The battery life in the iPhone 6 was finally not terrible and while the iPhone 6S hasn't really pushed that ability on any further, it's still in the mix with the top smartphones on the market.
That doesn't mean it has stellar battery life by any stretch though, as it will still struggle to last the day. It's only saved by the fact that most of the other top phones - the Samsung Galaxy S6, the HTC One M9 and the LG G4 - all can't manage the same thing either, the handsets all desperately trying to fire more pixels in the screen or update more apps to provide a richer experience.
What is cool is that Apple now provides more info as to what's going on behind the scenes with the battery. Not only does it tell you what's been nabbing all your power in the last 24 hours / week, but it will also tell you how much of that was background and foreground effort.
iPhone 6S review
That means if you see Facebook is taking most of your battery and constantly updating when you're not looking, you can disable it to get back that life (and not really lose much functionality).
Or perhaps it's an app that's acting up - if so, delete it and reinstall and you'll probably find it behaves itself much better the next time around. You understand that apps you're looking at all day long drain the battery - anything on the screen is a power hog - but when you can finally get a handle on what's doing it tin the background you can really begin to manage your battery better.
That doesn't mean I was able to really get a lot of battery life out of the iPhone though. Even when I'd managed to get rid of the apps that were taking the most power, things like Apple Music would pop up and take their space, despite not being in the foreground.
The battery life issue doesn't seem to be based on anything in particular - if you're listening to a lot of music on Spotify or keeping things updating in the background then it'll eat the power without you really noticing, leading to around 30% when it's time to go home.
Keeping the screen brightness down will help a little here - but if Apple could make an OLED screen work on the iPhone then it would take back even more battery life.
The reason could have been shown off at the Apple launch itself: the iPhone 6S was seen in a video sporting 1715mAh battery, which is much lower than the 1810mAh offering placed in the iPhone 6 - that additional 3D Touch circuitry certainly seems to have come at a price.
In terms of out and out testing, we ran a Full HD at full brightness for 90 minutes from full power. The iPhone 6S dropped down to 70% power left, which isn't a great score. It's even worse when you consider that the iPhone 6 managed to get to only 74% in the same test - like for like, the older model is capable of running longer.
Low Power Mode
Finally, iOS 9 offers the chance for you to extend your iPhone battery life further by simply tagging an option in the settings.
The move will disable certain aspects like the phone constantly listening out for you saying 'Hey Siri', or keeping your mail updated in the background.
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