Do iPhones Charge Faster On Low Power Mode?

Using our iPhones constantly in our day-to-day lives has become the norm in modern society, and we often find ourselves struggling to maintain battery life throughout the day. We combat this by finding spots to charge our iPhones, be it in the car, at work, or a coffee shop, just so our iPhone never hits that dreaded point where it dies on us just when we need it most.

As the battery dwindles, you may be asked by your iPhone if you want to put it in Low Power Mode, which disables much of the activity on your phone in order to savor that battery power for as long as it can. Getting that prompt on your iPhone never feels good, because even though it can control that decrease, you know your iPhone will only last a little bit longer. When it gets to that point, we also know that when we do eventually have the ability to plug it in it is going to take far longer than we hope it will to fully charge up back to 100%. If there was a way to make that charging process shorter, just about all of us would do that, right?

Well, if Low Power Mode reduces strain on the battery to make it last longer, maybe charging your iPhone in Low Power Mode will make it charge faster. Here's what we found with our own testing and surveying the testing of others.

Our methodology of testing charge times for the iPhone was quite simple. For each different method, the battery of the iPhone only had 13% remaining, at which point it was plugged in and the timing began until it reached 100%. There were three different tests for the iPhone. First, it charged as it normally would. Second, the iPhone was placed in Low Power Mode and charged. Third, the iPhone was turned off during its charging.

While there were differences in the charge times, they were minimal at best. The longest time period was the normal charge, which took one hour and 39 minutes to reach 100% battery power. While it charged, the maximum amount of power for the charge was 25 W, though it actually stayed around 5 W for most of the time just from observation. Unfortunately, Low Power Mode presented only a slightly better result than the normal mode, speeding things up by only five minutes for a total charge time of one hour and 34 minutes at 22 W power.

The biggest gain came from turning the iPhone off during charging, as it uses almost no power at all. To do this, you first have to plug in the iPhone and then turn it off while it charges. If you do it before, plugging it in will just turn the phone on. The iPhone reached 100% in one hour and 26 minutes, charging in the range of 22 W to 26 W.

Although there were differences in charge times, you probably need to bet on your iPhone taking about an hour and a half to fully charge if the battery's this low.

The results of our charge testing seem to mirror that of other places that have done similar tests of comparing regular charging to Low Power Mode charging. At MakeUseOf, they tested to see how much of a battery increase the iPhone would receive after 30 minutes of charging. With normal settings, the phone gained 47% battery power in 30 minutes. Testing it in Low Power Mode, it gained an identical 47% in 30 minutes.

Repeat tests varied charging percentages, and they concluded that iPhone charging is not linear. This could account for the differences in time from our testing as well. Unfortunately, Low Power Mode doesn't give a boost to the charging process for an iPhone that you might hope it would. You may get lucky and gain a couple of minutes, but in the grand scheme of things, there isn't much of a need to turn on Low Power Mode before charging. The only time you really need to use that is if you are low on battery and want to conserve it for as long as possible. After all, that is why the mode exists in the first place.