iPhone 14 Pro Max battery drain test: here’s how much battery Apple’s always-on display drains compared to Samsung

Highlights
  • The iPhone 14 Pro Max with its Always-On-Display (AOD) has undergone a battery drain test 
  • The iPhone 14 Pro Max loses 20 percent battery life over a course of 24 hours with wallpaper being turned on with AOD when left idle
  • The iPhone 14 Pro Max however returns 100 percent of battery status over the same period when AOD is turned off

The iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max introduced Always-on display for the first time on an iPhone and the latter has now been tested for battery drain. PhoneBuff has tested the battery drain on the iPhone 14 Pro Max in scenarios where the AOD is switched off, switched on and switched along with the wallpaper integration. The iPhone 14 Pro Max came out with a solid 100 percent battery status when the AOD was turned off over a course of 24 hours; however, it dropped by a sizeable amount when the feature was kept on.

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However, the report also suggests that in real-world conditions the device is expected to perform better given that Apple switches the AOD off in real time if the device is inside a pocket/sleeve, left unattended or in other AI-enabled conditions. 

iPhone 14 Pro Max battery stats with AOD tested

The test was conducted under well-lit conditions with illuminance being set at 1000lx, similar to outdoor lighting, and spanned over a time period of 24 hours. The battery drain was observed to be negligible when the AOD was switched off as the iPhone 14 Pro Max retained 100 percent charge. When the AOD was switched on without the wallpaper integration, the battery status dropped to 84 percent over the same course. The battery toll was slightly higher when the wallpaper integration was left turned on along with the AOD. The battery dipped to about 80 percent. 

While the battery was most hit with the wallpaper integration switched on when AOD was working, the gap between the feature being turned on and off can be negligible. The iPhone 14 Pro lost just 0.17 percent more charge per hour with the wallpaper integration turned on with AOD. This shows that contrary to popular belief, the iPhone 14 Pro Max does not lose much more battery with the wallpaper being shown on AOD. 

Apple vs Android AOD

This can be credited to the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s LTPO panel which has a variable refresh rate that considerably brings down the charge being consumed. Apple’s LTPO panel reduces down to 1Hz whereas most Android devices in comparison get down to about 10Hz. This alone makes power management on the iPhone 14 Pro Max even more efficient. It is also important to mention that AOD switches off automatically under certain conditions such as when the iPhone is kept in a pocket or a sleeve.

Phone Buff also directly compared the battery performance of the iPhone 14 Pro Max with the AOD of the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. The iPhone 14 Pro Max’s AOD was set up without the wallpaper to maintain standardisation. The math takes into account the general drop in battery life when on standby and the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra consumed less battery by up to 5 percent when compared to the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

The iPhone 14 Pro and the iPhone 14 Pro Max is the first iPhone model in history to get the Always-On-Display (AOD) feature. The display technology has been present on the Apple Watch and other competing flagship smartphones for some time now.