Optimised battery charging - not working?

Battery health was always 100%, I never charge overnight until Apple released the gimmick optimized battery charge. After a week of thinking this feature was actually working, battery health declining. My bad for think Apple can design software that performs the functionality it boasts at its conference. I am going to go back to my original opinion of Apples design and test practices as being subpar and overrated.

So as of this morning, both of my Iphones (XSMax and 6S) are no longer using optimised charging even though it's switched on.

Previously, the 6S was using it, as evidenced on the charging graph, but now the 6S has also started charging fully straight away. This is in spite of me getting up at roughly the same time every day.

I guess what we don't know is whether this is a bug or a problem with Apple's optimised charging feature, or whether it's somehow working as designed. The only documentation I've seen states that it works based on learning when you charge it and when you take it off charge. Perhaps there is some other criteria that's used behind the scenes on that, but if so Apple hasn't mentioned it in any documentation that I've seen.

I have an iphone xr that is about 7 months old. Im on ios 13.1.2. My battery health is still at 100%. My optimize battery thing is toggled on. I have a fairly regular schedule. I plug my phone in at bed time sometime around 10pm ish and unplug in the morning around 6:30am. I check the graph regularly and my phone always reaches 100% within a few hours of plugging it in, usually around 12-1am, and it in and stays there until I unplug it in the morning. Ive never had a notification pop up about the battery being optimized. From my understanding it uses machine learning to figure out when not to fully charge it but its been weeks now with no apparent "optimizing" happening. This is the 3 bug/feature not working ive encountered since updating to ios13. Im rather disappointed in apple right now.

What you just described is a feature Apple boasts about that doesn’t work whatsoever. Like a lot of the software they Piece together and release way too early without the slightest bit of internal testing.

You’ve twice now gone on about Apple software that doesn’t work as they show during announcements. I think that statement couldn’t be further from the truth. If you’ve ever used an android device or a windows phone you world know the very meaning of that statement. Whilst there are certainly features that Android has that iOS does not, the one thing that Apple usually gets right is waiting to release something when it’s ready.

My battery optimisation is not working, but maybe it’s not meant to. Perhaps it will start to work on a certain age of device after a certain battery health threshold is reached.

Well to be fair, if this is working "as designed", it would be quite easy for Apple to amend the help page to say something like "optimised battery charging will sometimes charge your phone to 80% and then wait until you are going to use it before doing the final charge, based on usage patterns and on other factors related to battery health".

If they said that, then I guess there would be no need for this thread. As it is, their documentation implies that the function is only based on usage pattern, so people might legitimately be puzzled as to why only some phones are doing it and others are not.

If people have an irregular pattern of use, this is completely understandable. But this not the case for many people, such as myself, who are pretty consistent with a charging schedule and have not seen any optimizations.

Do you have Background App Refresh enabled in Settings/General? If you do apps that take advantage of this ability to run in background can run during the night; there are many that do to update their content (e.g. many news apps update frequently so when you open the app the latest news is displayed). It's likely that this is interpreted as "use" and the optimization feature charges to 100% to serve these background apps.

This is a complicated question, because when the battery is fully charged and the phone is plugged in any energy used by the phone comes from the mains rather than the battery, thus reducing the discharge/charge cycles of the battery. Battery life is affected most by the number of full charge-discharge cycles. So which is better for the battery, reducing the number of cycles or keeping the charge level at 80% and thus forcing the battery to discharge followed by charge more frequently?

While I realize I'm just one data point, my year-old XR is charged overnight (before optimized charging was available), every night. My battery capacity reported by the phone is still 100%. My cycle count is 96, measured with Coconut Battery, which reports my battery capacity as 95.6%.

Yeah, that’s very true. Hopefully if there is a criteria the device has to meet it can be noted somewhere.

My problem is that I use CarPlay, so my phone gets a charge whenever I’m driving, so maybe that’s part of the issue... the irregular pattern.

Background app refresh is switched on for both my Iphones, but one of them is correctly using optimised charging (or at least it was until last night) and the other one not.

If the device is plugged in to the mains and able to charge, there is no reason why background app refresh would make any difference as it would draw power from mains no?

I suppose it could be that there is a particular app that is somehow blocking it from working as I have a lot more apps on my XSMax than on my other iphone.

If it's plugged in and not at full charge the current from the mains goes to the battery and the phone, so it slows the charging. If an app that is running draws a lot of power and the charger cannot supply enough energy it will actually discharge the battery even though it is plugged in. For example, in my car if I plug the phone into the car's USB port, which can only supply 0.5 amps, and I use the car's navigation app (which uses the phone's cellular data) the battery actually goes down.

Apple can tell the difference between an app running in the background and user using the device. If background app refresh being on or prevents the battery from being optimized then that is a pretty useless feature. Personally I have only one app that updates content over night which is my fitbit, even though BAR is off for this app. It runs for a few mins per hour and doesn’t even use 1% battery. Still no optimizations happening.

This gimmick does NOT work. Spin it however you want, it is a feature that is completely useless like much of the other software on the iPhone that doesn’t work. Apple have a terrible track record for releasing flat out garbage applications that never really do want Apple spin in the conference. Has anyone had the notification pop up on their phone to say this feature is even working?

Yes... I have seen this ‘gimmick’ work on my on my 4yr old work SE. I’ve seen the notification and have seen the charging graph.

By the sound of it, you just need to stop buying Apple products if you’re so unhappy with them.

I have stopped buying Apple. I am making comments about a service that doesn’t seem to work that well as much as Tim fanned it at the conference. It’s pretty useless as is a lot of the buggy garbage found in iOS 13. Stuff all over the operating system just doesn’t work, it’s the designed very well, and was never really tested in a manner that resembles reality. Music is broken in majority of automobiles, reminders won’t sync to Mac anymore. No family accounts for Apple credit card, ditching ability to send money from credit card over iMessage, latest iOS TV on Apple TV is a disaster that needs daily restarting to unlock. My stuff worked fine until iOS 13. It would be nice for Apple to be a little more open and honest about their mistakes and then actually fix them in a timely manner.