iphone 12 pro max battery health degrading

Exactly like mine before replacement. I showed them my problem with 1% drop per 3 cycles in 1week. They finally agreed to replace it free of charge .

Because you can't compare between phones.

What you are experiencing is normal, but Apple will replace your battery for free if you reach 80% health within 12 months of purchase.

There is no benefit to shutting it down when charging it. And it defeats battery optimization and automatic backup. There is also no benefit to letting it run down to any specific value. Charge it when convenient. But the best practice is to turn on Optimized Battery Charging, then charge the phone overnight, every night. And also turn on Automatic Backups, so you will have a current backup every day. Only charge during the day if it doesn’t look like it will make it through the day. This way managing the state of charge won’t rule your life. This is how I use my phone. It’s now over 2 years old, and the battery capacity is 95%.

That’s the short answer. Here is the long answer→When to charge your iPhone or iPad - Apple Community

GGGGCLK wrote:

i used to charge overnight since iphone4. Apple asked me not to charge overnight as this may damage the battery as it will increase unnecessary charging cycle loss at sleeping time . I tried once, then result was like this , 6% drop without reason

Not true, there is a good reason. There is no time when the phone is powered on when nothing is running. There are apps that update overnight, you get emails, notifications, texts, all of which use power. iCloud synchronization. Photo sorting. Also just staying connected to the cellular network uses energy. Just iOS staying “awake” to manage these activities uses energy. The phone is rated for 200 hours on standby. That’s 9 days. So if the phone is doing absolutely nothing the battery will deplete about 11% a day, about what you are observing.

And Apple never told you not to charge overnight. In fact, Apple says explicitly that you should enable battery optimization and charge overnight, and also enable automatic backup overnight. This is the best way to extend the useful life of the battery.

If you use the free Coconut Battery app downloaded from the web onto a Mac only, it reports a ton of battery statistics such as date of manufacture, design capacity, percentage of design capacity remaining for both the Mac and phone and it shows how many charge cycles and who made the battery. No need to crack the phone open.

It pulls the Apple analytics tables and presents it in a neat package.

I think there are 3 applicable, possible scenarios here:

# 3 and it is possible by what I have surmised and is not an absolute: The phones that are experiencing this could possibly just have a batch of batteries that are preforming normally which is the 1 % drop every few weeks scenario we have been reading about, or one of the batteries manufactured by a particular supplier to Apple could have supplied /had a bad batch. I have 3 iPhone 12 Pro's in my family. Mine is down to 94.5% now and my daughter's is at 100% as is my son's 12 Pro Max. The 3 of us have batteries made by different companies that supply batteries to Apple. Maybe I got the luck of the draw :) Either way, I have always found Apple support to be very helpful when I present things to them in a cool, calm, collected fashion.

I see that the 14.5 calibration thing that is going on is for only for the 11 series and not the 12's. Maybe ours is the first batch to be really accurate?

Again, every 12 Pro Max has about six months of factory warranty left.

If around October you check and it’s below 80%, Apple will replace your battery under warranty.

If before then you check and it’s below 80%, Apple will replace your battery under warranty.

Anything else at this point is needless worry.

The thing is, MANY have. A lot of the chats have been useless, including mine that states "normal battery, - restore the phone" then the person gives me tips on preventing battery drain (not health drain) just normal usage drain.

*BTW, 14.6 is draining batteries more in everyday use, thats a whole other topic I guess.

But there have been a few that have received a total iPhone replacement after certain Apple support members did a thorough diagnosis , or the free battery replacement by going to the Apple Store (but that communication was never received at the store - and the person has to jump through hoops what Support told them. *They smartly printed out the online chat and brought it to the store, finally Apple Store agreed...or gave in but only after speaking to the manager).

Personally I do not want a new phone, replacement.

I WOULD NOT mind a battery replacement now however.

percy240 wrote:

Yea me too I just brought this phone I think it’s defected I only had my phone for about 7-8 months

A decrease in battery health of 0.5%-1.0% per month is normal and expected. Your phone is not defective.

Go and ask for help. I got a free replacement at 92% . If you look carefully , only one person keeps on saying that all of us are NORMAL. If I can get replacement, you can too. If it really drops too rapidly , ask for help. So called NORMAL is draining the battery to zero and charging it with high output/ wireless / car charger, all methods which are well known to kill battery , that’s why it is so called NORMAL.

My iphone 12 pro max was losing 1% battery health per week since updating to 14.5 in april. Until then I was at 100% health and now I'm at 90%...After updating last week at 14.7 the problem looks to be fixed. I was expecting to lose another 1% by last Friday, but I'm still at 90%. So for me it seems that 14.7 fixed the problem. But the battery health it's still at 90%. So it looks like there was something messing up the battery in 14.5 and 14.6 that was making it degrade faster.

Fallenshadows82 wrote:

I’m at 90% taking mine to a store soon to see if they can do anything for me

They can run battery diagnostics remotely.

Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

However, they won't generally replace the battery until it drops below 80%. It is considered fit for use above that.

Nothing "smells."

This behavior is completely normal for any device with a rechargeable battery.

The iPhone 12 is simply letting you know; with other devices battery degradation happens silently.

The batteries on the iPhone 12 report the degradation more honestly; past phones only reported reductions in large chunks, so it seems like the 12 is worse.

crystal_star wrote:

Ok so i don't know if this has anything to do with my battery capacity, but here goes.

my battery has been charging really slowly recently (keep in mind I only charge 40% every day, from 60%-100%). it's taking a little over 2 hours to be exact, and i really don't know why. however, yesterday and the day before, it charged noticeably faster, even while i used it the entire time. it took only about 1 hour and 40 mins. my capacity hasn't dropped for over a month, so i really wonder if it's accurate now. today, it went back to charging super slowly even when i was NOT using it. i've had my iphone 12 for more than a year, so maybe that explains it, but why did it charge so "normally" for the last two days even when i never restarted or did anything to my phone? i have been using the exact same charger, brick, and wall plug. what is going on, exactly?

Some background…

Batteries are considered consumable or wear items. All batteries will inexorably and inevitably degrade, and all will fail. When (and not if) the battery fails, the battery can be replaced, if that happens before the iPhone is replaced. Individual batteries will vary, too. Some arrive with more capacity. Some other batteries are exposed to environmental heat, and degrade mire quickly. Details and usage all vary.

Battery charge and battery capacity are also digital estimates of what is an analog device. Batteries can have temperature sensors and voltage sensors connected, but there’s no charging sensor nor any capacity sensor. The charge and capacity values shown are estimates, and are derived indirectly from other available data over time. With a petroleum-powered vehicle fuel gage, you can have a physical float sensor or an electronic depth sensor measuring how full the fuel tank is, and you know the tank capacity. Batteries lack that tank sensor, and the original maximum capacity of individual batteries can vary based on materials differences within individual batteries.

For charging…

iPhone will charge to about 80% and then wait until somewhat before your normal usage starts, and will then fully charge the battery.

That is, iPhone will quickly charge to ~80% (depending on the available wattage at the charger, the battery temperature, and probably some other factors) and then charging will pause, and then fully charge.

This scheme all to avoid trying to hold the battery at fully charged for longer than is necessary, as this tends to degrade the battery more quickly than does a partial charge and then a quick sprint to fully-charged.

You can see this charging pattern behavior on the charge graph, too.

This is what is mentioned in the text of the screen shot shown at the top of this webpage.

It is common to charge the battery during the user’s downtime and particularly the user’s during sleep, and the optimized battery charging tries to learn your charging (sleep) schedule.

As for shifting behaviors, with iOS 15.1 Apple also implemented “Battery algorithms updated on iPhone 12 models to better estimate battery capacity over time”, so there can or will be some changes around the battery capacity display from previous iOS versions.

When your battery capacity drops below 80% and you find yourself needing to add an additional charge cycle into your normal usage, get your battery replaced. Otherwise, use your iPhone for what you bought it for. Which probably wasn’t as a battery gage.

crystal_star wrote:

and yes, for the last two days before yesterday, my phone did charge quickly from 60%-80%, in about 40 minutes. it charged to 90% only about 15 minutes after it was 80% (I have on a shortcut that sends me a notification every time my battery reaches 70, 80, 90, and 100, so i know the time differences between two percentages). but yesterday, it took about 15 minutes longer even when i wasn't using it, so i don't think the part about charging quickly to 80% applied. it became more normal towards the end (by that i obviously mean faster), so it was really the beginning that threw it off. but still, there's really no one specific way to judge, correct?

Apple has sought to avoid the need for the user to need to manage the battery; to automate battery maintenance.

Your iPhone is working normally, including the charging behavior.

A completely charged battery is good when you need it, but sitting at a full charge is not best for lithium ion battery longevity.

What you are seemingly expecting to happen here—a direct and immediate run to a full charge—and are clearly puzzled by—slower charging past 80%—are part of the charging algorithm’s efforts to preserve battery capacity.

Enable optimized charging, charge your iPhone on a regular schedule, and (as was mentioned in Lawrence Finch’s reply above) have regular and preferably scheduled backups of your data.

If you’re interested in lithium ion battery technologies in general, there are lots of references around the net. Here’s one:

https://batteryuniversity.com/article/**-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries