iPhone 13 Battery Health Drop

My iphone 13 battery health went from 100% to 99% after 3 months. Since last September 20 when I update to ios 16, my battery health is decreasing. Battery health has decreased by 4% in the last 20 days. Solve this problem?


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Posted on Oct 11, 2022 10:21 AM

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57 replies

Jun 17, 2023 1:33 AM in response to IdrisSeabright

I purchase my iPhone 13 Pro in June 2022. Today, after more than 1 year it’s battery health has just dropped to 98%.

I rarely charge it above 80% with the help of an App called Battery Alarm. I also have charging optimised and various settings adjusted to save battery life like Push emails and Background App refresh switched off

Rechargeable batteries do not like charging above 80/90%, it kills their lifespan.

The biggest error most people make is charging overnight.

My phone cost me £1000. Why would I intentionally damage it?

I also drive an EV and follow exactly the same principles.

Jun 17, 2023 7:37 AM in response to mdg424

We charge our phones overnight, every night to 100%. My 14 Pro is currently at 100% capacity after 9 months. My 4 year old XR is at 94% after 4 years. My wife’s 8 is 6 years old. Its battery is 98%. So perhaps your information about what batteries “like” is misguided.


Actually, the Best Practice is to charge overnight, every night, with Optimized Charging enabled and automatic backups also enabled. As Apple recommends.


My granddad used to say It ain’t what you don’t know that hurts you, it is what you know that ain’t so.

Jun 17, 2023 9:42 AM in response to Lawrence Finch

Hello Lawrence.


to keep my post short I avoided TMI. I’ll now expand on my original post.


If a Lithium-Ion battery is charged to 100% and then either not used immediately or lightly used so the charge state stays above say 90% for some time, the battery will prematurely age and it’s health will drop.

Apple acknowledges this here;

Batteries - Maximising Performance - Apple (UK)


see this statement;

Do not fully charge or fully discharge your device’s battery — charge it to around 50%. If you store a device when its battery is fully discharged, the battery could fall into a deep discharge state, which renders it incapable of holding a charge. Conversely, if you store it fully charged for an extended period of time, the battery may lose some capacity, leading to shorter battery life.


This statement relates to storing a phone however in my opinion it is a disingenuous statement which only eludes to the truth. 100% is 100% and how long is storage for ‘some time’? If 10 days does some damage the surely so does 10 hours or even 10 minutes, obviously to a lesser extent but the cumulative effect will be similar.


A brief Google search will show many commentators who advise against 100% charging.


Perhaps it’s in a phone manufacturers interest to avoid the full truth in the interest of sales and replacements.


I’m an electronic engineer in Industrial Automation and Control where battery back-up systems (DC-UPS) utilising Li-Ion are commonly used.


I’ve also driven Tesla’s since 2016, my house is powered by Tesla Powerwalls and my wife drives another EV.


I have a huge investment in Li-Ion and consequently need to understand them.


I have made a study of maximising battery life and have investigated the chemistry and chemical reactions in Li-Ion batteries.


If you have been charging consistently to 100% I’m amazed that your battery health is still so high, perhaps the exception that proves the rule.


Thank you for your advice but I’d rather follow my experience.


Regards

Malcolm.




Jun 17, 2023 10:08 AM in response to mdg424

You are missing one factor: Whether the phone runs on battery 100% of the time, or uses external power some of the time, which reduces the number of charge-discharge cycles. When you charge overnight, 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.


The 100% factor is the battery should not be kept at 100%, not that it should never be charged to 100%. Follow Apple’s guidance to charge overnight with optimized charging enabled it will only be at 100% for a short time, as it will start discharging as soon as you discount it.


There is a fundamental difference between an EV car and an iPhone; you can use an iPhone while it is plugged it, and it can use external power rather than the battery. You can’t use your Tesla when it is plugged in unless you have a VERY long extension cord.

Jul 31, 2023 6:33 AM in response to mae8096

mae8096 wrote:

I bought my Iphone 14 pro last December 2022 and now July 2023 the battery health becomes 95 so fast. Idk what happen. I make sure that I charged my phone before its get down to 30%. I guess its because of the updated then?

On average, batteries will lose about 1% a month. Therefore, 5% in 6+ months is better than average. Nothing is wrong with your phone.


Why are you checking battery health? Are you experiencing other problems with your phone? If you are not, there's no useful information to be gained by checking. Check again about a month before your warranty expires.

Aug 22, 2023 3:13 PM in response to Bob Timmons

I’ve had my iPhone 13 mini for around 6 months now and battery health dropped from 98 to 95 in just a week, so after 6 months i’d dropped 5%… I’ve had an iPhone SE (2020) and it dropped to 99% after 1 year and 5 months of heavy usage, basically after 500 charge cycles. iOS 13 and 14 were doing a great job on battery health, but i feel like iOS 16 is the cause of the problem here, because as soon as i updated my SE to iOS 16, is dropped by 6% in 2 months. Does anyone know how to stop this or am I just gonna have to replace the battery sooner than I thought?

Aug 22, 2023 5:14 PM in response to RickyChLo

After 6 months dropping to 95% (and if it has just dropped, actually to 95.9%) is normal. Your iPhone SE battery was better than normal.


A battery is a chemical device, and chemistry is generally pretty variable and uncertain, as well as being analog, not digital. Apple specs the battery capacity to remain above 80% for 500 full charge cycles, but that is a minimum requirement; there is no published maximum expected capacity. So sometimes batteries will perform much better than that minimum specification, and sometimes the change in maximum capacity won't be linear. There is no way to predict in advance what the real-life performance of any specific battery will be.


All iPhones have a specification for the battery. As an example, for the iPhone 14 Pro that is 3200 milliampere-hours (MaH). So the battery monitor is calibrated for 100% at that value. But there are variations in manufacturing, so some batteries will have less capacity, and some will have more. Suppose your battery had, say, 3520 MaH capacity (10% over standard). That would still show as 100% (even though it was actually 110%), but as it aged the health would stay at 100% until it fell below 3200 MaH. This would appear to you as if the battery had fabulous life, until suddenly it didn’t.

iPhone 13 Battery Health Drop

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