iPhone SE 2020 Battery Issue

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Level 1

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iPhone SE 2020 Battery Issue

Kind of irritated at Apple. My SE 2020 which is BARELY ever used has battery health of 97%. I bought it in June 2021 and for the most part, it has been sitting in its box. I have an S21 so I switch between Apple and Samsung. I felt like using my iPhone but I turned it on today and the health is 97%. How can the health degrade when it wasn't even being used?? Also, I charged it up and within a matter of 15-20 mins, the battery went from 100% charge to 81%. I wasn't gaming, I wasn't watching videos. I was using a shipping app and sending out tracking numbers to my customers. I mean to drop from 100 to 81 in that small amount of time seems odd. Maybe I'm just used to my beast of a phone S21.

Is anyone else having problems with their SE 2020? Is it Apple doing this to the battery? Should I just trade it in for a 12?

Posted on Sep 6, 2021 2:38 PM

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Answer 1

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Lawrence Finch

Level 10

211,946 points

Sep 6, 2021 5:38 PM in response to Ashley_J92

Batteries are consumables; they lose a little capacity every time they are discharged, then recharged. On average this works out to about a 1% loss for every 25 “full charge cycles” ( some will be a little more, others a little less). As one example, if you charge the phone overnight, every night (and that is what you should do; it is a best practice), it starts the day at 100%. If it drops to 20% by the end of the day before you charge it again overnight that counts as 0.8 full charge cycles (20% to 100%), or about 24 full charge cycles per month of use. For this example your battery capacity will lose about 1% per month. Of course, if the end-of-day level is higher than 20% the capacity loss will be a little less, and if it is lower than 20%, or you charge it during the day, the capacity loss will be higher.

The absolute best way to 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.

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