iPhone 12 Pro max battery health drops 6 percent after 2 months

Mldz_96 wrote:

Hi so I just check for my battery health today and it drops to 92%. It’s dropping every week. What to do with this?

At 92% after 9+ months isn’t bad and isn't necessarily a sign of anything wrong. Apple’s nominal rating for iPhone batteries is 500 charge-discharge cycles before an expected degradation from 100% to 80%. Some do better and some do worse, which is the case with all batteries. Degradation isn’t necessarily linear, but with an assumed 1% drop every 25 cycles and 25 cycles per month, it would be at 91% by now.

Apple won’t do anything other than maybe offer to replace the battery for a fee. And they might not even offer that for you depending on your country since that may require a complete replacement for the “battery service”. Those would be limited to situations where the battery is depleted to under 80% battery health, which is how iPads qualify for replacement for depleted batteries.

Pretty normal actually and try checking your battery health when the battery if full and when it is down to 20%. You can click on the Get Support link at the top right of this page and have the phone tested but if you are not experiencing any problems I wouldn't worry about it. Check it again in February 2022 and if it is below 80% use your warranty.

It's not a live reading, although there's no way of knowing when and how often the battery health updates. I've seen it where my battery's health remained unchanged for months, but then reported a 4% jump overnight. I've seen a lot of the battery health changes in big drops.

Mldz_96 wrote:

Is there any reason why is this happening? My iphone xs max after a year it only drop 1% that it takes a year to drop to 99%.

What I'm saying is that it wasn't necessarily just dropping 1% in that time but a matter of when it updates the number. I suspect that my iPhone has updated the battery health as I have another battery tool (coconutBattery) that claims to have a live reading that's considerably lower than what iOS currently reports. And in a few cases I've seen the battery health reported in iOS drop 4% overnight. I've also heard of some reports of the battery health going up, although usually maybe 1%. I don't buy that real battery health can increase, but reported battery health is only an estimate.

It may feel like you're ahead of the curve just because it appears that you're getting minimal battery degradation over 6 months, but that may be an illusion. But overall if you're actually using the battery for a full cycle every day, 93% since March 2021, it sounds typical.

Mldz_96 wrote:

Thank you for explaining. Atleast I can be at ease now. It was really disturbing for me to think that my iphone xs max decrease 1% after a year of using. While this iphone 12 pro max of mine right now. It’s been only a few months and it’s decreasing to 8% already.

Not sure what else can be said other than that rechargeable batteries wear out. It's also just an estimate. It's not like a gas tank where one can see exactly where the maximum level is. It requires tricks using what can be observed to make an estimate about how much capacity remains. I've had my iPhone battery health drop in chunks after reporting 99 to 100% battery health for a year. Even now mine is reporting 92% after over 3 years and over 500 charge cycles, and I suspect it's actually less than that and will eventually update.

Batteries also don't necessarily wear out evenly. There might be certain events that generate a lot of heat which is the worst thing that can happen to a rechargeable battery.

If it's really that concerning to you, you might consider obtaining a charging case or using a USB power pack whenever possible. That will limit the amount of cycles on your internal battery.

y_p_w is completely correct in everything they wrote.

There is nothing to do until it hits 80%

The process is normal in all batteries.

All phones are different

It is not a straight line ageing process.

Nothing you can do will prevent the ageing, apart from charging all night every night and don't ever drain it to zero.