iphone 12 pro max battery health degrading

mike20301 wrote:

My iPhone was 93% battery health like a month or two ago now it’s only 90% this is crazy they need to fix this I got iPhone 12 also but my old iPhone the 6 plus it’s battery barely degrades at all it’s been at 91% for like 2 years

You can't compare the battery usage of an iPhone 12 and an iPhone 6. They have different processors and different capabilities.

Mark-D wrote:

All I can say is that the battery characteristics of the iPhone 12, is very much different to any other iPhone I've owned - a part of me would prefer Apple to turn this feature off, as it's too distracting and perhaps something we don't need to be preoccupied by.

Yes, every model phone has different characteristics. There is no need to look at Battery Health. Just ignore it until your phone is close to the end of its warranty.

Fallenshadows82 wrote:

My iPhone 12 Pro Max has been at 90% for nearly 3-4 weeks hasn’t decreased since the last iOS update despite heavy use or could it be the rate of decrease is slowing down because it’s levelling off?

The decrease is not linear. Battery health can stay the same for quite a while, then drop several points either all at once or over the course of days or weeks.

Thank you Samuel. Oddly enough, the battery on my iPhone 12 Pro isn't quickly draining--it's just the battery health is "draining" faster than it should.

I last charged my phone Saturday night, took it off the charger Sunday morning. I'm still 29%. I'm going to completely drain it all the way just to see if that might make a difference with the battery health.

My boss was just in here and he got an iPhone 12 Pro Max earlier this year and his is still at 100% and I know he uses his far more than I use my personal phone. He's going to be watching the battery health now.

motorola-user wrote:

Has it ever occured to these people that you might find yourself in a situation where you cannot charge your phone and you absolutely need it to get to where you need to be?

What if you are stuck somewhere in the wilderness?

What do you do then when your phone dies in less than 6 hours?

You literarily might get found dead because you were not able to make a call or share your location when needed.

1) Relying on a cell phone in the wilderness is foolishness of the first order. If it had cell towers, it wouldn't be wilderness. 2) If your battery is only lasting six hours, you should have Apple run diagnostic on it and 3) Carry an external battery pack.

Pro the legend wrote:

Sorry if I’m being a bit skeptical, but could you link an article/video where Apple has officially stated that the 12 series has a chip built into the battery to monitor the battery health?

No. You will have to accept that there are people who might have more information than you have, and that might not be permitted to reveal the source of their information. To the best of my knowledge Apple has never published information about their internal designs. But the fact that older iPhone models have highly inaccurate battery health displays is easy to demonstrate, and that the iPhone 12 is much more accurate is also easy to demonstrate. I have an almost 3 year old XR. The cycle count is 494. So you would expect it to be around 80%, right? But it shows 94%, and has been for over a year; it has not budged from 94%. But in spite of that outstanding maximum capacity value its battery life between charges is about half of what it was a year ago. So it should be obvious that the maximum capacity figure is way off. I’ve seen quite a few similar comparisons in the forum from users with iPhone 12’s, who have posted that their maximum capacity pretty closely matches what would be expected given their phone’s age and cycle count.

I don’t care what you believe, and I don’t care whether or not you admit you were right or wrong, for that matter.

Change the wilderness to just being out and about in the city.

I don't know about you, but this phone cost 1500 USD here in Sweden. And frankly I find it unacceptable that the phone cant last 6 hours on standby. I'm paying premium price and therefore I expect premium quality.

Not only did I have to buy the phone, I also had to buy the 20W wall charger right. And now you're telling me to go and buy a battery pack for even more money. And on top of all this I have to carry around more stuff.

Let me put it like this: No 😂

So your current phone is performing according to specs, which you acknowledge. Have you considered that your previous phone performed better than its specs, and that you were just lucky with it? Or that the battery health gauge on the XS was not as accurate as the current phone? I have an XR. It’s maximum capacity is reported as 94%. It has 520 cycles. But it’s actual performance is rather seriously degraded, I have to charge it twice a day, so clearly the reported maximum capacity is wrong. Does that make sense?

Have you seen the thousands of posts from users who complain that their older phones (XS, XR, X, 11, etc) lost battery capacity faster than they thought it should? As I said, you were just one of the luck ones who got a battery with some extra capacity - or your gauge was not accurate.

And how is this “planned obsolescence"? How does this force anyone to upgrade for $1000 or more when they can replace the battery for $69 out of warranty, or for free in warranty, probably while they wait?

crystal_star wrote:

but how can it go from 93 to 92 in 10 days if the total number of cycles in those 10 days alone was only about 4?

Nobody here can know the answer to that.

Different batteries have different characteristics, slightly different construction details, different usage patterns, different charging patterns, and different environmental exposures, any and all of which in aggregate will effect the battery health to differing degrees.

Some folks see a drop, then the same health for many months. Others can expose the battery to excess heat or other detrimental activities, and the health then drops much more rapidly.

All batteries will trend downward, eventually requiring an extra charge during normal use, or otherwise manifesting capacity problems.

eT_The_Healer wrote:

There is something amiss with 12 ProMax battery health degradation period!

That particular display has caused untold concern and myriad postings around here, and fir no benefit to anyone.

I do hope that gets replaced with something a little different and closer to how Apple documents use and replacement. Maybe: 🟢🟡🔴; good, fair, bad.

Until an iPhone battery drops below the replacement threshold 80% 🔴, it’s fine.

Getting near the replacement threshold 80% or with a quick drop gets 🟡.

Otherwise, 🟢.

If your iPhone is 80% or higher 🟢, it’s fine. If it’s not 🔴, get the battery replaced. If you want the battery to last, see the tips published by Apple: Batteries - Maximizing Performance - Apple

If you want to understand a little more about the tech: iPhone Battery and Performance - Apple Support

Typical is to charge the iPhone while you sleep.

Running the iPhone while charging will slow the charging, as you have been told.

The smart charging setting is what Apple recommends using, and that works best when you’re on a fairly consistent schedule.

crystal_star wrote:

but overall, the only thing i really want to know is: will using my phone constantly while it's charging damage my battery in any way?

My earlier “shouldn’t” was unclear?

It’s a battery. In an iPhone. The battery will degrade and will fail. All batteries do. Use the iPhone for what you bought it for. Which almost certainly wasn’t as a battery wear gage. When the battery fails, replace it.

Clearly apple thinks there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, considering they said it’s in “good condition”. Clearly they don’t find anything wrong with my phone, and I’ve been complaining of poor battery performance since months, go a few pages back. So they’re acknowledging 80% battery health in 345 cycles is normal.

crystal_star wrote:

I literally did nothing different than I ever did, I closed them all before I left and cleared their cache and everything. So why did it drain so much yesterday? If there was background usage, it would've showed up in the 7-8 usage.

Didn’t you read ANYTHING in my post? Let me state it more clearly. CLOSING APPS DOES NOT STOP THEM FROM RUNNING. GET IT? CLOSING APPS DOES NOT STOP THEM FROM RUNNING. Whenever a closed app gets a notification, receives push data like email, or texts, receives a new social media post (TikTok, SnapChat, Instagram) the app reloads and runs. If you have closed it the process of reopening it uses more energy than if you had just left it suspended, so closing apps actually makes your battery drain faster. Here’s more reading on that subject→Do not close "background" apps | Communities

As you have no control over when people send you updates, email or texts, the amount of energy used will vary from day to day in the same time period.

y guess is that this has to do with optimized battery charging because it works around a schedule, which is kind of impossible to maintain. About a year ago, even when this phone was brand new, it drained from 80% to 50% in only 20 minutes of not using it, and my guess is that the day before at that specific time, it was at 50% already, so the battery wanted to maintain the same charge the next day so that I could plug it in at the same time. I remember being super suspicious about that. Therefore, I made it a point to charge it every day at exactly 9:30, but that means my battery has to be at a certain percent by a certain time for that to work, and that's not what I want at all. If this is indeed what optimized charging requires, then the phone is just not worth $800. I doubt that anyone in the world experiences charging their phone at a new time every day and having it drain drastically in a short period of time. My classmates charge their phones during class and probably do at home too, and their battery is normal. I understand what optimized charging is trying to do, but isn't that ruining the usage?

Your guess is wrong. It has nothing to do with optimized charging. It has to do with day to day variability in when external events cause apps to run on your phone.

And you are also wrong about anyone in the world; there are an estimated 5 billion smartphones of all kinds in the world. And pretty much all of the 5 billion users of those phones think their battery performance should be better.

And you are using a less than ideal charging protocol. You should be charging your phone overnight, every night. It is the absolute best way to get maximum use on a charge, as well as slow the decline of battery capacity long term is to enable Optimized Battery Charging (Settings/Battery/Battery Health) and charge the device overnight, every night. The battery will fast charge to 80%, then pause. During the nighttime pause the phone will use mains power instead of battery power, allowing the battery to “rest”, and thus reducing the need to charge the battery quite as often. The phone will resume charging to reach 100% when you are ready to use your phone; it will “learn” your usage pattern. If you enable iCloud Backup (Settings/[your name]/iCloud - iCloud Backup) the phone will back up overnight also, assuring that you can never lose more than the current day’s updates.

But if you didn’t read my last post, I doubt you will read this one, so I’m not going to bother responding to you again.

crystal_star wrote:

Therefore, I made it a point to charge it every day at exactly 9:30, but that means my battery has to be at a certain percent by a certain time for that to work, and that's not what I want at all.

Why are you doing that? It makes no sense. Put the phone on to charge when you go to bed at night and take it off in the morning. Your battery doesn't need to be "at a certain percent" before you put it on to charge. You're overthinking this.