slightly off topic but you folks appear to understand these issues:


i just spent a month in remote eastern oregon, out of cell range with my new iphone 14 pro. i turned off the cellular data, wifi, & bluetooth, yet when left 100% charged at night, it was near dead by morning. "Battery Level" chart in Settings showed a continuous drain throughout the night.

was this due to the GPS constantly searching? what should i do during my next visit?

thank y'all!!!!

Hard to say, wouldn't have thought it was GPS. Do iPhones show which apps where using battery power?

The only thing that keeps a modern smartphone’s battery from draining without any signal is “Airplane Mode” or turning it off.

Otherwise it spends a great deal of its battery power looking for cellular and wifi signals.

“Airplane mode” turns off the GPS, which makes the phone fairly useless for most backcountry tasks.

Depends on the phone, my GPS works in airplane mode (since its just a receiver) and OSMAnd lets you download maps for offline use so it doesn't need the cellular radio to get map data.

all very helpful. next trip north, i will test each option. airplane mode make sense, even if just sitting overnight. thanks kids!

Quite right! On iPhone, Airplane Mode turns off the GPS (or at least, it does so on every iPhone I’ve owned since the 3G). On other phones, this may or may not be the case.

That seems like a mighty fast battery drain, especially for a new phone. I've been using iPhones for years, currently using an iPhone 11, and I've never seen battery drain anywhere near that fast when not actively using the phone. Makes me think it is something other than just the GPS?

I would check to make sure you don't have some app running in the background? You can set things up so that it only uses the GPS ("location services") only when you are actively using an app.

And yes, when an iPhone is in Airplane mode it does turn the GPS off.

i've had this 14 pro (max) for a few months. it has always had great battery runtime, no issues. only problem to date has been when i was out-of-range. and yes, ALL other apps were turned off (nothing running in background).

my guess is that it could have been the GPS, so will use airplane mode next summer when i head back north. if that doesn't do it, i'll check under the BATTERY LEVEL chart to see what did draw it down. thanks everyone!

Remember though that Apple has been caught still using cellular radios even when turned off so off may not mean off.

Another one:

Man saved by iPhone technology after car plummets 400 feet over cliff on Mt. Wilson

He was out of cell phone range, so the automatic crash alert went via satellite.