I know that on the iPhone 17 (which I just got) there's adaptive power mode. I read about this, and from my understanding, it'll sometimes slow things down in order to conserve battery. I'd imagine that when this occurs, VoiceOver can get pretty laggy, so I've turned it off.
I'm curious if anyone has it on, and what your experience is if and when it is ever in use. Do you notice a significant difference with battery or not really?
Loving the new phone so far, though! Very responsive with VoiceOver and I'm really enjoying the high quality sound.
Comments
I haven't Noticed a Performance Hit
I haven't noticed significant slowing with the feature turned on. I'm using an iPhone 15 Pro.
No difference
Same, using 15 pro make no difference to VoiceOver at all.
does it slow things down?
I know it causes certain things to take longer if activated. Not sure what these are. Making sure there hasn't been a noticeable delay in things like, say, messages or WhatsApp.
I think it's mostly for heavier tasks
I think the performance reduction is mostly for heavier tasks, not for things like messaging. I've used adaptive power mode for a while now and honestly, I haven't noticed any slowdowns whatsoever.
Duo Lingo
I tried it out on my 15 pro Max when I updated to iOS 26, but turned it off pretty quickly. I use Duo Lingo daily for, well, language learning, even though they have other things you can learn. Anyway, to the point, i found before iOS 26 that even on iOS 18, when my iPhone or iPad went into low power mode, Duo would start to lag, and VoiceOver got choppy and slow to respond. Turning off low power mode would get the app and VO working well again. I found that the adaptive power mode did the same thing on my iPhone, even when low power mode wasn't on. Since that's one of my heavier used apps, I just disabled it. I wasn't noticing any difference at all in battery life anyway.
They really need to take VO into consideration with the low power mode/adaptive settings. Maybe they have since the initial release. Maybe I'll give it another try just to be sure.
GPS Accuracy
"I use an iPhone 16 Pro, which has a dual-band GPS module. Thanks to this, navigation is much more precise, but when I turned on adaptive power mode, the accuracy dropped. The phone guided me just as if I were using a standard GPS module. So, if precise navigation is important to you, I don’t recommend turning this mode on."
Keep in mind it's not always active
Keep in mind, adaptive power mode only kicks in if you are using what your phone determines to be, more battery than usual, at that point in the day. Or at least that's how I understand it.
re: GPS accuracy
Interesting tip about the GPS. How do you think this would impact things like Aira, when using it for navigation?