As the launch date of a new iPhone draws near, there’s speculation that people tend to notice a decline in their current iPhone’s battery performance. In simpler terms, as a new iPhone model is about to be released, many folks start thinking that their current iPhone’s battery life is getting worse.
However, beyond the humour, there are genuine reports that as iPhones get older, they can experience a decrease in value. This doesn’t just concern battery performance, but also how the phone itself might lose access to important apps due to iOS limitations. An intriguing case was shared by Alvin, who noted that his iPhone 14 Pro Max’s battery health was dropping by 1% each week.
This issue wasn’t limited to Alvin; many others reported the same problem. Even the popular figure Matt Navarra mentioned that his iPhone’s battery health remained at 95% until recently but started declining to 90% just weeks before Apple was set to launch a new iPhone model.
This raises the question: Is battery degradation somehow linked to the number of days left until a new iPhone is released? Or is the battery health indicator on iPhones perhaps less reliable than we think? These thoughts prompted me to investigate further and find a rationale for why Apple relies on Lithium cells for its devices.
The remaining part of this article discusses how lithium batteries, like the ones used in smartphones and laptops, behave over time and why some companies, like Apple, design their devices to charge the battery to 100% even though it might have some trade-offs.
- Capacity and Degradation: As lithium batteries are used and charged, they naturally degrade over time. When a battery is brand new, it can hold a certain amount of charge, let’s say 100%. However, as the battery gets older, it slowly loses the ability to hold that full 100% charge. This is called degradation. So when a battery is used closer to its maximum capacity (100%), it tends to degrade faster.
- Battery Aging: As the battery ages, it becomes more difficult for the battery to reach its original maximum capacity of 100%. As a result, the rate at which the battery’s capacity decreases starts to slow down. And the rate of this degradation becomes slower over time because the battery struggles to fully charge to its original maximum capacity.
- Apple’s Approach: Apple designs its devices to charge the battery to 100% even though it might lead to faster initial degradation. The reason is that when a battery is charged to its maximum capacity, the user gets the benefit of a longer battery life between charges. So, while the battery might start to degrade a bit faster when it’s new, users experience the advantage of a longer time between needing to charge the device.
- Balancing Trade-offs: Apple could engineer their batteries to only charge to 80% to reduce the chances of damage and slower degradation. This would mean the battery might not degrade as quickly over time, but it would also mean users would need to charge their devices more often since they would be starting with less charge.
All rechargeable batteries are consumables and have a limited lifespan — eventually their capacity and performance decline so that they need to be replaced.
Apple Support Page
Have you also noticed your iPhone’s battery health dropping, similar to the experiences shared by individuals like Alvin and many others? Well, the factors mentioned earlier could be contributing to the reasons behind the decline in battery health status on your Apple device, especially if it uses lithium cells. As your device ages, its battery naturally undergoes a process of degradation, causing it to lose some of its original charge-holding capacity over time. This phenomenon, combined with other variables, could be responsible for the decrease in battery health that some users observe in their iPhones.
