iphone 12 pro max battery health degrading

ok so if it's not any of that, then i have another guess.

my apple watch series 3 got watch os 8.3 on saturday, and it's been draining really bad. i unplugged it at 7:30 today and by noon, it was already 50%. it usually lasts me until at least 8 pm, where even then it's not 20% yet.

I remember back in september when my watch drained my phone battery drastically because i haven't updated it in more than a year, so it literally didn't even show up in my batteries widget until i got the update. i had to power it off for my phone battery to act normal again. however, this time, it's not that i haven't updated it yet. it's literally on the latest watch software, so there must be something eating up the battery so bad that it's disrupting the connection between my watch and phone, or vice versa, with my phone causing the connection disruption. i read another forum about this, and people are experiencing the same thing on their watch, but no one mentioned anything about a phone. i also called apple support and they said if i have the latest software already on both devices, then this has to be some kind of bug issue. yes, they mentioned that there are background apps and stuff, but if both devices started draining really bad at the same time, it can't just be a coincidence because everything's always been normal. if it doesn't go away, they told me to erase and restore completely, which i really don't want to do.

is it true that waiting a couple days could make the problem disappear? that's one solution i saw on the forum, but i don't know if it'll work because i don't want my phone to die in the middle of my 2-hour exam tomorrow.

Stop guessing, and stop obsessing about the battery and just enjoy using the phone. You are really overthinking this. In the first few hours after an update there is sometimes some “housekeeping” that needs to be done to reindex the databases on the phone. So you really can’t get a meaningful reading on battery performance until that completes. Leaving the phone plugged in overnight usually lets it finish, and is a good thing to do anyway.

On your watch, unless you are using it for sleep monitoring, leave it on its charger overnight also. And if you do sleep wearing it charge it fully in the morning, which should only take an hour.

yes, i charge my watch overnight every night. is it possible for the housekeeping to last more than 2 days? because i got ios 15.2 last wednesday and didn't get watch os 8.3 until saturday. is the same thing happening for my watch?

crystal_star wrote:

So you're basically saying that optimized battery charging doesn't force your phone to be at a certain percent for it to charge at the "right" time?

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. And what Lawrence has said.

Here's the question: Did you spend ~$1000 to get a battery meter to fuss with all the time? Or did you spend the money to get a device you could use for things like making calls and sending messages?

Here's what you do: Put the phone on to charge when you go to bed at night. Take it off in the morning. And stop worrying about it.

my battery has been fine for about a week until today, when it dropped more than it should have in a given amount of time even with airplane mode on. i checked the battery usage bars and was very thankful that it dropped right before i used it at 9 AM, but this had never happened before. i saw the battery stay at 100 for about 9 hours, then drop right at the beginning of the hour again, even with airplane mode on. yesterday and every day before that, it lasted longer, for at least 9.5 hours (but at a different time of day). i'm not surprised about this because it's probably getting used to my wacky schedule that's been changing all over the place, but i still really wonder what caused that drop right at the beginning of the hour after it lasted for so long. i don't have any apps that would work with airplane mode enabled and no wifi. the thing is: how much time is one bar on that battery usage chart worth? i always thought it was 15 minutes because every time i highlighted a section, 4 bars showed up for every hour and that would make it even, but i'm not sure about that. from 8-9 AM, the battery was at 100 even at the very last bar of that highlighted section. and right at the first bar of 9-10 AM, it was already lower.

even if i do that, i sleep at a different time every day, so it won't be the same.

so for the last few days, i plugged it in at different times, but they were all between 8 PM and 10 PM. it usually takes 6-7 minutes to charge 3%, but today, i plugged it in at 9 PM and after 6-7 minutes, it was already 6% higher! that didn't happen for the last few weeks, so what happened today? my capacity dropped too!

Is it because my phone is used to charging at 8 PM, so since i plugged it in at 9, it tried to charge faster to finish faster??? only 2 weeks ago, i plugged my phone in at 5 PM compared to 3:30 PM the previous day (1.5 hours apart), and nothing happened.

yeah but i sleep at a different time every day, and today i plugged it in an hour later than yesterday, so why did it charge faster? last week this happened too, and my capacity stayed the same and it charged normally.

how will i be able to predict if an issue like this happens again though? there has to be some reason why it charged way faster today even when i didn't do anything differently. like i said, i've been plugging it in at different times every day, sometimes 2 hours apart, and nothing happened till now.

crystal_star wrote:

how will i be able to predict if an issue like this happens again though?

You can't. All you can know for certain is that your battery health will continue to decline. You can either spend your time worrying about that unchangeable fact. Or you can use and enjoy your phone until the battery needs to be replaced and deal with it then.

so plugging it in later than the day before isn't necessarily causing the problem? is there a specific rate that the phone is supposed to charge too? because what i experienced yesterday was way faster than usual. and this isn't because the phone has learned a usage pattern, right? if batteries are made to charge at the same time every day, that's very inconvenient because some people don't have "routines." i sleep at a different time every day, so that won't really be a "routine" for optimized charging.

crystal_star wrote:

so plugging it in later than the day before isn't necessarily causing the problem?

No. There is no problem. The only problem is that you're worrying about something that isn't a problem.

There are only two times you need to look at Battery Health: 1) If you are having an actual issue with your phone running unusually slowly or perhaps suddenly shutting off or 2) About a month before the end of your warranty. Check to see if it's close to or below 80%. If it is, make arrangements to have the battery changed. Otherwise, pretend that setting isn't there.

crystal_star wrote:

so plugging it in later than the day before isn't necessarily causing the problem? is there a specific rate that the phone is supposed to charge too? because what i experienced yesterday was way faster than usual. and this isn't because the phone has learned a usage pattern, right? if batteries are made to charge at the same time every day, that's very inconvenient because some people don't have "routines." i sleep at a different time every day, so that won't really be a "routine" for optimized charging.

There's no particular routine if you don't have a regular schedule. I have Optimized Charging turned on, but it will charge up to 100% pretty much all of the time. I've only see it indicate that it was holding off on the charging once or twice. And as far as how much it helps, I'm skeptical. What would really help for battery longevity is a way to allow the user to program a lower maximum charge level, like one can do on other battery powered devices like electric cars or laptop computers.

but optimized charging works directly on a routine, so if the phone charges at a different time, it'll think the schedule is messed up and it'll charge at a different rate to finish at the "normal" time. it'll still hold it at 80% for most of the night, but before and after that will be different, and that's what i'm worried about.

crystal_star wrote:

that's what i'm worried about.

Why are you worrying about it? If it bothers you so much, turn off Optimized Charging. It is obviously not working for you (though I suspect it's working fine for your phone).

i just don't want it to get in the way of when i can't charge my phone overnight, because yes, i have to go places at 3 AM sometimes, so i need it to finish earlier on those specific days. i don't want it to make my phone charge faster, lowering the capacity by a percent every time it does so. i want it to leave my phone alone when it's not charging overnight and stop thinking that i'm gonna charge at the same time every day, because i'm not. sometimes i won't be able to charge till 2 hours after the time i charged the previous day. the only reason why i want to keep it on is to reduce battery aging over time.