iPhone 13 mini Battery Replacement Time

[ThrowerGB]

People have repeatedly stated that replaced batteries (from everywhere, even Apple Stores themselves) have a worse time-to-cycles-to-health ratio than original batteries.

Some people have theorized that replacement batteries have 100% capacity, at exact spec, unlike original batteries, which frequently have over 100%. I cannot confirm that. But I have repeatedly read statements by people saying that replaced batteries drop faster with fewer cycles.

Just curious, how many cycles does your replaced battery have?

How do I find that out?

 

[FeliApple]

How do I find that out?

Analytics, Coconut Battery on Mac, iMazing on Windows

The easiest is analytics I reckon. Enable “share analytics” in settings-privacy-analytics and wait for analytics-date-ips.ca.synced and scroll to Apple.ioreport.batterycyclecount

 

[James6s]

I’ve only had a battery replacement once, on an iPhone 11 Pro at the Apple Store. Only took an hour.

It was running iOS 16 & the battery health was 77% and it wasn’t making it through the day without being put on the charger at least once. The battery was erratic too.

Battery life and stability were restored with the battery service.

 

[RoadWarrior56]

I just replaced the battery on my iPhone 13 Mini last Saturday. I have heavily used that phone since the 2021 launch day. Battery health was still 88%, which is good for its age, but I have noticed a decline in its usable battery life, especially over the last one+ year. If I were planning to replace the phone within the next year, I would had kept the original battery. However, I plan to keep the phone for up to another 2 years, or even longer. I love the size of the phone, and unfortunately, I don't see Apple ever making a phone this size or near it ever again.

Most people seem to want to carry baby iPads in their pockets or in their purses. The phone is still fast and runs as good as new, and probably will receive at least two more years of updates. Finally, if I decided to replace the battery in another year, the replacements may be harder to find, and may cost more as well. I paid $89 at the Apple Store, and they were done in an hour. The phone now has much better battery life. I definitely notice the difference.

 

[ger19]

I had Best Buy replace the battery in my iPhone 11 Pro Max 256GB last February (14 months ago). It cost the same as Apple and they said the new battery would be Apple. I chose Best Buy for convenience. I'd booked an appointment for the service, which was to take an hour or so. When I went to pick it up, they said they didn't have the new battery in stock so I had to wait a few days and it was over a weekend so it took a little longer.

I will then probably go to the Apple Store. I don’t want to give up my phone for more than an hour or so, certainly not days. I assume that if I make an appointment, Apple will have a battery there that day.

 

[MacCheetah3]

Is Best Buy authorized, i.e. - will they use an OEM battery?

As already stated, yes; although, here’s the official:

https://getsupport.apple.com/repair-locations?locale=en_US

2. Do I need to log out of anything aside from Find My for them to do this? My phone is in as mint condition as a nearly 4 year old device can be and has lots of synced media - hoping these music and video files don't need to be wiped for a battery replacement.

Prepare your iPhone or iPad for service - Apple Support

Before you bring your device or send it to Apple for service, follow these steps to help protect your personal information and save time on your repair.

support.apple.com

I think that this battery replacement craze has to end.

Prior to iOS 11.3, people didn’t replace the battery nearly as much. Since the battery health number appeared, the obsession has been insane.

I’ve never replaced a battery. My iPhone 6s on iOS 10 (which was then being used by a family member), failed and dropped below 80% a year and 300 cycles in. What did we say? “Who cares anyway”, and I used the phone FIVE years after that with the original battery. I could still get like-new battery life on iOS 10.

You see people today with original iOS versions replacing batteries with 88%. Ridiculous. People didn’t replace the 6s Plus’ battery 8 months in. Because battery life was still amazing.

Today they do because their obsession with the stupid number has no limits.

I, generally, strongly agree.

I’m still collecting data on multiple devices, but I’ll provide a tidbit right now. With ~40% max battery capacity (a.k.a. health), a 6th generation iPad running the latest OS (at the time), iPadOS 17.5.1, was still able to stream movies/TV shows for four hours. In other words, nowhere near the mark of unusable or even inconvenient.

 

[ebika]

The constant misguided blame at battery health for battery life issues since iOS 11.3 has been ridiculous. Instead of placing blame on normal factors (usage patterns) and correct, but sad factors (iOS updates), everybody just gives the same advice: “maybe you should replace the battery”. I’ve seen people say this with iPhone 15 models! 15! I don’t care how much you’ve used it. Blaming battery health on the second-to-last model is ridiculous.

I have two questions first: what’s your usage pattern? And what iOS version are you on? Then we can start talking. But the obsession with replacing a battery as soon as it has 79%, the fact that people are now removing and suggesting to remove 40% (or more) of their batteries with a ridiculous charging pattern and so they’re suggest other people should be tied to chargers all day… I think it’s a little too much. You can do whatever you like, but I think that this is too much, especially when it comes to recommendations (as I’ll never criticize a usage pattern, but I will be critical of recommendations).

15 years of iOS experience tell me that the device will be obsolete before the battery matters if you don’t update iOS. So the issue isn’t the battery, it’s iOS updates.

Sure, if you update a battery replacement will improve it a little, but it will still be garbage when compared to my original iOS version device with 73% health. Good luck saying this to people and getting them to believe you. “There’s no way”. Only when I show screenshots do they buy it (sometimes). Due to how updates work (they increase load and power consumption so batteries can’t provide the required power eventually), battery replacements help relative to degraded batteries on updated devices, but an original iOS version device will lose compatibility and be obsolete before the battery is an issue. This is an unpopular opinion, but people don’t know because they don’t try.

I see you writing multiple things, including

1. newer iOS versions are less efficient on older devices/leverage more compute from devices
2. people can fixate on min/maxing their battery longevity and stats

I'm not going to dispute #1. I don't know if it's true, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were true. It is the nature of the space though. If Apple is going to increase computing power and usually efficiency on newer devices, which seems like the thing to do, it will have consequences for better or worse on older devices (new features, harder hits on battery for older devices).

As for #2, I won't argue there are some that have expectations on battery longevity and health that are out of whack. However, <80% battery capacity on the current generations of Li batteries is end-of-life, per the manufacturers. To me, that doesn't mean if falls off a cliff for functionality, but it certainly means the discharge curve often gets off-spec. Unexpected voltage and current delivery can and does start happening, and that's not great for experiences with electronics. Personally, it's not a big deal to replace them at that point, so I do without a lot of drama, and keep my expectations reasonable. I just don't see the reason for your passionate response to others replacing their batteries at their end-of-life (with full acknowledgement that those batteries still function, just in a degraded state).

 

[That70sGAdawg]

I recently purchased a refurb Mini 13 with 82% battery- the 16 Pro is going in a drawer for Spring/Summer months since I wear shorts then & prefer the lighter weight (unless pro needed for vacation pictures) . I took it to Apple store and had diagnostics, everything checked out & and an hour later had an $89 new battery 100%! Happy camper here

 

[nathansz]

Apple replaced the battery in my 12 mini in store in about an hour

They also broke the scratched up old glass taking it off so they installed a new screen for free

For all intents and purposes I got a brand new phone for about $100

 

[light_switch]

Someone mentioned that eventually they don’t keep certain batteries in stock. Is it possible they’re taking my money monthly for AppleCare+ but won’t have a battery when I need it? Or do they just upgrade you to a new device in those cases?

 

[ger19]

Someone mentioned that eventually they don’t keep certain batteries in stock. Is it possible they’re taking my money monthly for AppleCare+ but won’t have a battery when I need it? Or do they just upgrade you to a new device in those cases?

Upgrading you to a new device would be their only option. That’s fine except in the case of the mini which doesn’t have a comparable new version.

 

[FeliApple]

I see you writing multiple things, including

1. newer iOS versions are less efficient on older devices/leverage more compute from devices
2. people can fixate on min/maxing their battery longevity and stats

I'm not going to dispute #1. I don't know if it's true, but it wouldn't surprise me if it were true. It is the nature of the space though. If Apple is going to increase computing power and usually efficiency on newer devices, which seems like the thing to do, it will have consequences for better or worse on older devices (new features, harder hits on battery for older devices).

As for #2, I won't argue there are some that have expectations on battery longevity and health that are out of whack. However, <80% battery capacity on the current generations of Li batteries is end-of-life, per the manufacturers. To me, that doesn't mean if falls off a cliff for functionality, but it certainly means the discharge curve often gets off-spec. Unexpected voltage and current delivery can and does start happening, and that's not great for experiences with electronics. Personally, it's not a big deal to replace them at that point, so I do without a lot of drama, and keep my expectations reasonable. I just don't see the reason for your passionate response to others replacing their batteries at their end-of-life (with full acknowledgement that those batteries still function, just in a degraded state).

I think it’s a combination of both. The 15 series replacements where they drop to 88% and already think about replacing the battery is a fringe minority, an iPhone 15 with iOS 17 or 18 won’t have battery life issues due to battery health. Any battery issues will be due to heavy usage, and that’s just mismatched expectations. The user thinks that iOS devices should be better with ridiculously heavy usage and that has never been the case. I have described my battery life progression to some people on iPads (14 hours with light use on my 9.7-inch iPad Pro and with the same usage, about 25 on my iPad Air 5), and they say that iPad Airs have poor battery life and barely get 5 hours. They’re using it for gaming at full brightness. Well, it certainly won’t last like that. People are getting 5 hours and calling the Air garbage with that usage whilst I’m getting 25 hours. It’s almost the best iPad I’ve ever used (narrowly defeated by my 11th-gen iPad).

People have said that battery life hasn’t improved because their power consumption (even on original iOS versions) has skyrocketed. Brighter displays still used at max brightness, newer and heavier games, even more video-heavy apps like TikTok), and they say “this iPhone is purported by Apple to have 27 hours and I’m getting 8-9”. Apple doesn’t test it like that…

So, add to that an even heavier power consumption with iOS updates and a degraded battery, and yes, it’s a recipe for disaster. I recall seeing the SOT numbers here on MacRumors for the iPhone 6s. They hovered at about 7-8 hours of SOT barring exceptional cases of heavy use. Today that heavy usage is the norm, and you see people killing a 16 Plus or Pro Max in 10 hours. That’s why I think the fixation comes. Because the combination of iOS updates and heavy usage is eventually untenable. People ending the day with 15-20% on a 16 Plus! I have it, I’m ending the day with 80% in my heaviest days with about 5.5-6 hours of SOT (with 80% remaining!!). But when this happens, and you keep updating in the middle, the threshold for a half-decent day on a device updated 7 times is now perhaps 90% health. So you end up with what I’ve seen on the 6s on iOS 15: people saying “this is my 7th battery and I replace it every 8 months”. Of course! Video-centric heavy usage on a massively inefficient, battery-hog iOS version with full brightness. The device can’t cope.

In fact, there’s when this comes around: it falls of a cliff <75% if I’m not mistaken when updated. But if you update far enough, you can probably feel an impact by <90%. The 15 series issue I mentioned is just obsession. There’s no way an iPhone 15 with 90% battery on its original iOS version (or the following one) is degraded in any way, shape, or form.

 

[Ethanmenzel]

I wasn’t trying to save money. The benefit of using Best Buy would be convenience. If there was a difference in the product, I’d definitely go with taking it to the Apple Store.

Don't even take the chance. I ALWAYS go to Apple for replacement. It's like comparing APple to buying a part off of eBay and doing it yourself. I don't know how good Best Buy is or If I would trust them.

 

[Ethanmenzel]

interesting how apple batteries seem to last pretty long. Heck I have a well used iPhone 8 Plus that's been around 7 yrs and have about 80% and still going. It's been in the USA to Philippines and back to USA. It's still going strong. Frankly I just charge and don't worry much about it.

Some people aren't sitting at a charger all day.

 

[That70sGAdawg]

Don't even take the chance. I ALWAYS go to Apple for replacement. It's like comparing APple to buying a part off of eBay and doing it yourself. I don't know how good Best Buy is or If I would trust them.

AND, Best Buy doesn't keep stock of Mini batteries as their weren't that many sold originally.