Update: we took my wife’s phone to the Genius Bar yesterday. The very helpful associate ran some diagnostics that revealed a normally functioning battery. He suspected a third party app may have corrupted the software, and scheduled us for a wipe and reset the next day, as we needed to wait for my wife’s messages to backup. He would then walk us through downloading only proprietary apps from the cloud, meaning my wife would have to manually reinstall other third party apps. We were willing to try this, despite the tedious process ahead, to determine if the phone was a dud, as we are still within T-Mobile’s 14 day return window. He also suggested we try one of Apple’s MagSafe pucks (which my wife was going to buy for work anyway), to see how the phone charged on it.
This morning, we woke up to her phone fully charged on Apple’s puck, while my phone — which previously had no issues on my Anker 3-in-1 or my wife’s Anker 3-in-1, was not fully charged. Is there a “pulling out my hair in frustration” emoji?
This makes me think we’re dealing with a software issue. Perhaps Apple hasn’t fine-tuned the new battery management features well enough so that phones running iOS 18 play nicely with other MagSafe chargers? We’re going to keep the appointment, just to get our new experiences on file. I’m confident that if Apple has enough documentation of the problem then they’ll find a way to fix it… hopefully.
