With iOS 18, your iPhone can tell the time even when battery is near-dead

The iPhone is a wonderfully versatile device, but if you've forgotten to charge it, and its battery has gone down below 1%, it's as useful as a brick, as it only displays an icon indicating that the battery is dead.

That was before iOS 18, though. As some Redditors noted (via MacRumors), an iPhone running iOS 18 developer beta shows some additional info when the battery's depleted. This includes the time, in the upper left corner, as well as a notice that the iPhone can be found (via Find My) and that express cards and keys are available.

As MacRumors noted, this appears to work only on iPhone 15 models (possibly only the Pro models); an iPhone 14 Pro Max did not show the time when its battery was nearly depleted.

This feature is part of an older feature called Power Reserve, which allows you to retain some functionality even when the phone is off, or its battery charge is extremely low. This includes NFC tags, cards, and digital keys, all of which can continue to work in Power Reserve mode for a few hours after battery reaches critically low levels. Note that Power Reserve is not the same as Low Power Mode, which saves battery life and can be turned on manually, whereas Power Reserve turns on automatically when the battery is almost dead.

While not exactly revolutionary, the new feature does make the phone just a tiny bit more usable when it's extremely low on battery, so we're chalking it up as another iOS 18 win. The new software also brings several other battery-related improvements, which we've listed for you.