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I imagine the iOS UI design team would veto this, but for those of us with smaller phones, why not give us the option to toggle between a battery icon and a percentage number?
What I don't get here is that it basically is only a percentage number. They just put a weird battery themed frame around it. Unless its just not finished yet, and they plan to have the battery actually animate in the next beta...
 


Apple this week brought back one of the most highly requested features from iOS users since the launch of the iPhone X in 2017: the ability to see your battery percentage directly in the status bar.

iOS-16-battery-percentage.jpg

Ever since the launch of the iPhone X with the notch, Apple has not allowed users to show their battery percentage directly in the status bar, forcing them to swipe down into Control Center to glance at their current battery level.

With the launch of iOS 16 in just a few weeks, that's set to change. The fifth developer beta of iOS 16 includes a new toggle that allows users to always show their battery percentage in the status bar.

ios-16-battery-indicator-2.jpg

When Low Power Mode is enabled, the battery glyph and the percentage turn yellow, and when low on battery, it turns red. When charging your iPhone, it turns green. The battery percentage is visible in the status bar across the system, including on the Lock Screen.

All flagship iPhones since the iPhone X have had a notch, yet not all customers with notched iPhones will gain this new feature.

Here is the list of iPhones that will gain the ability to display the battery percentage directly in the status bar:

  • iPhone 13 Pro Max
  • iPhone 13 Pro
  • iPhone 13
  • iPhone 12 Pro Max
  • iPhone 12 Pro
  • iPhone 12
  • iPhone 11 Pro Max
  • iPhone 11 Pro
  • iPhone XS Max
  • iPhone XS
  • iPhone X

All other iPhones, including the smaller iPhone 13 mini and iPhone 12 mini, the iPhone 11, and the iPhone XR, do not have the battery percentage option. As iOS 16 is still in beta testing, Apple may decide to expand the list to include other iPhones in the future so we'll have to wait and see.
While it's not entirely clear why Apple has chosen to limit the availability of this feature, it may be due to space constraints on the smaller displays.

Article Link: Apple Limiting iOS 16 Beta 5 Battery Percentage Display to Select iPhones: Here Are the Supported Devices
This is the reason the term "first world problem" was invented. Seriously, let's all get some perspective.
 
Ok, I’ve either got a weird phone (8) or not understanding this thread as my battery percentage is on the screen - or are we only talking
about phones with a notch?
Yes one's with the notch except the exceptions listed can have the number inside the battery icon. Non notch can have the % next to the battery icon
 
Solution. Only display the battery icon outline and the number inside.

That way the background of the icon wouldn’t trick you.

instead of this:

191-C5-B71-7145-4-D0-A-9-AE2-13-A9-A6816-BC4.jpg



it could be like this:
C5-BCAE28-4671-4291-933-B-2-B4830-C25-DA4.jpg
 
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Have a 13 Mini. Not caring about a lil number inside the battery indicator. With fast charging & just being a little bit aware, the 20% warning is all I need.
 
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Have a 13 Mini. Not caring about a lil number inside the battery indicator. With fast charging & just being a little bit aware, the 20% warning is all I need.
They definitely need to make the font bigger so it is not just inside the icon or make the font color always contrast well with the icon color, and not be transparent.
 
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Have a 13 Mini. Not caring about a lil number inside the battery indicator. With fast charging & just being a little bit aware, the 20% warning is all I need.
I also have a 13 mini. I also don’t care about it. Obviously, if I did, I would have bought a android or something. However. I’m looking at the battery icon right now. There is plenty of space above and below it. A tiny little number CAN fit. What a stupid thing to say, that it couldn’t fit.

Edit: stupid thing of Apple to say. I know you didn’t say it.
 
It's funny, battery percentage was introduced back on 2009's iPhone 3GS but the current iPhone 13 mini can't do it.

And it's true, coincidentally it's the cheapest models of the last 4 years that have been excluded.
 
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apple is ridicolous. it drives me angry when i want to see date but my iphone its charging so i see the % battery instead of the date, and have to wait some seconds before it shows, like it wasnt possible to use another line of the screen. now i imagine how its possible to show battery % only on selected iphones....
 
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Seems to me that the Macrumors forum can put perfectly legible text in a box with a very similar vertical height as the battery icon on my 13 Mini and I’m not even using the smallest system font size.

6BF3E043-B2D5-4B8E-B49B-C16891D9EEE4.jpeg
 
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I really don't understand why the 12/13 Mini will not have the battery indicator with IOS 16. Its obviously some kind of upselling from Apple, as the 12/13/ Mini XDR display has the highest PPI screen of any IOS device ever released, so no one can use the excuse of having a lower resolution screen here.
 
I really don't understand why the 12/13 Mini will not have the battery indicator with IOS 16. Its obviously some kind of upselling from Apple, as the 12/13/ Mini XDR display has the highest PPI screen of any IOS device ever released, so no one can use the excuse of having a lower resolution screen here.
Yeah, the resolution (or pixel density) is great, but the screen size itself might be considered a limiting factor. And if the 14 mini has a smaller notch, then that’s less space for the status bar in that size class, which could also explain Apple’s design choice.
 
So to anyone who didn’t think for more than 30 seconds and just started saying “well screw you Apple for making it an exclusive feature!” Let’s think about it for a second. All the phones excluded here are LCD-paneled devices, with an additionally much lower PPI than the OLED devices. That’s why your iPhone 11 isn’t getting the feature, there’s just simply not enough pixels for it to look good enough to be there.

“But the 12 Mini and 13 Mini have the highest PPI out there! Why doesn’t it have it??”

The answer is in the question. It’s a mini phone. Sure, the 13 Mini’s notch also got smaller with the 13 Series, but there’s still not enough real estate to fit numbers up in the battery indicator comfortably.

And you all know that if these phones DID get the battery percentage feature, and it looked off (even in the slightest), that the same people would just be throwing a different fit.
 
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