New Battery Health Features Remain Limited to iPhone 15 Models on First iOS 17.1 Beta

[TallManNY]

I'd much rather just pay $100 every 2 years for a new battery than live with 80% of its capacity every day. The amount of time and energy some people waste on trying to make their battery last an extra 6 months is totally worthless.

Not for me. 80% limit should work well. And this will likely be even better than getting a new battery in two years. Not better than having the new battery, obviously, but better than having degradation leading up to swapping the battery in year two. If it does what I think it will do, it will radically decrease my phone's battery degradation. So I might be looking at 95% capacity battery in two years with this process always implemented. We shall see what the real world impact is, but for now my plan is to leave the phone limited to 80% except in the rare cases where I expect to be away from chargers (including charging in my car) for a full day. I will also charge my phone at convenient times twice per day (but not have to worry about it being left in a state 100% charge for extended periods of time).

 

[HiRez]

Before enabling the 80% limit option, it would be helpful to know just how much charging over 80% is hurting. If it's only a marginal amount, I wouldn't enable it. If it's a very significant amount, I would. But they don't really tell you so it's hard to know the true benefit or risk.

 

[dwaite]

And yet, Coconut Battery can read this information just fine...

Some of it.

I think they don’t want it on any devices but the 15 pro battery is so damn bad they had to add it in last minute.

90 mins of screen time and I’m down to 65%.

Where did you start?

80% - 65% = 15%,
90 minutes * 100/15= 600 minutes = 10 hours of total activity

 

[FrozenDarkness]

It is a strange choice (IMO) to release battery limit charging for all watches that can ran WatchOS 10.x but nope, only iPhone 15+ can have it...

that's why all these apple jokes make absolutely no sense.

 

[Torty]

Before enabling the 80% limit option, it would be helpful to know just how much charging over 80% is hurting. If it's only a marginal amount, I wouldn't enable it. If it's a very significant amount, I would. But they don't really tell you so it's hard to know the true benefit or risk.

Why implementing it if it’s only marginal? On the other side my MBP is always connected to power which doesn’t really hurt the battery.

 

[mnsportsgeek]

Why implementing it if it’s only marginal? On the other side my MBP is always connected to power which doesn’t really hurt the battery.

The Mac stops charging when it reaches 100%. The iPhone continues to cycle on and off to maintain 100%.

 

[erikkfi]

And as many MR users have admonished me, Apple cares about user experience and Apple engineers know much better than I do, so if a feature is not on my device, no matter how absurd it seems, it's because it would have ruined my experience and I am better off without it. 🙏

Also you may only install apps that we have approved and are taking 15-30% of the payment for. It's for your own good. We believe something something privacy something something security, and pay no attention to the massive profits our services area rakes in.

 

[Prof.]

Twice now my iPhone 15PM stopped charging at 85% even though the 80% threshold was set.

Rebooted in between these charges and it still doesn’t work consistently for me.

Mine stops around 75-80%.

The fine print says “…to about 80%.”

85% is about 80%

 

[FrozenDarkness]

worth noting that these % are estimates. an on board computer will have to estimate how much battery capacity you have then figure out how much you have to charge. if the onboard computer recalibrates during this time, you may end up with some inconsistencies.

 

[dannyyankou]

This is embarrassing. There’s no technical limitation to adding this.

 

[dannyyankou]

By the way, question, what do they even consider a full cycle? Anything below 20%?. Because I never let my battery drain and the cycle count already says 6.

 

[TallManNY]

Before enabling the 80% limit option, it would be helpful to know just how much charging over 80% is hurting. If it's only a marginal amount, I wouldn't enable it. If it's a very significant amount, I would. But they don't really tell you so it's hard to know the true benefit or risk.

You kind of already know some of this answer because you've seen batteries degrade on phones over the year. I'm guessing that this 80% limit will decrease the regular yearly degrading that we see by about 50%. So if you were looking at a phone that was going to be 84% by the end of year 2, if you use this you will have a phone that is at 92% at the end of year two. This is my guess.

Basically Lithium batteries don't like being left at 100% (or near 100%) for long periods of time. I think many people were charging to 100% over night and then again were regularly topping up to 100% either with the phone plugged in at work or charging in their car. So we had phones in the wild that were at (or near) 100% for like 8 to 10 hours a day.

 

[JForestZ34]

People are going to go crazy over this. Worrying more about cycle count


James

 

[d5aqoëp]

Not for me. 80% limit should work well. And this will likely be even better than getting a new battery in two years. Not better than having the new battery, obviously, but better than having degradation leading up to swapping the battery in year two. If it does what I think it will do, it will radically decrease my phone's battery degradation. So I might be looking at 95% capacity battery in two years with this process always implemented. We shall see what the real world impact is, but for now my plan is to leave the phone limited to 80% except in the rare cases where I expect to be away from chargers (including charging in my car) for a full day. I will also charge my phone at convenient times twice per day (but not have to worry about it being left in a state 100% charge for extended periods of time).

Nah. It’s like living with 80% capacity from day 1. I charge my iPhones over night to 100% and use them to their full potential. Still at 98% battery health on 14 PM.

 

[matrix07]

I'd much rather just pay $100 every 2 years for a new battery than live with 80% of its capacity every day. The amount of time and energy some people waste on trying to make their battery last an extra 6 months is totally worthless.

You got a point there but some people use their iPhone much longer than that. I just upgraded to 14 Pro from X last year after 5 years, and if not for Dynamic Island I might continue using my X for another year so this kind of feature would really help then.

 

[applefanboysince93]

It is a strange choice (IMO) to release battery limit charging for all watches that can ran WatchOS 10.x but nope, only iPhone 15+ can have it...

Do you mean the optimized charging limit? I don’t see an option to do the 80% limit on my AWU1

 

[TallManNY]

Nah. It’s like living with 80% capacity from day 1. I charge my iPhones over night to 100% and use them to their full potential. Still at 98% battery health on 14 PM.

That is an incredibly rare result for a 1 year old phone. Absolutely nothing you should change with your usage. But almost everyone else is having much higher battery degradation. You do realize that you have an outlier experience, right? Also you are using a Max, so have much larger battery to start out with (my prior phone was a 12 mini: battery life started mediocre and got worse when the battery degraded (but I loved the size and would have bought a 15 mini if it existed)).

I get much higher degradation on my phones (especially the 12 mini (I was 89% in 11 months after getting a new battery from Apple). But I also regularly have a chance to charge during the day (three easy options: 1) at home over night or at my home office desk, 2) at work at my desk, and 3) in the car). So I can effortlessly top up, the issue being that topping up means bringing the phone to 100% unless I'm careful to not top up for too long. Now with this setting going to 100% won't happen and all my charges will bring the phone to 80% or less if I charge for a lower amount of time.

Anyway, how you use the big battery in the max does not stress it. You can ignore this feature. But for many people this is going to be the best way to set their phone.

 

[AlexJaye]

Apple is a joke for not making this standard on Macs and iPhones, not just the iPhone 15.

 

[dampfnudel]

And as many MR users have admonished me, Apple cares about user experience and Apple engineers know much better than I do, so if a feature is not on my device, no matter how absurd it seems, it's because it would have ruined my experience and I am better off without it. 🙏

Maybe Apple is worried some people would freak out when they first see the number of cycles on their phones. Maybe in their eyes, that would ruin the experience of what you don’t know won’t hurt you.

 

[mnsportsgeek]

You got a point there but some people use their iPhone much longer than that. I just upgraded to 14 Pro from X last year after 5 years, and if not for Dynamic Island I might continue using my X for another year so this kind of feature would really help then.

Babying my battery buys me what an extra 6 months? I’d honestly rather not think about it and just plan to replace the battery every 2 years. It’s not expensive and the amount of effort it takes to baby the battery is not worth it to me.

 

[svish]

Very possible that it is available only for the latest iPhones this year. Maybe next year Apple could release it for all the models.

 

[Macropanda]

Some of it.


Where did you start?

80% - 65% = 15%,
90 minutes * 100/15= 600 minutes = 10 hours of total activity

That's from 100% so 35% drop with 90 mins of use so looking at 4.5 hours for the full battery. This was worse than my 2 year old 13pro.
My 13pro battery life absolutely tanked as soon as iOS 17 came out though so really hoping it's a software issue.

 

[Macusercom]

But you have to understand: only the iPhone 15 is capable of showing this. The processor is not powerful enough. This why older models need a Mac to read the cycle count /s

 

[bmansvk]

This feature is baked in Ventura, but there is no UI interface to enable it. You can force limit Mac charge to 80%. This works without any application like AlDente. Currently AlDente using hacks like that it disables sleep during charge, because when Mac sleeps, it will charge to 100% and limit is not activated if the app is not running.
This new SMC option charges battery to max. 80% even when Mac sleeps or it is powered off.

Intel based MACs have this feature from the beginning + you can configure threshold freely (on M1 you can set to 80% without option to configure threshold).

I hope the same feature will be available on older iPhones/iPads someday.

 

[jasonsmith_88]

By the way, question, what do they even consider a full cycle? Anything below 20%?. Because I never let my battery drain and the cycle count already says 6.

A full cycle is when 100% of the battery’s capacity has been used. Even if you charge the battery in between using it, it’s still a cycle.

For example:
100% to 0% = 1 cycle
100% to 50%, twice = 1 cycle
55% to 35%, 5 times = 1 cycle
100% to 99%, 100 times = 1 cycle