Ten months later, my iPhone battery is at 90%.it’s perfectly normal

The controversy over the weekend was sparked by battery degradation in the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max.users in social networks x Forums such as Reddit ensure that this year’s wear and tear has been particularly severe, and the battery hasn’t exceeded 90 percent of its capacity (or even less) since the device was purchased. “This is the first time in a year that there has been such a large drop.“.

Technically, this is perfectly normal and we’ll explain why. Especially around this time of summer when the battery life percentages start to drop as the beta rolls out. But we’ll start with the basics: how long does a lithium battery last, according to Apple?

80% after 500 cycles of use. Apple says its batteries are designed to retain up to 80% of their capacity after 500 full charges under “typical” conditions. If our batteries drop below this percentage within one year, we will be entitled to replace them free of charge.

The math is simple: based on this data (and in a normal usage scenario) After 250 cycles, our batteries may be around 90% lifespan (approximately less than a year lifespan).

Summer is here, drama comes with the drums

Summer is not suitable for playing with mobile phones. August has not been a good month for iPhone batteries. One of the weaknesses of Apple phones is heat dissipation. Using maps, connecting your iPhone to your car and running CarPlay, charging your phone for a day, taking photos with your phone on the street… temperature is the battery’s worst enemy, and the summer of “basic” use of a phone can be devastating to its lifespan Impact.

Rivals like the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra cool off much better thanks to technology like the vapor chamber. The average temperature of your phone in summer will greatly affect how your battery degrades at the end of summer.

The beta version didn’t help either. To the “my battery is degrading quickly” drama, we have to add that besides it’s summer, a large percentage of users exposing this wear and tear are iOS 17 beta users. We’re in beta 5, and Apple hasn’t given the key to good power consumption in this beta.

In my specific case, the iOS 17 beta I do it at a rate of two loads per day (I’ll need more if I use it a lot) on my iPhone 14 Pro. As far as my second iPhone 14 Plus is concerned, it continues to maintain its autonomy throughout the day, so its wear and tear is not too high, as I will detail later.

use, all depends on use

Heavy usage doesn’t come for free. There is no trick to lithium batteries: more care, longer life, less care, less life. We consulted with Webedia’s editors, and it turns out… logical. In my case, my iPhone 14 Plus has iOS 17 beta 4 installed and its battery has been at 97% since its release. It has a total of 203 cycles: these numbers are even better than what Apple promised. I didn’t care about it at all, I use CarPlay every day, I charge it with 65W Xiaomi GaN, I don’t respect the charge cycle. Of course, I’ve never charged it more than once a day, which is why it gets so few cycles.

Other roommates showed signs of wear. After more than a year of use, Juan Carlos López’s iPhone 13 Pro Max is 97% charged: he is very careful about charging and cycling the terminal.Others, like Javier Lacort, have iPhone 14 Pro September 2022 90%: Lots of Magsafe, lots of fast charging, and total indifference to charge cycles. Another extreme example is the case of our colleague Fran Bouzas: his iPhone 14 Pro is 90% charged according to the coconut battery and 85% according to the Apple meter: he uses it a lot and has all the betas installed. result? 565 cycles.

This is not the first time this controversy has occurred.Digging into old tweets, we see colleagues in the industry 86% battery After a year of heavy use. Genbeta and Xataka Home director Antonio Sabán also explained how his iPhone 11 Pro dropped to 91% capacity after 250 cycles (only numbers given by Apple). guilty? Video call and warm up during confinement.

Personally, the iPhone 11 Pro’s battery also showed exceptional degradation, dropping to 98% in just three months.i opened Thread in X Users have reported similar wear and tear. After a few months the wear “stabilized” and almost a year later I ended up selling the same 11 Pro with a 95% battery. guilty? Probably a gauge setting.

The Apple Meter isn’t entirely reliable. In the iPhone’s battery settings, we found the wear and tear on the battery. This is a good approximation, but error prone. The best way to measure this is with an app like coconut battery which tells us the number of cycles, remaining mAh, and even the current temperature of the battery so we can know its status (I write these lines with my iPhone 14 Plus 40.5 degrees, barely there).

Still, maybe it’s time to embrace the scientific evidence: Lithium batteries degrade by about 10% a year if we don’t take care of them adequately, which will prompt us to throw ourselves into the arms of a technical service to replace them after two years of use. use. If we want to keep the iPhone away from SAT, it’s handy to minimize its use over the summer and keep a safe distance from betas, no matter how greedy they may seem.

Image | Sataka

at shataca | 7 things that damage your battery while using your phone: Habits to improve your phone’s life