Love the app. Thanks for sharing. Have a quick Q how does max capacity work or how is is calculated? My wifes old 6 has 500 cycles and still at 102.8% max capacity. That cant be right no? Other cases like my old ipad its 250 cycles and 88% which I definitely beleive. Thanks again!
In terms of how maximum capacity is calculated, the answer is that there is just one source for that information: The gas gauge chip. The gas gauge chip is a tiny IC that’s attached to the battery (so that when you replace your battery you’re also replacing the chip). Its job is to measure state of charge (how full the battery is), and maximum capacity over time.
The problem is that those two metrics are never accurately known. The chip has to guess (based on a fairly complex algorithm) the state of the battery at any given time. The algorithm is based on measuring the flow of electricity into and out of the battery as it charges and discharges and trying to calculate how full it is and what its maximum capacity is at any given point in time. The chip reports that to the system (iOS) every few seconds, and a nicely rounded version of that is the battery level you see in the status bar at the top of the screen.
Because the maximum capacity is nothing but an educated guess, those values can vary quite a bit. As the battery is charged and discharged, you will see the gas gauge revising the estimated capacity. Because of that, Apple has a simple mechanism to try and reduce the fluctuations: they round up the maximum capacity to 100mAh, so if the gas gauge says maximum capacity equals 2420mAh, Apple’s algorithm will show 2500mAh. This rounded number is what they use to calculate the battery percentage shown by the system.
The current version of my app shows the Apple rounded figures for maximum capacity, while many JB apps (like the one pictured above), as well as tethered solutions such as iBackupBot tend to show the raw values from the chip.
One recommendation I keep reiterating to users: In order to improve SoC and maximum capacity accuracy one should perform a periodic deep-discharge of the battery, where you completely drain the battery until the device shuts off on its own. I wouldn’t do it too frequently, about once a month should be fine.
Deep-discharge cycles really help the gas gauge determine how much energy is actually stored in the battery, and they tend to reduce the variability of all of those metrics, and therefore improve the accuracy of the battery percentage shown by iOS. To be clear, it doesn’t actually improve your battery’s capacity, but it’ll make the battery percentage (and other health readings, if you use the app) more accurate.