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iPhone 15 Pro Max To MagSafe or Not? (Battery health tips)

S

Sp0ke23

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 28, 2023
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Hello everyone and wish you a Happy New Year. First of all I’d like to thank you for your recommendations in other thread about the cases and I went with a Mous Limitless 5.0. Had a nice chat with a friend of mine over battery health. I have an iPhone phone since iPhone 3 and never thought about battery and how to maintain it. So he gave me few advices to charge it not more than 80% and never let it drop below 20%. Is that correct?

Also is it better to wire charge it than using the Belkin 3-1 (that’s what I have) MagSafe charger because it gets a bit hotter and can degrade the battery life (because of the heat) ?

If you have any other battery tip please feel free to write them down! 🙏🏻

Thank you
 
Sp0ke23 said:
Hello everyone and wish you a Happy New Year. First of all I’d like to thank you for your recommendations in other thread about the cases and I went with a Mous Limitless 5.0. Had a nice chat with a friend of mine over battery health. I have an iPhone phone since iPhone 3 and never thought about battery and how to maintain it. So he gave me few advices to charge it not more than 80% and never let it drop below 20%. Is that correct?

Also is it better to wire charge it than using the Belkin 3-1 (that’s what I have) MagSafe charger because it gets a bit hotter and can degrade the battery life (because of the heat) ?

If you have any other battery tip please feel free to write them down! 🙏🏻

Thank you
Click to expand...
My experience with magsafe charging on my 13 pro max is that it caused my battery health to drop approximately 1% every month. So I think there is definitely a deleterious impact on your battery from using magsafe, though the convenience can’t be beat. I was using the Belkin 3 in 1 charger, and it‘s great for cable management.

Of course, if you expect to have your battery replaced later on, preserving your battery health may not matter so much. Just go with whichever works best for you.
 
Sp0ke23 said:
Hello everyone and wish you a Happy New Year. First of all I’d like to thank you for your recommendations in other thread about the cases and I went with a Mous Limitless 5.0. Had a nice chat with a friend of mine over battery health. I have an iPhone phone since iPhone 3 and never thought about battery and how to maintain it. So he gave me few advices to charge it not more than 80% and never let it drop below 20%. Is that correct?

Also is it better to wire charge it than using the Belkin 3-1 (that’s what I have) MagSafe charger because it gets a bit hotter and can degrade the battery life (because of the heat) ?

If you have any other battery tip please feel free to write them down! 🙏🏻

Thank you
Click to expand...
You have been given harmful, stupid advice, which is like myths floating around the Internet. . In addition, with this style of charging/discharging, the battery life will quickly decrease and you run the risk of being left with a dead phone at the wrong time. This was said on your favorite YouTube and you're succumbing to mass hysteria?
Charge your phone when you have 5-8% charge left and charge it safely up to 100%. Charge it with whatever you want. All batteries get hot when charged, it's physics and chemistry. There is nothing dangerous or critical in it. It can only shorten the life of the battery if you charge it above 50C. And for the smart people who are about to bang on the keyboard, I'll ask a simple question. What type of Li-ion Polymer battery is used and what does it have to do with copying the tesla batteries, which are based on lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt-oxide elements that just love such a charge corridor?
 
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I don’t get involved in any of that rubbish because batteries degrade regardless of what routine you do. I simply get Apple to fit a replacement OEM battery every 2 years so that I can obtain maximum use out of my device. No hassle, no messing around and, at no point, do I allow my possessions own me.
 
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Andeddu said:
I don’t get involved in any of that rubbish because batteries degrade regardless of what routine you do. I simply get Apple to fit a replacement OEM battery every 2 years so that I can obtain maximum use out of my device. No hassle, no messing around and, at no point, do I allow my possessions own me.
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Exactly what I do. $100 every 2 years is cheap.
 
Use your phone however you want. Babying the charging process will not dramatically change how the phone battery ages. Keep the phone from going to extremes with cold or heat and don't let the battery fully discharge on a regular basis. Outside of that, get the battery changed with needed, if you plan to keep the phone more than 2 years.
 
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Apple_Robert said:
Use your phone however you want. Babying the charging process will not dramatically change how the phone battery ages. Keep the phone from going to extremes with cold or heat and don't let the battery fully discharge on a regular basis. Outside of that, get the battery changed with needed, if you plan to keep the phone more than 2 years.
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Absolutely. All the “Rules”, particularly 80/20 are a myth.
And shame on Apple for bringing in the 80% max charge to propagate the myth only to satisfy the myth believers.
 
Wireless charging is still the most inefficient way to charge, no matter how hard you try to spin it. Fast charging is just as brutal. But if you don't care, you don't care.
 
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freeagent said:
Wireless charging is still the most inefficient way to charge
Click to expand...
Based on what? The heat the people attribute to the battery is actually the coils heating. Not a big deal.

I charged my iPhone 13 Pro for two years using MagSafe. I had no issues with the battery and the battery was at 95% after two years. At that rate it would be another four years before I would consider replacing the battery. I replace phones before that occurs.

Wireless may not be the most efficient as there are power losses due to the coils and the heating of the coils. But it is still quite convenient and IOS is smart enough to properly manage the battery health. Anything a human does to try and game the charging system and battery health is mostly of trivial impact.

Use the phone, charge it how you want, and don't fret the small details.
 
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I charge my iPhone 13 every single night without fail on an Apple MagSafe puck and after exactly one year, my battery health has dropped down to 92%.

This doesn’t appear to be any worse than normal wear as my 6S, which was used as my daily driver from 2016-2018, was charged every night for 2 years using a 5w charger and ended up with 82% battery health.

I have a strong suspicion that after 24 months of wireless charging, my 13 will have around 82-85% battery health.
 
Abazigal said:
My experience with magsafe charging on my 13 pro max is that it caused my battery health to drop approximately 1% every month. So I think there is definitely a deleterious impact on your battery from using magsafe, though the convenience can’t be beat. I was using the Belkin 3 in 1 charger, and it‘s great for cable management.

Of course, if you expect to have your battery replaced later on, preserving your battery health may not matter so much. Just go with whichever works best for you.
Click to expand...
If that was true on your battery dropped approximately one percent every month by using the Belkin mag charger then mine would have dropped 36 points by now. Mines at 87% for the iPhone 12 Pro. I am using the 3 in 1 belkin mag charger.
 
Happy New Year, OP. There’s nothing wrong with the advice your friend gave you, but it is unnecessary effort.

Wireless charging is least efficient because it generates access heat (especially when the coils are not completely aligned) and some energy transfer gets lost. See this article for a more technical explanation: https://debugger.medium.com/wireless-charging-is-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen-48afdde70ed9

That being said, wireless, wired and MagSafe are all fine methods. Before MagSafe I almost exclusively used wireless and suffered no appreciable degradation over the years. Now I use MagSafe daily and it’s the same result. Worst case scenario, in two-three years, can buy a new battery.
 
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