I used the iPhone 17 Pro every day: Here are the real battery life numbers

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By Victor Hristov

Published: Jan 30, 2026, 9:36 AM

This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.

I used the iPhone 17 Pro every day: Here are the real battery life numbers

It's been a few months since I switched to the iPhone 17 Pro as my daily driver, moving over from an iPhone Air, and one question kept coming up in my everyday use: how much better is the battery life, really?

On paper, Apple has been steadily increasing battery size in its smaller Pro iPhones over the past few years, and especially so in the last two years.

Just take a look at the evolution, the change is significant:

Model	Battery size	Change
iPhone 13 Pro	3,095 mAh
iPhone 14 Pro	3,200 mAh	+3.4%
iPhone 15 Pro	3,274 mAh	+2.3%
iPhone 16 Pro	3,582 mAh	+9.4%
iPhone 17 Pro	4,252 mAh US model with eSIM 3,988 mAh Global model*	+18.7% for US model +11.3% for Global model

*I used a global iPhone 17 Pro model.

And if you compare the battery size on the iPhone 17 Pro to that of the iPhone 13 Pro, there's been a nearly 37% increase.

That sounds really impressive, but specs don't always translate directly to real-world improvements. So the real question is: does the larger battery actually mean better battery life in daily use?

Well, I started tracking my usage, and here is what I got:

Victor's iPhone 17 Pro Battery Diary:

Day	Drain	Screen time
Sunday	100%	5h 14m
Monday	70%	4h 16m
Tuesday	75%	4h 44m
Wednesday	85%	4h 20m
Thursday	93%	5h 30m

At the time of recording the data, the phone was at 100% battery health and 52 battery cycles.

And here is a breakdown of my usage day by day. It's normal, everyday use — with way too much social media, and no lab tests or artificial scenarios. It's just how the iPhone 17 Pro behaves as a daily phone. Below, you can see which apps I used and which ones drained the most power.

Five days of my iPhone usage in numbers

Average Screen Time: What the numbers say

When I average out my usage over these five days, here are the numbers that I get:

Average screen time per 100%: 5 hours and 20 minutes
Average screen time per 80%: 4 hours and 40 minutes
40 minutes of screen time per 10% battery

In practice, that means the iPhone 17 Pro comfortably lasts a full day for my usage, with battery drain that scales predictably instead of dropping off a cliff in the afternoon.

How does this compare with your iPhone usage? Are you seeing similar numbers, or is your screen time different?

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Victor, a seasoned mobile technology expert, has spent over a decade at PhoneArena, exploring the depths of mobile photography and reviewing hundreds of smartphones across Android and iOS ecosystems. His passion for technology, coupled with his extensive knowledge of smartphone cameras and battery life, has positioned him as a leading voice in the mobile tech industry.

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