Battery cycle count keeps increasing for iPhone running iOS 18.5

The Cycle Count will always increase. The charging limit does not prevent the from happening as you phone still needs to charge.

When you use your iPhone, its battery goes through charge cycles. You complete one charge cycle when you’ve used an amount that represents 100 percent of your battery’s capacity.

iPhone battery and performance - Apple Support

So if you charge from 70% to 80% ten times, then that will equal 1 Charge Cycle. To be completely accurate it is the discharge that counts as a charge cycle, so it really is determined by discharging from 80% to 70% ten times.

One "cycle" is one complete discharge and recharge of the battery. It is also two discharges to 50%, or four to 25%.

You can only stop the cycles from increasing by never using your device.

Charge Cycles will always increase. If they didn't, your phone would not be recharging.

For every 50 Charge Cycles, the Maximum Capacity will drop about 1% on average. So, after 250 Charge Cycles, the Max Cap will read about 95%. After 500 Cycles, the Max Cap will be about 90%.

Replace the battery when the Max Cap is down to 80%

In addition to everything you've been correctly told, you need to understand that batteries are consumable parts. You simply cannot stop the natural aging of a battery. iPhone batteries are certainly smarter than the batteries in your flashlight, for example, but eventually they too will degrade to a level which requires they be replaced.

Trying to micromanage your battery to only operate within a 10% charge range will only serve to frustrate you. Don't let your battery fully deplete. Try to avoid letting it go below 20%. Charge it every night, ALL NIGHT as it can't be overcharged. Just enjoy your phone and when the day comes the health of your battery declines to 80% or lower, which it surely will if you own the phone long enough, pay Apple to put a new battery in your phone at that point.

Andrey_Kazak wrote:

It would be great if iOS could share the battery degradation stats and make a series of predictions of date versus Max Cap in a form of a graph.

Not even possible to predict in the future. Apple states your battery is engineered to last 1000 charge cycles on average. If Apple predicted a date in your Settings and it was wrong, then people would think that Apple owes them a battery because it has failed too early. You are perfectly capable of making any predictions on your own and Apple will give you the current stats of the battery.

As for the charge limit, Apple introduced Optimized Charging 6 years ago, the same year your Galaxy was launched, and automatically charged device to only 80%. It learns your charging habits and just before you normally take it off the charger, it will charge to the full 100% so you are not starting your day off with a phone that is only capable of performing 80% of what it was designed to.

While now Apple has Optimized Charging AND the ability to manually set a Charge Limit, it has been referred to as a gimmick, simply because some users are obsessed with controlling their battery. Optimized Charging works just fine and that one has always been recommended. Some users are so focused on the battery that they will do things that basically cripple the device such as constantly turning off/on Low Power Mode, turning down the screen brightness where it is hardly even visible, manually turn on/off Wifi, Cellular, and Bluetooth. It is kind of like not wanting to change the channels on your TV remote, because that means you will need to replace those batteries sooner. They create so much anxiety that it is their life span they are reducing, not the battery. Simply use the phone like it was intended, and when the Battery Health is below 80%, then it is time to change it. Use either the Charge Limit or Optimized Charging, the choice is yours. If you want to start your day with a 100% charge and not a battery that is already partially depleted, then Optimized Charging is your only option.

Keep in mind that no two batteries will exhibit the exact same levels and battery health decline is NOT linear. It can remain steady for a while, then drop a few points all at once. In other words, it's "on average" that for every 50 cycles, you may see about a 1% drop in battery health. But it is NOT exact.

(assuming the relationships are linear)

They aren't normally. They might be, but in general the gradual battery decline is not linear. We see posts all the time from users asking why their Max Cap dropped 1-2% in a given month.

4 years are required to degrade the battery to 80% of its full capacity....and to loose (lose) the peak performance.

Are you saying that peak performance will remain constant for 4 years? It won't. You may likely notice that things are not the same by the 3rd year and change even more during the 4th year. Battery charging may take longer and battery charge may be depleted faster as the battery declines. Or, it might not.

No one has a crystal ball that is good enough to predict the future accurately.

Regarding Charge Limits, Personally, I think they are more of a gimmick than anything else, but that might be another discussion.

Somehow, things were just fine for 15+ years without them before Apple added them with the introduction of the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16. If Charge Limits were really all that important, you might wonder why the simple software was not included for all iPhones that could run iOS 18.....not just the iPhone 15 and 16.

It's not hard to figure out the reasoning on that one.

Just a small comment to Charge Limits: my 5+ year old Samsung Galaxy S10+ from the box had the Battery Saver mode to charge the battery up to 85% only. This might tell that there something valuable behind limiting the battery charge.

And it might not. You have to charge the battery more often this way. That's more wear and tear on the battery. But, I don't know whether Samsung even has an option similar to Optimized Battery Charging.

No one has a crystal ball that is good enough to predict the future accurately.

I have tried it both ways, and Optimized Battery Charging works better for me on the iPhone. It might not for you though.

But, the question still remains......if Charge Limits are really that beneficial......why was this "important" feature not provided for for all iPhone users running iOS 18? Gimmick?

Bob Timmons wrote:

But, the question still remains......if Charge Limits are really that beneficial......why was this "important" feature not provided for for all iPhone users running iOS 18? Gimmick?

That's what I've long suspected.

I’m sure its a gimmick, because there are many YouTube videos and advice from “experts” who say disaster is sure to happen if you ever charge any Lithium Ion battery higher than 80%. Which is total nonsense, and is the comparable to saying the Earth is flat. But Apple added that feature for the poor victims of these fake facts.

Thanks, Lawrence!