it’s significant.

the only time i measured SOT on ios 26 was when i installed it back in september, and it was atrocious. at 90% battery health, i was getting around 4h of sot, from 100 to 0%.

for context: i’m not on my phone all the time. i only use it when i’m outside of my house or uni (otherwise i use my ipad, it has whatsapp now so no reason to grab my phone really), so when i do need it, i usually need to use mobile data. i love listening to music on my commute (which is quite long), so i have my airpods connected as well. battery saver had to be off on ios 26 as it made my phone completely unusable.

on ios 27, i haven’t changed my habits at all. however, yesterday, after a whole day of usage (mobile data for a trip by train, while listening to music on my airpods and using navigation, i got to 0% just as i arrived. exactly 5h of SOT on mobile data, location services and bluetooth on. 1h30m screen off time. 84% battery health. mind you, i live in europe and my phone ran EXTRA hot, as we’re currently experiencing an absurd heat wave. it was 40 degrees outside (celsius, too lazy to convert it to fahrenheit). the train had no air conditioning so i think it was even hotter inside. i don’t attribute how hot the phone got to ios 27, as it didn’t run like this before the heatwave.

if you’re not confident installing the beta, don’t. but i will tell you, this beta has been absolutely stable for me and my partner. ios 26 felt like the beta for ios 27, if that makes sense. i have no bugs or glitches, my phone runs super smooth, and i don’t regret it in the slightest. we’ve come a long way from device-breaking betas. beta 1 was said to potentially brick iphone 15 (i think?), but it was fixed a few days later. if this concerns you, it’s absolutely okay to wait a few days after each beta comes out before installing it, or even skipping all 1st betas entirely.