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iPhone 15 Models Feature New Setting to Strictly Prevent Charging Beyond 80%

Great setting for me for 90% of my usage. I can take the phone off the charger at 80% in the morning, go to work, at some point during the day put it on charger at work, get back up to 80%, leave work, put it on the charger at night. Phone will never be low of charge and also never be charged over 80%, which will prolong battery life significantly. Also will work great for days around the house. But those are low usage days and also on wifi, so those days don't hit the battery hard and I've obviously got access to chargers.

But let's see how often I regret this when I'm not headed to work and I am headed out of the house. I know I will be able to turn off and charge to 100% if I have a day that I know I'm going to be out and away from chargers. But how well will I remember to do so? Hmm.
 
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HobeSoundDarryl said:
Conceptually, the current way to do that would be to put in a battery with 100% capacity, set the meter so it shows 100% when it is actually 80% and put however this works in the system to halt charging at (actual) 80% while showing 100%. We see 100% but behind the scenes, it's this same 80% charged (actual) store of power.

And maybe tweak that gauge with some inspiration from Spinal Tap so that a dial that normally maxes at 10 could go up to 11 and thus "be louder, because it goes to 11" by making the PRO MAX option make the above option make the (actual) 80% display as 110%, so PRO MAX users can enjoy "10% more battery." ;)

To what you probably want though is an actual 100% capacity able to be effectively charged to 100% over and over with no consequence. For that, a new kind of battery technology will need to be discovered and invented beyond the one used now.
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I was just about to write something very similar to this. Apple marketing missed a trick this time around LOL
 
On a more serious note, if the batteries have stacked regions/cells, I wonder if they could do “wear leveling” similar to SSDs.

Give a stated capacity that is the nominal 100%, but have a little spare area, then charge and discharge certain regions, in a round robin fashion or something…
 
Anyone with an office 9-5 would stand to benefit. Have a 80% profile for weekdays where your phone can stay on the charger and be at 80%, charge to full on weekends where you may use it more. Etc. not a new concept at all.
 
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TallManNY said:
But let's see how often I regret this when I'm not headed to work and I am headed out of the house. I know I will be able to turn off and charge to 100% if I have a day that I know I'm going to be out and away from chargers. But how well will I remember to do so? Hmm.
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Should be easy enough for me. I'm at work during the week and doing chores during the weekends.

Only time I'll need to go up to 100% is for vacations. Even if I forget to charge it at home prior to the trip, I could still charge it to 100% in the car, airport or hotel before I actually start needing to use it.
 
till said:
Nice, hope this comes to macOS as well, where the OS will sometimes notice that you're constantly plugged in and stay at 80%, but it's really inconsistent. Just let me configure it!
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I use a program called Al Dente (what does pasta have to do with battery life I'll never know) that does various things to help maintain overall battery longevity. It lets you set a charge window, stops charging on temperature etc.
 
Mazda 3s said:
Good to know. My launch day iPhone 14 Pro is now down to 89% after a mixture of wireless charging in the car and overnight charging (optimized) at night (with MagSafe mostly).

I'm probably going to try to forgo wireless charging altogether when my iPhone 15 Pro Max gets here and see how that affects battery health over the next year.
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My launch day iphone 14 pro max is still at 100% using wireless charging. I set up auto shortcut to stop charging at 85% and start charting at 35% (turn on/off wifi power adapter). Though this shortcut did not always work.
 
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i don't know much about rechargable batteries, but if laptop batteries could also benefit from this, i would love to have this option also on macos.
 
rui no onna said:
It's possible with extremely light use and a battery with higher than design capacity.

I've noticed on iMazing/Coconut that the original capacity is often higher than design capacity. The iPhone just reports 100% but I've seen actual capacity on some of my devices to be 107% of design capacity. Hence in this scenario, when battery health reports 99%, it's already lost 8% of the design capacity (or 7.5% of original capacity).
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Sure. Capacity degradation is heavily dependent on charge cycle not time. If you never use your phone or deplete it sure. Some batteries are also over spec so actually it does degrade but is still remain spec.

But theres no magic here. If you use it it will degrade. Sorry to disappoint some posters about their “magic” battery.
 
Karma*Police said:
I have a better idea Apple. How about you take some of that $25B+/year in R&D money and actually do something significant with it like coming up with better battery tech instead of expecting customers to utilize only 4/5ths of the battery potential of their brand new iPhone.
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Do you really think Apple cares whether you use the full 100% or just 80%? They are giving you the option. If you don’t want it, don’t use it.
 
This has to be the best feature of iOS 17 for me!

No more custom shortcuts! Thank you Apple!!

My 12 Pro Max battery health is at 88%. For the first 2 years I kept it at 20-80% charge most of the time. Obviously if I needed more then I’d use it but I wanted to look after my battery.

I still get good charge out of the battery after almost 3 years but it is noticeably shorter.

So excited for this new setting lol. Can’t wait to get my 15 Pro Max.
 
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GDF said:
What is the point of any battery if charging past 80% causes excessive wear and tear. Same with EV’s. Just plain dump. I want the full capacity always, so develop battery technology that does that.
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The problem is long duration high and low charge. So, for examples, users who keep their iPhone plugged in all day while at work, (as mentioned earlier) while driving/traveling/commuting (e.g., using the phone as a GPS or music player), overnight fast charging, etc.
 
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^^BIGMac said:
And read the rest of my post. I’ve had my phone 3 1/2 years. No problem with the battery after charging every night to 100%. Cherry picking a post is disingenuous.
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You said it was dumb to limit charging to 80% because a lot of people get a new phone every year. I pointed out that even more people don't upgrade every year, hence it not being dumb to limit charging to 80%. What exactly am I cherry picking 😂

You haven't upgraded in 3 1/2 years. So?
 
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Hoyboy said:
This setting is mainly for people who use wired CarPlay and spend hours in the car with their iPhone needlessly being fully charged. The optimised setting was never able to predict random long journey in cars on random days of week which is why they’ve added this option.
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Ok that makes sense to me. I don’t have. CarPlay on any of my elderly cars, so it just didn’t occur to me.
 
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Mazda 3s said:
Good to know. My launch day iPhone 14 Pro is now down to 89% after a mixture of wireless charging in the car and overnight charging (optimized) at night (with MagSafe mostly).

I'm probably going to try to forgo wireless charging altogether when my iPhone 15 Pro Max gets here and see how that affects battery health over the next year.
Click to expand...

I doubt it will make a big difference. I don't charge wirelessly and I've seen similar reductions in battery health.
 
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GrumpyMom said:
Ok that makes sense to me. I don’t have. CarPlay on any of my elderly cars, so it just didn’t occur to me.
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No CarPlay either but I bought one of those MagSafe chargers that are powered via the cigarette lighter for our vehicles. My dad charges his phone with that while using it as GPS.
 
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My iPhone 14 Pro must be an outlier. I got it last year on launch day.

I charge it 8hr a day while I’m at work on a wireless MagSafe mount so it stays at 100% almost that whole time.

After installing iOS 17 yesterday battery health still shows 100%.
 
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This feature might be because of the stand-by mode (horizontal) for which to work a device must be connected to a charger at all times. However, the horizontal mode is now available on older phones as well, but not the battery protection.
 
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My 11 pro max and watch Ultra rarely enter optimized mode. I always check on my charging devices (a habit from the dusty days of Nicad recharging, strengthened by images of flaming lithium) and they usually just go straight to 100% regardless
I wish I could limit them to 80% without having to unplug them physically.

My iPhone 11 PM still has 84% and lasts a whole day of heavy surfing/music and video use. My ultra still reports 100% battery condition (I only seem to charge it twice a week or so).
 
This is no Ev battery. We can change the battery in like 2 years for like 80€.

Who will sacrifice 20% daily battery for that 80€ in 2 years…
 
And the forum ghouls who have been talking about this for years…will still find a reason to complain! Don’t you doubt it!
 
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