

Unless you have a defective battery, you should be able to fix your bad iPhone X battery life from the comfort of your office or computer chair at home. You just need some patience and some free time.

In this guide we’ll take you through the first steps to take if your iPhone X battery life starts acting up. We’ll also provide you with some tips that could help you prevent future iPhone X battery problems.

Restart Your iPhone X

If you start noticing faster battery drain than usual, the first thing to do is restart your iPhone X. This works a little bit different on Apple’s new flagship.

To completely turn off the iPhone X, you need to press and hold the side button and either volume button (up or down) at the same time. Slide to power the phone down.

Restarting your iPhone X will only take a few seconds, but it could have a positive effect on your device’s battery life.

Use Low Power Mode

If you’re a veteran iPhone user you’re probably aware of the built-in Low Power mode. If the iPhone X is your first iPhone, know that Low Power Mode is your friend.

Your iPhone X comes with a battery-saving function called Low Power Mode which shuts off functions that could be draining your battery. For example, Low Power Mode kills Hey Siri, automatic downloads, and mail fetch.

When your iPhone X gets down to 20% or below, you should receive a prompt beckoning you to turn Low Power Mode on. You can also manually turn Low Power Mode on whenever you want.

If you need to conserve battery, head into Settings, tap Battery, tap Low Power Mode, and and toggle it On whenever you need to save a few battery percentage points. We also recommend dropping a shortcut into your iPhone X’s Control Center.

On the iPhone X, you pull Control Center up with a swipe from the top right of the display (as opposed to a swipe up from the bottom of the screen on previous iPhones). There, you’ll find a list of handy shortcuts. Low Power Mode isn’t there by default, but you can add it in seconds from Settings.

Head into Settings, tap Control Center, tap Customize Controls, and tap the green plus sign next to Low Power Mode. Go back to Control Center and toggle Low Power Mode on and off whenever you want.

Use Greyscale

If you want to squeeze a ton of battery life out of your iPhone X and you don’t mind viewing the world in black and white, here’s a nifty trick to try out.

First, go into your Settings app, tap General, tap Accessibility, and tap Display Accommodations. Next, tap Color Filters and now toggle “Color Filters” on. After that, tap the “Grayscale” option.

Once that’s done you need to invest your iPhone X display’s colors. In Display Accommodations, tap Invert Colors and then toggle “Classic Invert” on.

For the full effect, toggle Low Power Mode on.

Check Your Apps

Apps like Facebook have been known to suck up iPhone battery life and there’s a good chance one your apps is causing your iPhone X battery to drain fast. Fortunately, it’s investigate your apps on your own.

Before you make an appointment to see an Apple Genius, check your iPhone X apps. To do that, head into your Settings, tap Battery, and check out the Battery Usage tool. This handy tool shows you the apps doing the most damage to your iPhone X’s battery life.

If you notice something out of the ordinary, like an lightly used app heavily draining your battery, delete the app to see if your battery life improves. You can always re-install the app if you determine it’s not the actual source of the drain.

If can’t do without the app, check for an update on the App Store. Developers have been rolling out a steady stream of support updates so there’s a chance the latest bug fixes will remedy your issue.

Use Wi-Fi

Use Wi-Fi whenever you can. If your iPhone X is connected to a cellular network (LTE, 4G, Edge), its battery will drain a little bit faster. When you can, use Wi-Fi.

Use Airplane Mode

If you start noticing extreme battery drain, flip on the iPhone X’s Airplane Mode.

Airplane Mode, which can be accessed via your Settings app or via Control Center, kills all of your connections including Bluetooth, cellular data, and Wi-Fi.

If you’re currently in an area with horrible service, your iPhone X is going to work hard to obtain a signal. When your iPhone X is working hard, its power is probably draining rapidly.

Manage Your OLED Display

Your iPhone X comes with a beautiful 5.8-inch OLED display. However, if you don’t manage it properly, it can put a major dent into your battery life.

If your iPhone X’s screen is bright for no reason, you might be losing precious battery percentage points. Auto Brightness is typically accurate, but there are times where it will misread your environment.

If your iPhone X is sometimes too bright for your needs, try manually adjusting the display to better suit your lighting conditions. To do this, you’ll need to turn Auto Brightness off.

Head on into Settings, tap General, tap Accessibility, tap Display Accommodations, and toggle Auto-Brightness off. Once you’ve shut Auto Brightness off, you’ll need to manually adjust your screen brightness. This is easy on the iPhone X.

Simply pull up Control Center (swipe from the top right of the display) and adjust your screen as needed. You can also adjust the brightness in the Settings app, but Control Center is a lot faster.

Turn Off Raise to Wake

The iPhone X features a handy Raise to Wake feature that automatically turns your screen on when you pick up the phone. If you don’t need your screen to automatically turn on every time you pick up your phone, turn off Raise to Wake. Doing so could save you some battery.

Go into the Settings app, tap Display & Brightness, and toggle the Raise to Wake function off. Your screen will now stay off whenever you pickup your device, but you might save power.

You can always turn this feature back on if you don’t notice any major improvements.

Avoid Dynamic Backgrounds

You might be tempted to showcase the iPhone X’s beautiful screen with a dynamic background. Animated wallpapers look great on the iPhone X, but they can chew into your battery life.

If you want to save a little bit of power, stick to static wallpapers. Your iPhone X comes with a ton of stock wallpapers and there are thousands available across the internet.

Turn Off Fitness Tracking

Your iPhone X comes with an M11 motion coprocessor that can track your steps and other activities. If you’re trying to stay in shape, by all means, leave fitness tracking on. However, if you don’t need your iPhone X to track your movements, try turning this feature off to conserve battery life.

Head into your Settings app and tap Privacy. From there, select Motion & Fitness and toggle the Fitness Tracking function off. You also might want to toggle off apps listed below Fitness Tracking in that menu.

Reset Network Settings

If none of those fixes work, it’s time to take some more drastic measures.

The first thing we recommend is resetting your iPhone X’s Network Settings. To do that, head into Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.

This will cause your device to forget stored Wi-Fi passwords so make sure you have those handy before you start this process. It should only take a few seconds to complete.

Reset All Settings

If that doesn’t work, try resetting all of your settings. To do that, head to Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Settings and then enter your passcode if you have one enabled on your device.

The process might take a few minutes and it will restore your device’s settings to their factory defaults so make sure you have those Wi-Fi passwords handy.

Update

If you’re running an older version of iOS on your iPhone X, try upgrading to iOS 12.1.4. We, and many others, are having an excellent experience on Apple’s latest version of iOS 12.

Downgrade

If you started noticing battery drain after installing a new iOS update and you don’t mind dropping back to older software, you can try downgrading.

If you were having a good experience on a previous version of iOS, this is worth a shot, assuming a downgrade loophole is open. Apple closes them up fairly quickly.

Buy a Battery Case or Battery Bank

If you’re willing to spend money to improve your iPhone X’s battery life, look into battery cases and battery packs.

You might look into a battery case for your iPhone X. There aren’t a ton of options out there yet, but we plan to add some to our list of the best iPhone X cases in the near future.

If you don’t want to cover up your device with a bulky case, and we don’t blame you if you don’t, thinking about buying a battery bank.

Battery banks are small lightweight gadgets that give you multiple charges. A device like the the RAVPower battery pack can give you six full iPhone charges before it needs to be recharged.

We also recommend Mophie’s powerstation plus mini and the Anker Powercore 20100.

Restore or Factory Reset

If nothing works you can take the nuclear route.

Assuming you’ve backed up the data your iPhone X, you can try restoring from an iTunes or iCloud backup. You can also try starting from scratch.

Restoring your iPhone X to its factory defaults could help cure your battery life problems. If you want to start anew, head into Settings, tap General, tap Reset, and select Erase All Content and Settings.

Just make sure you backup all of your irreplaceable photos and videos before you make this choice.

Install iOS 14.8.1 for Better Security

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If security is important to you, think about installing iOS 14.8.1 right away. The iOS 14.8.1 update brings 12 new security patches to the iPhone. You can read about all of them over on Apple's site.  If you want to better protect your iPhone and its data, you'll want to install the iOS 14.8.1 update in the near future.  If you missed iOS 14.8, you'll get its security patches with your upgrade. You can learn more about them right here.  If you missed iOS 14.7.1, you'll get its patch with your upgrade. If you want to learn more about iOS 14.7.1's security update, check out its support page. If you missed iOS 14.7, you'll get its 31 security patches with your upgrade. You can learn more about those on Apple's website.  If you skipped iOS 14.6, you'll get the update's 38 security patches with your iOS 14.8.1 update. If you're curious about the particulars, you can read about them right here. If you skipped iOS 14.5.1, you get the update's two security patches on board. You can read about them over on Apple's website. Both are related to WebKit.  If you missed iOS 14.5 you'll get its patches with your upgrade. You can read more about those changes over on Apple's website. iOS 14.5 also brought Apple's new App Tracking Transparency which lets you control which apps are allowed to track your activity across other companies' apps and websites for ads or sharing with data brokers. If you skipped iOS 14.4.2, you get its security patch with iOS 14.8.1. You can learn more about that patch over on Apple's website as well.  If you missed iOS 14.4.1, you get its patch with your upgrade to iOS 14.8.1. You can read about that patch right here. If you skipped iOS 14.4, you get the update's patches with your upgrade. You can learn more about iOS 14.4's security patches right here.  If you skipped iOS 14.3 you'll get its nine security updates with your upgrade. You can read more about them on its security site.  iOS 14.3 also included a new privacy information section on App Store pages that includes a developer-reported summary of the app’s privacy practices. If you skipped iOS 14.2, your iOS 14.8.1 update includes 24 additional security patches. You can learn more about the patches on Apple's security website.  If you're still running iOS 13, iOS 14.8.1 includes iOS 14.0's security updates.  iOS 14.0 brought 11 new security patches to the iPhone. If you're interested in the exact nature of these improvements, you can read about them over on Apple's website. In addition to those patches, iOS 14 comes with some security and privacy upgrades including improvements to Home/HomeKit and Safari.  For instance in Safari, you can now tap the Privacy Report button to better understand how websites handle your privacy. With iOS 14 on board you can now get information on the App Store that will help you understand the privacy practices of apps before you download them.  There is also a new recording indicator that will appear at the top of your screen whenever an app is using your microphone or camera. You can see if an app has used them recently in Control Center. Researchers also discovered that Apple brought a new "BlastDoor" sandbox security system to iOS 14. The system is meant to prevent attacks from occurring via the Messages app.  You can read more about "BlastDoor" right here.

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