An Apple iPhone 7s is seen in the upgraded Apple store on Regent Street on October 13, 2016 in London, England. (Photo : Getty Images/Leon Neal)
Apple releases iOS 10 or other software updates to keep iPhones both new and old running well but it turns out that some, including third-party updates, actually drain the battery of smartphones even more.
It is no secret that smartphones, both Android and iOS, have short battery lives. Most smartphones today, even flagships, can only last roughly a whole day with moderate use.
While there are other smartphones with larger battery capacities, they do not necessarily have the best specs or design in that matter. Now, a consumer watchdog has conducted a research into what drains smartphone batteries faster.
The Which? Consumer watchdog had an investigation regarding how iPhones and other mobile devices performed after a software update was downloaded and installed, Mirror.co.uk has learned. They found out that some devices perform even worse than when they were not updated at all.
One of the cases presented was a Google Nexus 6P which lost about 3 hours of battery life after it got upgraded to Android 7.0 Nougat from Android 6.0 Marshmallow. In comparison, the Apple iPhone 6 had 38 minutes less battery life when it got upgraded to iOS 10 from iOS 8.
Users do not really have much of a choice as updates patch up security vulnerabilities which can be more harmful in the long run. One Microsoft Surface Pro 3 tablet also lost 30 GB of storage due to an upgrade, Telegraph reported.
Richard Headland from Which? said: " Given how much we rely on mobile devices, companies should do more to tell us about the possible downsides of updates, as well as the benefits."
Despite the findings, Apple and Google still did not comment on the issue. Their updates do patch up vulnerabilities and exploits but the overall performance of their smartphones end up to be worse by a noticeable percentage after upgrading.
