Battery rapidly depletes with no usage

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Battery rapidly depletes with no usage

My iPhone 14 Pro Max is losing battery rapidly and randomly. I’ll leave it with 60%+ and go to bed at 9pm, then wake up to it turned off needing a recharge at 6am. I’ve checked battery health and during these times there are no background apps in use, & it also shows a very sudden or instant drop from 60 to 0. Its battery health is 86%. This started happening about a week ago before the 18.3 update. Updating to 18.3 did not help. It has happened during the day too, I put it down at a high % (can’t remember exactly) then checked it about 2 hours later and it was on 4% after no use at all, sitting on a table in the shade in 30C temperature. Bluetooth and wifi both on (wifi is connected at home, watch is connected via Bluetooth always).

I didn’t change any settings or do anything different, it just happened out of nowhere.

As you can see from the pictures it dropped suddenly at around 10am out of nowhere (not in use) then I charged it to about 80% (I rarely charge to 100% and try to only ever charge to 90% at most) then it sustained battery life well with usage until about 830pm when I went to bed then it shut down at around 11 (no use, no background apps, and in the second pic the last bar also shows no app usage but I thought best to show more time leading up to its shutdown too). I don’t understand and my phone is only 2.5 years old. Charged mostly using wireless chargers, rarely plugged in. I haven't tried a fresh install of iOS yet.

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you.

Posted on Feb 7, 2025 3:48 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 7, 2025 3:58 PM in response to jwrath

What do you see when you go to Battery Health & Charging?

Regardless, you should be charging overnight, every night.

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. Here's more information→About Optimized Battery Charging on your iPhone - Apple Support

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Answer 2

Feb 7, 2025 5:33 PM in response to jwrath

The answer to all of your questions was in the response that I posted, including why to charge overnight, what Optimized charging does (and it ONLY works if you charge overnight), and any usage that occurs overnight (and there will always be some) will be powered from the power source, rather than the battery, thus decreasing the number of full charge cycles over the life of the iPhone. AND it automates backups, so when disaster strikes you won’t lose more than one day’s worth of content.

While you should not leave a battery at 100% for long periods of time, charging to 100%, then begin discharging it a bit later will both give you more life between charges, and won’t hurt the battery.

But for the REALLY long answer→When to charge your iPhone or iPad | Communities

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Answer 3

jwrath Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 7, 2025 4:14 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Optimised charging is already on. Why is charging overnight necessary? Charging to 100% is never optimal for a lithium battery right? All lithium products (cars, campervan batteries, tablets, phones, etc.) all recommend keeping charge between 20-80% for optimal battery health.

Also when I first got my phone I could use it for 2 days straight off one charge then charge it on the second night when it got down to 20%. I know that will not be the case after 2 years but why should I charge it if it’s already at 60%? Thanks for your reply but it doesn’t answer why it suddenly shuts down or loses mass amounts of battery (40-50%) instantly when not in use at random times of day or night. This is not “charge overnight” related.

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Answer 4

jwrath Author

Level 1

5 points

Feb 7, 2025 4:19 PM in response to jwrath

For additional context this has happened once when in use (the first time I noticed this issue actually). I can’t remember the exact battery % but it was at least 50% and I was using the flashlight for about 15 minutes then all of a sudden it was 3%. When I plugged it in to charge (not wireless) it rapidly charged back to 50% way faster than normal.

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Battery rapidly depletes with no usage

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