iPhone charging habits, battery health and 97%

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With iOS 13 and later, your iPhone learns from your daily charging habits to improve the lifespan of your battery.

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Sounds like she hasn’t abused her phone otherwise in terms of leaving it in a hot car, in direct hot summer sun, brightness at 100% with CPU intensity for hours, etc. A hot phone is going to prematurely kill it.

And mitigation software has done self management on battery degradation by preventing over charging, forcing reduced brightness, shutting it down with a heat message etc.

However, isn’t it 90% when Apple considers the battery needs replacing? So it’s really a 10% scale? Whatever the case it’s just a number. If the phone becomes a nuisance needing a charge or power brick more than a few times per day, I’d replace my battery.

AncasterRFD wrote: ↑ Sounds like she hasn’t abused her phone otherwise in terms of leaving it in a hot car, in direct hot summer sun, brightness at 100% with CPU intensity for hours, etc. A hot phone is going to prematurely kill it.

And mitigation software has done self management on battery degradation by preventing over charging, forcing reduced brightness, shutting it down with a heat message etc.

However, isn’t it 90% when Apple considers the battery needs replacing? So it’s really a 10% scale? Whatever the case it’s just a number. If the phone becomes a nuisance needing a charge or power brick more than a few times per day, I’d replace my battery.

It's 80%.

The most intensive thing on her phone is playing youtube or instagram.

Just bananas, 1.5 years took away 3% battery health.

Re. the other comments above - I had an iPhone XS and took pretty good care of it but knocked off 6% in 6 months or something. I am just saying, charging patterns and topping off unnecessarily is improving battery health and to me, it is not known to many cell phone users in general.

The conventional wisdom is to kill the battery and charging it to full which creates heat, and therefore, kills the battery life span.

OP can you check the battery cycle count on your gf’s phone. This will tell us a lot. This is how you do it. https://howchoo.com/iphone/simplest-way ... our-iphone
After burning through my first battery using it like you did, I read a lot and my second battery is a monster. The consensus of what I read was not to let it get overly hot or drain to often below 30% . It’s like us humans, if we constantly exert ourselves to exhaustion and heat stroke then we will not live as long as someone who stops at 50% and recharges while staying cool. All things being equal the second person/battery will live longer.

Tiger_paws wrote: ↑ OP can you check the battery cycle count on your gf’s phone. This will tell us a lot. This is how you do it. https://howchoo.com/iphone/simplest-way ... our-iphone
After burning through my first battery using it like you did, I read a lot and my second battery is a monster. The consensus of what I read was not to let it get overly hot or drain to often below 30% . It’s like us humans, if we constantly exert ourselves to exhaustion and heat stroke then we will not live as long as someone who stops at 50% and recharges while staying cool. All things being equal the second person/battery will live longer.

There is an easy way to copy and search through that iPhone data file IF you have a computer, just email the file to your computer and open it with something like a text editor such as TextEdit on Mac, then Edit/Find “BatteryCycleCount”.

I tried that and my 23 month old iPhone 8 shows 161 charges. Not sure how they get 161 as I rarely charge it to 100%, maybe done that 10 times. Actually I have charged it about 1000 times but just partial charges to keep the level around 40%. I use partial charges of 10 to 15 minutes to avoid heating up the phone. Battery health 98%, phone lightly used.

That sounds about right for iPhones.

Purchased my X in Jan-2018 and it is at 88% battery health with 628 cycles. A 12% loss in ~42 months

If you have a Mac, get CoconutBattery and it can read the cycle counts of the iOS device, via USB.

My phone normally ends up at <20% charge each night, and gets charged the entire night. Nothing special

I’ve always found poor data signal, leaving bluetooth and location on battery chompers thereby going through cycles faster. I still turn them off at home/work when not using to make my daily charge last longer.

BTW I leave my phone on the charger once it reaches 100% for hours if I use or don’t use my phone and unplug it when I leave. Read that leaving it on charge once it reaches 100% or unplugging it and the phone sitting on standby degrades the battery the same amount. Benefit of phone on charger is it is 100% charged when you leave. If you feel your charging cube it will be very hot to about 80% charge and then get cool b/c the battery is “trickle “ charged the rest of the way to 100% and does not degrade the battery as it sits plugged in at 100% charge for hours as it did in the early days of phones.

adams7 wrote: ↑ There is an easy way to copy and search through that iPhone data file IF you have a computer, just email the file to your computer and open it with something like a text editor such as TextEdit on Mac, then Edit/Find “BatteryCycleCount”.

I tried that and my 23 month old iPhone 8 shows 161 charges. Not sure how they get 161 as I rarely charge it to 100%, maybe done that 10 times. Actually I have charged it about 1000 times but just partial charges to keep the level around 40%. I use partial charges of 10 to 15 minutes to avoid heating up the phone. Battery health 98%, phone lightly used.

I never let my battery drop below 20% and only charge to 80%, also use a slow charger when every possible.
The last 80% to 100% is trickle charging.

You do not need to charge to 100% to complete a charge cycle.

form https://www.apple.com/ca/batteries/why-lithium-ion/

"You complete one charge cycle when you’ve used (discharged) an amount that equals 100% of your battery’s capacity — but not necessarily all from one charge. For instance, you might use 75% of your battery’s capacity one day, then recharge it fully overnight. If you use 25% the next day, you will have discharged a total of 100%, and the two days will add up to one charge cycle. It could take several days to complete a cycle."

Tiger_paws wrote: ↑OP can you check the battery cycle count on your gf’s phone. This will tell us a lot. This is how you do it. https://howchoo.com/iphone/simplest-way ... our-iphone
After burning through my first battery using it like you did, I read a lot and my second battery is a monster. The consensus of what I read was not to let it get overly hot or drain to often below 30% . It’s like us humans, if we constantly exert ourselves to exhaustion and heat stroke then we will not live as long as someone who stops at 50% and recharges while staying cool. All things being equal the second person/battery will live longer.

Just checked. 491 cycles. Still 97% battery health. She had the phone over one and a half years. Iphone XR. She always leaves the phone charging overnight so I don't think that's a factor.

Maybe the screen is not oled so the power consumption per second/minute/hour is significantly less stressful on battery?



The trick is to top it off when it hits 60% from what I can tell from her charging habits.

I always thought that Apple should offer a "stop charging at 80%" feature like some laptops and tablets. That alone will give you the best battery longevity. Lenovo has a "Battery Conservation" mode which keeps the battery at mid-charge (60% or less) when it's plugged into the mains.

I actually do that now with Shortcuts Automation. I have a Homekit switch with a charger plugged in, and the script will turn off the charger when it gets above 80% and turn the charger on when it goes below 75%.


I also turn on low power mode at night, may help the battery from updating content that I'm not going to look at until morning.

I only starting doing this since iOS 14 since the support for battery scripting was available, so I have no idea if it's going to make a difference long term over years. According to battery university articles, never going over 80% will double the longevity of the cell

Wireless charging is probably unnecessarily hard on the phone, higher heat in general. I also just use a regular slow charger if possible.

For overall battery health, try to keep the battery between 20 and 80%. The extremes are more harmful for the battery.

My phone is 32 months old and is 95%, but I'm not a heavy user.

Apple considers 80% to be a worn out battery. it's designed to last 500 full charge cycles.