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Apple's 80% Charging Limit for iPhone: How Much Did It Help After a Year?
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Update: Had my physically-damaged iPhone 15 swapped for a (like) new one under AppleCare today at the mall—cycle count back to zero. Battery manufacture date of July 2024.
Now I’m really not sure about upgrading to a 16-whatever; I probably won’t, given this new lease on (battery) life. But I certainly will be keeping the charge limit set to 80%, save for the occasional need to fully charge.
I hope Apple adds this to M4 MacBook through battery settings (not using tweak via Terminal), because I plug my MacBook to external monitor all day long in office and it always charge Macbook battery.
My 15 Pro max after 1 Year:
234 Cycles - 100% Max Cap..
I used mostly the 80% - sometimes 100% when I needed it (travel eg)
Always charged it as often as possible - here the 80% limit helped a lot!
Over night always "slow" - meaning 10-12W Brick with Magsafe - rarely used USB-C
My new 16 Pro Max is now set to 85% Limit - thats more enough for my "normal day"..
234 Cycles - 100% Max Cap..
I used mostly the 80% - sometimes 100% when I needed it (travel eg)
Always charged it as often as possible - here the 80% limit helped a lot!
Over night always "slow" - meaning 10-12W Brick with Magsafe - rarely used USB-C
My new 16 Pro Max is now set to 85% Limit - thats more enough for my "normal day"..
99% on “optimized charging” after one year on my 15Pro. Only 136 cycles, though. I place it on a puck nightly…
As to keeping your phone set to 80% while replacing it annually, Juli… I’m not sure there’s much in it. If a similar article appears in a year, we’ll see how my phone battery has held up…
As to keeping your phone set to 80% while replacing it annually, Juli… I’m not sure there’s much in it. If a similar article appears in a year, we’ll see how my phone battery has held up…
I see a lot of people with cycle counts in the high 200s and ofter over 300. What are you doing with your phones? Are you sitting in front of it for the whole day? This is an honest question. E.g. I am close to 200 after one year and I charge the phone nearly every day.
Charge limit 100%. Optimised charging on. Overnight charging by MagSafe. Top up charging where needed by either MagSafe or USB-C
Health 93%
Cycles 424
Glad I didn’t deprive myself of 20% of my day to day battery life limiting it to 80% charge
Health 93%
Cycles 424
Glad I didn’t deprive myself of 20% of my day to day battery life limiting it to 80% charge
The alleged utility of this feature makes no sense to me, longterm or not. If you only ever charge to 80%, then you only ever get 80% of the battery life, so who cares if it's capable of charging above that level or not?
Meanwhile, I've never limited the charging of my 15 Pro Max's battery, and after 358 cycles (of I'd guess mostly wireless charging) and very intense daily use since basically Day One, its max capacity is still 88%. So after a full year, I'm still getting more than anyone who's been limiting themselves to 80%—especially if we ignore the degradation of their own batteries, which lessens what their 80% actually means—and have enjoyed longer battery life the entire time.
This feature doesn't even make sense to me to use once "full" capacity drops to 80% or lower, because then you're only getting 80% of that capacity (which for me now would only be 70.4%, for example). IMO it's a clever PR trick, but functionally useless in the real world.
Meanwhile, I've never limited the charging of my 15 Pro Max's battery, and after 358 cycles (of I'd guess mostly wireless charging) and very intense daily use since basically Day One, its max capacity is still 88%. So after a full year, I'm still getting more than anyone who's been limiting themselves to 80%—especially if we ignore the degradation of their own batteries, which lessens what their 80% actually means—and have enjoyed longer battery life the entire time.
This feature doesn't even make sense to me to use once "full" capacity drops to 80% or lower, because then you're only getting 80% of that capacity (which for me now would only be 70.4%, for example). IMO it's a clever PR trick, but functionally useless in the real world.
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It’s absolutely made a world of difference for me. Lately it seems the phone (15 Pro) is a little more power hungry but my app usage has also changed. Rarely do I have to charge before I’m home at the end of the day
With the iPhone 15 models that came out last year, Apple added an opt-in battery setting that limits maximum charge to 80 percent. The idea is that never charging the iPhone above 80 percent will increase battery longevity, so I kept my iPhone at that 80 percent limit from September 2023 to now, with no cheating.
My iPhone 15 Pro Max battery level is currently at 94 percent with 299 cycles. For a lot of 2024, my battery level stayed above 97 percent, but it started dropping more rapidly over the last couple of months.
I left my iPhone at that 80 percent limit and at no point turned the setting off or tweaked it. There were some days when I ran out of battery because I was without a charger for most of the day, and there were other times that I had to bring a battery along to make sure I didn't run out of power. It wasn't always convenient to keep it at 80 percent, but there were days when it didn't have too much of an impact.
It was always a treat when the iPhone randomly decided to charge to 100 percent, which is something Apple has baked in to the 80 percent limit to ensure the battery level stays calibrated.
For the most part, I charged using USB-C rather than MagSafe, but there was some MagSafe charging mixed in. There was probably a 70/30 split between wired charging and MagSafe charging. I did often let my battery get quite low before charging, and it didn't sit on the charger for long periods of time too often. Most charging was done in a room at 72 degrees. I'm adding this context because temperature is a factor that can affect battery longevity, and wireless charging is warmer than wired charging.
You can compare your level battery to mine, but here are a couple other metrics from MacRumors staff that also have an iPhone 15 Pro Max and did not have the battery level limited.
I don't have a lot of data points for comparison, but it does seem that limiting the charge to 80 percent kept my maximum battery capacity higher than what my co-workers are seeing, but there isn't a major difference. I have four percent more battery at 28 more cycles, and I'm not sure suffering through an 80 percent battery limit for 12 months was ultimately worth it.
- Current capacity: 87%. Cycles: 329
- Current capacity: 90%. Cycles: 271
It's possible that the real gains from an 80 percent limit will come in two or three years rather than a single year, and I'll keep it limited to 80 percent to see the longer term impact.
I did set my iPhone 16 Pro Max to an 80 percent limit, but I don't know if I want to continue the test given the lackluster results I had from 2023 to 2024. Will the thermal changes in the iPhone 16 models make any difference? Maybe, maybe not. There's a 90 percent charge limit option too, and that might be more feasible than 80 percent for most people, especially those that have phones with smaller batteries.
Let me know your current battery capacity and cycle count in the comments below, and weigh in on whether you think Apple's limits are worthwhile.
Article Link: Apple's 80% Charging Limit for iPhone: How Much Did It Help After a Year?
Initially, it was charged with quick charging but now is charged either with MagSafe at 7.5W or USB-C previously with a MBA (M1) adapter but now 7.5W typically in low power mode. If I’m ever in a time crunch I’ll do quick charging.
Sitting pretty at 100% and 229 cycles. I do my best to stay between 20% and 80% and maybe let it die once a month.
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The way you presented it, it’s like as if we have no choice of charging to 100% if we need.
For me, the limit to 80% setting is only activated when I have charger access i.e. at office, from Monday to Friday. And guess what? After 336 cycles, my battery health is at 97%.
When I need to have a full charge like in the weekends or when I travel, now I can have 97% of battery capacity compared to day 1. And no matter how you charge yours, you have 88%. That’s the difference.
What’s worse is that Apple will not replace your battery if you cannot drive the health down to below 80%. They won’t even if you’re willing to pay the out of warranty cost.
So, to conclude, my cost of maintaining battery health is only flipping a switch between limiting to 80% or 100% on Friday and Monday. I always have the battery life when I need.
15 Pro Max (manufacture date 10/2023, first use 11/23), almost entirely using magsafe charging, 80% limit since not long (couple of weeks?) after start of use:
Battery health Normal
Max capacity 100%
cycle count 140
i suspect the real benefit will be better battery health in a couple of years time
Battery health Normal
Max capacity 100%
cycle count 140
i suspect the real benefit will be better battery health in a couple of years time
I chose to do exactly the same this year anticipating keeping the 15 pro max for 2yrs. It was doing great and was at 100% quite literally up to 10 months. At which I saw a drop in a couple of percentage. It then started dropping massively over a 2 month period down to 93%. This didn’t seem right to me, so contacted apple support. By the time they gave me the call back 2 days later it had dropped to 91%. After diagnostics were carried out they told me nothing was wrong and this percentage drop is to be expected. 9% in 8 weeks seems strange to me, especially as it’s new phone season. 🤔
15 pro max - 100% (no limit) But Optimized charing on (so perhaps its alwyas at 80%) (will that show as 100% if not then it almost never kick in, because it always charges to 100% in display)
maximumkapacity 99%
Cycles 191
Produced Juli 2023
First use September 2023
maximumkapacity 99%
Cycles 191
Produced Juli 2023
First use September 2023
iPhone 15 Pro Max, 93% after 271 cycles. Never used the 80% limit and I always charge wirelessly.