Apple’s new “adaptive power” mode, which aims to prolong the battery life of the best iPhones, is one of our favorite new features included with the iOS 26 developer beta. Unfortunately, it appears that in order to take advantage of the advantages, you will need an iPhone 15 Pro model or later.

Adaptive power mode helps your iPhone make “small performance adjustments to extend your battery life,” like lowering screen brightness and “allowing some activities to take a little longer,” according to Apple’s description in the iOS 26 developer preview. Your phone will automatically reduce its energy consumption when this setting is activated in order to extend the time between charges.

The iPhone’s low power mode, which limits background activity and switches on automatically when your battery reaches 20%, is not the same as adaptive power mode.

The functionality is exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 series, according to a MacRumors story from the weekend. Although iOS 26 works with phones as old as the iPhone 11, adaptive power mode is only available on devices that can run Apple Intelligence because it is driven by artificial intelligence.

The complete list of iPhone models that support iOS 26’s new adaptive power mode is provided below:

iPhone 15 Pro
iPhone 15 Pro Max
iPhone 16e
iPhone 16
iPhone 16 Plus
iPhone 16 Pro
iPhone 16 Pro Max

The iOS 26 developer beta comes with Adaptive Power activated by default, but you can also find it in the Settings menu’s Battery > Power Mode section next to Low Power Mode.

Last month, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg first revealed that Apple was developing a function that would optimize batteries using artificial intelligence. Gurman stated at the time that the feature will determine which apps to reduce power usage from by using the “battery data it has collected from users’ devices.”