Resetting Battery Health Indicator after Battery Replacement

Apple's methods of resetting the battery indicator are proprietary to Apple.

One should always expect that performing an unauthorized repair (e.g., replacing a battery at a third party shop) will result in interfaces such as the battery health indicator failing.

Posters here are reporting that it might take a while before the battery health status shows up after a battery replacement. I’ll just say that the number seems to be extremely stable in my case. I look at other tools (the Battery Life app and coconutBattery) which vary a lot.

However, apparently the battery health indicator relies on talking to the battery’s smart management electronics.

iPhone Battery and Performance - Apple Support

Battery health unknown

If iOS is unable to determine the device battery health, you'll see this message:

This iPhone is unable to determine battery health. An Apple Authorized Service Provider can service the battery. More about service options…

This may be due to having an improperly installed battery or an unknown battery part.

If you want to monitor your battery health, another tool might work.

mcewans wrote:

Thank you. I didn’t know that.

Just as a thing to think about - that it's generally understood that replacing the battery with an aftermarket part means that Apple will refuse to service it in the future. Not a screen repair or any other issue. And definitely not an OEM battery replacement service. I can't say I like it, but certainly after a warranty is up, no manufacturer is obligated to service a product.

Apple doesn't really warn anyone about it though, other than normal warranty disclaimers (stuff like "damage caused by"). The AppleCare+ terms do say that "unauthorized modifications/service" will result in loss of the ability to service.

If the indicator requires manual action it will be just one step in the Apple process. As stated above, the Apple workshop process is proprietary and as far as anyone here knows it has never been disclosed.

This is a user to user support forum and Apple does not participate here. No one with "chime in" here. If you wish to ask Apple the question, then you need to use the Contact Support link at the top of the page.

ChrisJ4203 wrote:

This is a user to user support forum and Apple does not participate here. No one with "chime in" here. If you wish to ask Apple the question, then you need to use the Contact Support link at the top of the page.

They do occasionally - you know the “Community Specialists”? But they seem to avoid posting to topics where the discussion could get chippy.

Apple’s refusal to handle equipment with third party batteries is completely understandable as a safety policy. There are only two kinds of lithium ion batteries; Apple Genuine Parts with traceable QA, and “Anything Else” where anything else includes everything from unofficial parallel production in a respected facility, down to counterfeits made in a backstreet workshop. The problem is that (particularly) counterfeit lithium batteries can get very excitable. They have a well deserved reputation to explode or catch fire with little or no warning, and there is no way to know which third party batteries are safe to handle.

Branta_uk wrote:

Apple’s refusal to handle equipment with third party batteries is completely understandable as a safety policy. There are only two kinds of lithium ion batteries; Apple Genuine Parts with traceable QA, and “Anything Else” where anything else includes everything from unofficial parallel production in a respected facility, down to counterfeits made in a backstreet workshop. The problem is that (particularly) counterfeit lithium batteries can get very excitable. They have a well deserved reputation to explode or catch fire with little or no warning, and there is no way to know which third party batteries are safe to handle.

Well - we do have laws around the world that cover such things - at least as it pertains to warranties and extended warranties. The legal requirement in the United States is that warranty service can't be denied on the basis of having an aftermarket part unless it specifically causes damage.

And with lithium-ion batteries I understand that there's a lot of junk out there. However, it's not as if Apple has a monopoly on high quality batteries. I could easily imagine an aftermarket battery to be equivalent in quality to Apple OEM.

I know the Community Specialists, however their job is to provide links to current Apple Support documents, and if that does not help, then they refer you to Apple Support. They generally will only respond to a thread that has not been answered within 24 hours. They will not get involved in actual conversations except as explained earlier. And they will not speak of Apple policy.

mcewans wrote:

Since I am a programmer with PLCs my intrest is more general knowledge as opposed to the specific algorithm used. I know there are different ways to measure battery llife. I know that the internal resistance is one of the factors. I have the third party “battery life” app on my phone and the weird thing it does whenever I reboot the phone usually due to an IOS upgrade, it will stay around 97% for a day or two and then shoot up to 100% and stay there. The Apple Battery Life Indicator has been steady at 97% since I installed IOS 11.3 back in February. I like to keep my phone fully charged as much as I can. I mostly use the phone for Netflix and Apple Music and rarely let the battery below 80%. I don’t know if I have just been lucky for the battery life to stay at 97% for such a long period of time or if it’s because I keep the battery charged. Hopefully I can get some answers just to satisfy my curiosity.

I get that with Battery Life and with coconutBattery. I believe it's more of a "real time" up to date estimate that may go all over the map. I believe temperature may also affect the reading. In coconutBattery I might see it display 92% battery health, but as the phone warms up I'll see it jump as high as 97% in a half hour.

If you're kind of curious, there are lots of articles on lithium-ion batteries at BatteryUniversity.com from Cadex. They're a supplier of battery testing equipment and their articles are reasonably easy for most people to understand.

Battery capacity estimates are of course just estimates. There really is no way to definitively know how much total capacity there is in a battery as it ages. All that can be done is monitor what going on and try to apply that to an estimate. One of the things that might be done is simply count the amount of total charge (Coulomb counting) going in and out, but it doesn't necessarily work that well when charging and discharging at random times. I believe this is one of the reasons why some device/battery makers recommended what was called a "calibration" cycle where a battery was discharged from 100% to 0%

However, one of the things that we have in modern lithium-ion batteries is a smart battery system. Parameters are monitored directly by electronics on the battery and stored on the battery. Not that I'd recommend it, but a salvage battery placed in another device would read out with exactly the same number of cycles and battery health, as that's stored somewhere in the battery's electronics. But back to estimates - this section on battery testing sort of says something about the difficulty:

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/battery_rapid_test_methods

A battery resembles a living organism that cannot be measured; only estimated by diagnostics similar to a doctor examining a patient.

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Estimating the capacity of the chemical battery on the fly is most complex. This involves algorithms and matrices that serve as lookup tables similar to letter or face recognition. Modern rapid-test methods move towards advanced machine learning in capturing the many moods of a battery.