I have lost 3 percentage points on my iPhone 15 Pro Max’s battery health % in the last month or so with the iOS 18 beta. I am now at 88% battery health and was at 91% just before downloading the beta. My usage has remained the same as the entire year that I’ve had the phone. Are others experiencing the same battery health degradation due to the beta?
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Beta + Rapid Battery Health Degradation
- Thread starter pcd213
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If the phone is running hot, it will degrade the battery. Try restarting the phone to see if it cools down. Otherwise, it's just normal wear and tear and not related to the beta. The phone will recalibrate battery health occasionally with updates to make it more accurate of what is actually left in the tank, so every update can cause you to "lose" a percent or two, but it's just making the measurement more realistic. How many cycles are you at? Apple upped the expectation with the 15 lineup from 500 to 1000 cycles before you get below 80%.
That is lower than I would have guessed for that number of cycles. It's not always a steady linear decline, but at that rate I imagine you will be below 80% before the end of year two. If you got AppleCare, they will replace it once it hits 80%. If not, you can always pay out of pocket whenever it bothers you enough.
Same behavior on my 15PM… 235 cycles and now already down to 92% health. Was at 97% before installing iOS 18 beta 2
I would love to bring it to the Genius Bar but (a) I feel like they’ll pull that “if you run the beta, that’s on you” bs, (b) I can’t even book an appt if the battery health isn’t 80%…they run some tool that checks before they’ll confirm your appt. Maybe I could overwrite that on desktop.
Thoughts? I’ve now lost 4% points in say 4-5 weeks. How is that normal?
Thoughts? I’ve now lost 4% points in say 4-5 weeks. How is that normal?
Yup. I posted about it a couple of times. Things got way better with 18.1b3, but 18.1b2 was absolutely torching my battery. with b3, it's far, far better, though YouTube still seems to heat things up quite a bit. I went from 98/99% to 91% in the span of two weeks.
Third party apps are not properly optimised for iOS 18 until the public release. So if you notice that YouTube is toasting your battery, just stop using it. Use it on another device or via Safari and see if this helps?
My 14 Pro started the beta cycle at 85%, and is currently at 85%. My AC+ expires in a week, would have been nice to get that free battery replacement at 80%. So, it doesn’t seem like the beta battery degradation is universal for all devices.
there’s nothing I can do about it so I don’t worry about it. Batteries are like tires they wear and eventually need to be replaced. There’s not a whole lot you can do to change that. at best, You will extend the life of your battery by a few months if you constantly stress about it.
Nothing you could do about it outside of asking others if they're experiencing the same issue, right?
How does that affect your battery health? All it affects is your own neuroticism.
Yup. YouTube via safari has been my solution. Every time YouTube drops an update, I give the app a try. So far, it's still a blowtorch.
I will say, this is the first time I've had this kind of an issue. Over the years there have been no end of interesting, funny, or horribly breaking bugs with apps running on a beta iOS, but this is the first time I've had a beta OS set the temp on 'nuclear reaction'.
I lost the same amount on my 13P and I’m not even running the beta. My guess would be they’re changing the algorithms to estimate the capacity.
The only thing that could bring down the capacity is the heat and even that wouldn’t deteriorate that quick. Apple has no other way to actually reduce the capacity but to guess.
Have 260 cycles and 92% maximum capacity, running iOS 18 since beta 1.
Have the 15 Pro Max since december 2023.
Have the 15 Pro Max since december 2023.
