Yeah. But the point is I want the latest updates - not because of the features (or rather 99% not) but because of the security updates.
That's why I pay insane amounts of money.
Well, that and the (mostly) frictionless user-experience.
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iPhone XS An iPhone battery can last much more than 1000 cycles!!!
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Yeah. But the point is I want the latest updates - not because of the features (or rather 99% not) but because of the security updates.
That's why I pay insane amounts of money.
Well, that and the (mostly) frictionless user-experience.
I know SoC means - State of Charge. (like 30% or 30%-80% of total charge).
ToC I'm at a loss here.
Maybe someone else can help. Total Charge?
Well, in that case there’s nothing you can do. New battery or not, eventually battery life will be complete trash. And in that case... why bother at all?
Obviously it’s a personal opinion and many disagree (which is fine), but I see no good reason to do this: if you don’t update, the device works well with the original battery regardless of battery degradation. If you do, battery life will be poor regardless of battery health.
Yes, poor battery health actually affects updated devices because the battery can’t cope with increased power requirements, and in that case, degraded batteries are unusable (updated 6s users with degraded batteries report complete instability and no battery life at all - many report less than an hour of SOT - in which case... yes, perhaps I can see the point. However, you’re putting in all of this effort, curtailing your ability to use the device to its potential, having to be behind a charger all the time just in case you step off of the small 40% battery margin that you do have... just to have a paltry experience anyway. Too much effort for too little gain.
Take the iPhone 6s: a new battery on iOS 15 gets maybe 3 hours with efficient and light usage. I’ll even give you a magical improvement which I don’t think it has. 4 hours. I’ll extrapolate: 100-99% may last for, say, 12 mins, the rest is linear: you will have to charge the 6s every 92 minutes of screen-on time with a 70-30% approach on iOS 15 (if lucky, I think the actual SOT is worse, but whatever, for argument’s sake). How many times per day is that for a moderately heavy user? Also, any unforeseen events and you’ll run out of battery very quickly... and for what?
While yes, you will be able to maintain a better battery life when compared to somebody who updates and doesn’t do this, the experience is subpar anyway.
And if you’re upgrading every year the exercise is utterly and completely pointless, that’s why I took an older device as an example.
What’s the point of maintaining your battery’s max capacity if you limit yourself to 40% of that capacity? Your phone would last just as long today if you had gone 100% to 1% every day haha
This statement made me chuckle.
I think what you mean is that ‘the remaining full charge capacity, as determined by CoconutBattery, is reported as being higher than the design capacity, also determined by CoconutBattery’.
A somewhat unlikely scenario after more than 1000 charging cycles, but in any case I am happy for you that after all this time your battery is still performing optimally…
…or is it?
I’ve seen batteries reporting good health behaving in a completely screwed up manner and Apple trying to convince me that there must be nothing wrong with it because their diagnostics said so…
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Ok so now I calibrated the battery once and the coconutBattery health aligned to battery health of the settings app. It displays 90% now, which should be the real SoH. And not the 100% from before. This shows that an uncalibrated battery management system can show a false health value for the battery. This is also a known issue for EV battery SoHs, because the procedures to measure this are always a kind of estimation and have measurement uncertainties.
But anyways, 90% is still very good in my opinion for this cycle life. I mean I can get above 2000 cycles out of it till it reaches 80%, if the health behavior is linear. And this is 4 times higher than predicted by apple. As I already said, I didn't do this because of saving money for new batteries, it's just an experiment for me. It's effortless for me to do this because I simply don't need the whole capacity of the battery and therefore there is no need to stress the battery more than needed. And I know there are enough people which can't understand why I'm doing this. But that's their problem.
Here you can see the updated screenshot of coconutBattery:
But anyways, 90% is still very good in my opinion for this cycle life. I mean I can get above 2000 cycles out of it till it reaches 80%, if the health behavior is linear. And this is 4 times higher than predicted by apple. As I already said, I didn't do this because of saving money for new batteries, it's just an experiment for me. It's effortless for me to do this because I simply don't need the whole capacity of the battery and therefore there is no need to stress the battery more than needed. And I know there are enough people which can't understand why I'm doing this. But that's their problem.
Here you can see the updated screenshot of coconutBattery:
I think you may be overlooking the (in my view normal) desire of people to use the latest software and for a good reason too. I love the widgets om the iPhone’s home screen, but is clear that this takes more power than the prior home screens. Apple tries to make phones with the best possible user experience for the current and possibly one prior generation of phones. Two generations out and you will see increased power consumption for running this software.
The other obvious point is that the battery does degrade chemically over time and more so with extensive use. I have an iPhone 11 Pro Max with 256GB and it recently struggled with some 4K video recordings in a very warm environment. It was showing a red battery sign during recording and some of the recordings were corrupted. There is nothing odd about it, the device is showing its real-life age. Despite always charging at 5W it is now at 85% after buying it in the first month it came out. It is now coming up to 4 years and that is completely as expected.
I can definitely understand the “why”, it’s an interesting experiment.
What I can’t understand is how you need only 40% of battery capacity on a phone with an objectively mediocre battery life such as an XS. You obviously don’t use your phone much, yet are enough of a techy/science type to run an experiment such as this which is a curious combo.
In any case, thanks for sharing!
So you're one of the lucky ones with a higher initial full charge capacity than designed. Do you know what your full charge capacity on day one was? It's possible that your battery did degrade, but that it's still above factory spec.
Absolutely, your first paragraph completely matches everyone’s experience: the first major update is fine, then it starts to degrade. Sometimes the second is fine too, but I don’t think you have more than that. After that it falls apart. From the second update onwards you’re risking it.
Of course, people update due to security, features, and app compatibility, and I don’t blame them, I just think it is completely pointless to curtail your usage like this, using only 40% of the battery and making battery care the main aspect of your iPhone usage only to obliterate battery life by updating anyway. Whatever gain you may have from this (debatable) you lose tenfold by updating.
Batteries do degrade, but (and this speaks to apple’s astounding efficiency) iPhones on original iOS versions aren’t affected. Those are way too efficient.
Like I said earlier: I have an iPhone 6s on iOS 10 with 63% health and battery life is like-new. When I see that, doing this is even more futile, as battery health can be irrelevant anyway.
I’ve seen this dismissed a million times, and it is because nobody tries it. I think many would be surprised, especially heavy users. You don’t even have to do this: use a 5w original charger, always avoid heat, stay on the device’s original iOS version, and battery life will be fine.
Very interesting, I’d never seen that happen. Yeah, I was inclined to believe 90% over 100%, 1157 cycles with 90% health is amazing, over 100% is just impossible.
This approach definitely works as far as sheer battery health goes, but honestly the variability is absolutely insane.
Some examples: no battery care at all, no fast charge, only 5w. Always charged to 100%, battery dropped to whatever was needed.
An iPhone 8 with 1800 cycles and 80% health, so not too far from your predicted count. And an iPhone 5c with 83% health and around 1120 cycles.
I’ve also seen an iPhone SE 1st-gen with over 1500 cycles and 78% I think it was, also no battery care.
Also an iPhone 6s with around 800 cycles and 84% health.
Conversely, I’ve seen people online post something like 210 cycles with 87% health. Barring these cases in which you deliberately take care of the battery, it doesn’t seem to have any logical progression. Barring the online case, all of the other results are absolutely amazing and some aren’t far from your result, with no battery care at all.
So it seems like when you take care of the battery, good results are almost guaranteed, and when you don’t, it’s just random luck.
Very interesting. So all the folks using Coconut believing them to be more accurate than Apple’s… might actually be further off? And a recalibration (which anecdotally seems very rarely done) is required to bring them back in line…. and only to Apple’s reported BH?
I personally don’t find any of these battery health/capacity meters very useful, beyond rough directional change indicators. Eg, a 20% drop in batt capacity (to 80%BH) should be reasonably negligible, but from most folks reports, 80%BH sounds more like a 50%+ loss of SOT. As far as I can tell, my BH meter looks at battery capacity changes the same way I do (except muted result, less accurate, and only moves in one direction). That is: 10day-ish rolling average %battery per hourSOT - when that number moves down, so does my BH%.
My home usage is very consistent, and so is my BH% (as I manage batts too). The only time my BH moves, is during extended travel - my avg SOT goes down (more standby drain), and I use power-consuming cellular and GPS more. A new low BH% bar is set, and of course it never recovers when my home usage goes back to normal. As my batt ages/loses capacity, some random subsequent extended trip will eventually trigger the next BH% step-down.
My routine for a new phone is to efficiency-tune it (turn off features I don’t use/care about) then take screen shots of rundown tests 100>50, 50>0, under my normal home usage, to benchmark it’s SOT when new. Then I just compare equivalent usage/batt graph screenshots as time goes on to gauge my real SOT loss.
After 3yrs, my XR started shutting down at ~15% so it needed a recalibration (which fixed it). Since my phone almost never sees 100%, I took this opportunity to do the full rundown comparison screenshots.
At 4yrs old, my equivalent usage/screenshots are finally starting to show 20-25% capacity losses. I feel ~half of that is from iOS16 inefficiencies (as it was a sudden hit, forcing me bump up my peak charge automation), and other ~half from normal age-related decay. I’ll probably run another recalibration @5yo, or maybe earlier if it starts shutting down unexpectedly again.
To the batt mgt nay-sayers, keep in mind I’m using a shortcut/smartplug for my custom charge optimization, and 50% daily cycling (+ 20% cushion) is more than enough to get me through the day on a single plug-in that requires no effort/monitoring/hassle. I actually like the ~8ish hr capacity limitation - I need the self-imposed ‘parental control’.
Keep in mind that coconutBattery just report's Apple's own internal battery specs.
If you have a Mac - open a terminal and type:
ioreg -l -w0 | grep AppleRawMaxCapacity
ioreg -l -w0 | grep DesignCapacity | tail -1
These are the values coconutBattery reports.
I do think you're onto something with the fact that the battery health % and even internal stats trying to get capacity are just estimates that deteriorate with age. Mr. Isidor's book states something very similar to this (from Battery University website).
Then the problem seems to be that it’s reporting the wrong info? I mean if the OP does a recalibration and the Apple health remains unchanged, and Coconut just aligns to it, what use is it beyond placebo? (especially if recalibrations are rarely performed). Also carrying the capacity/health % out 2-decimal points (like it’s accurate) and then being off 10% w/o recalibration… wow.
My guess (just a guess) is that Apple's health % has code in it to keep it more stabilized. Those internal capacity stats vary day to day (I've spent many years watching them as a hobby) and can swing several %s over the course of a week, month, etc.
But yeah, I've never seen 10% difference from recalibration. I know recalibration was heavily preached on Apple's own website till they removed it. I do think on phones only a few years old, it's not needed unless they're plugged in all the time or barely used.
An example - my 16' MBP - note the maximum capacity shifting - these are Apple's own internal battery stats (one can find out via the above terminal commands) - but all the while, Apple's health % reader shows 100%:
It’s interesting how your 25% SOT loss after 4 iOS versions is exactly my 25% SOT loss after Apple’s forced update from iOS 9 to iOS 12 on my 9.7-inch iPad Pro.
Also, you mentioned that you don’t think that the health indicators are too useful, and I absolutely agree: my 9.7-inch iPad Pro was at a pathetic 85% health after 454 cycles back in 2019. I thought: “well, if it starts like this, I’ll be at 60% in not too long”. By then, from an initial 14 hours of SOT, I was getting 13.5. So a half-hour loss. This was all on iOS 9, so original iOS version. Immediately after that measurement, Apple forced it out. Four years and 250 cycles later (so 700 cycles), Coconut shows... 83-84%. Where’s the logic?! I said, you know what, Apple already obliterated battery life so I’m going to use it. In these four years, my battery care protocol has been in the negatives. I used it for gaming plugged in, with the device getting warm a million times, I’ve charged it to 100% and let it drop to 0%, like, I’ve been the anti-battery-care for this device... and battery health has been... stable?! What? A 1-2% loss after 250 cycles with absolutely no care at all? After 7 years? Also, I asked Apple and they claim this iPad is at 93%, impossible.
I’d read endlessly about 11-year-old, very heavily used 32-bit iPads with no battery life degradation, so I figured that unless iOS 12 was infinitely worse than I thought, it would be fine, and worst case scenario, I lose a couple more hours. I lost nothing. Very surprising.
As far as coconut’s inefficiency goes, I think @BigMcGuire is absolutely correct: Apple has code to stabilise the number shown in settings. Fortunately, I can’t check, but I’ve seen my iPhone 6s on iOS 10 (with no battery meter in settings), go from 50% to 72% after immediately consecutive readings. I doubt the internal meter would have those jumps. And I reckon the 50% measurement was just plainly wrong.
I’ve seen my iPhone 5c jump quite a bit too, from 76-77 to the current 83%, so Coconut seems quite variable. And my theory is, when the device crosses the 80% barrier, it gets even more inconsistent. The lower you go, the more it varies. Interestingly, this is one of the first cases I’ve seen where it varies above 90%. My iPhone Xʀ’s coconut measurements have been remarkably consistent, both by themselves and when comparing them to the iPhone’s internal meter, but it’s always been above 90%, of course.
You and I have had this go around before…
All I can say is that my battery on my 6s+ was replaced in November 2021 and I've not had any problems with it. I will concede that my use of the phone is minimal (45 minute walks each day while it streams music), but usage of my 11 Pro Max (my primary phone) is also minimal as I don't use it (or any of my phones) as anything other than a phone.
Every time I plug my iPhone 6s+ in at night it's still around 85% battery charge.
I didn’t know OS X (sorry, I prefer that name), shows an iOS-like battery health tab! Very interesting.
I don’t know why really, but my 2015 MacBook Pro (still happily trudging along on OS X El Capitan) has seen very minimal usage in the 7 years since I purchased it, and battery health is just... pathetic. Coconut shows 92% after... only 105 cycles. On a Mac. That’s rated for 1000. It has spent the vast majority of its life turned off, and battery life is still like-new, but I am a little surprised. It’s been, by far, the worst battery health experience I’ve ever had on an Apple device. Maybe it’s because I’ve left it off while fully charged? I haven’t done that with anything else. In any case, yeah, 92% after 100 cycles is not great.
Do you have an older MacBook with more cycles? If you do, how is it faring?
Surprisingly, iOS devices retain absurd runtime for music playback, even with a million iOS updates on them. Use them for standby music playback and I reckon they’ll be fine, especially with 97% capacity. But even if it were more degraded, I reckon you shouldn’t have many issues with that usage. Increase listening time to three hours and it should still be fine.You and I have had this go around before…
All I can say is that my battery on my 6s+ was replaced in November 2021 and I've not had any problems with it. I will concede that my use of the phone is minimal (45 minute walks each day while it streams music), but usage of my 11 Pro Max (my primary phone) is also minimal as I don't use it (or any of my phones) as anything other than a phone.
Every time I plug my iPhone 6s+ in at night it's still around 85% battery charge.
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Yeah, the way I see it is, 1000 cycles or 2 years. Those of us who use our MacBooks like desktops will have almost no charge cycles but the health will go down over the years.
Most of my older MacBooks were in the low 90% after several years of being plugged in despite being very low on the cycles. Why? MacBooks can run entirely off of wall power and bypass the battery. So if I leave my MacBook plugged in all month, I can use 0 cycles. But, after 2 years, my health can be lower than 90% - and was on my older Macs.
Until I found AlDente. AlDente lets me keep the state of charge super low so my battery health stays much higher over time despite being plugged into the wall all day. Before AlDente, my MacBooks would be low 90% after 2 years. With AlDente, I keep 100% battery health after 2 years (and very little cycles). I usually keep state of charge around 60-70% and run off wall power in a clamshell mode.
Time is just as bad for health as a lot of other things.
My opinion of course - I am no expert. But 1000 cycles or 2 years. One can burn through 600 cycles a year and they'd see a drop in health OR after a year of no usage (always being plugged in usage), they'll still see a drop in health if at 100% charge.
Batteries degrades fast when stored at a high state of charge. Store at 40-60% if you can (same when running off wall power (AlDente helps with this)).
OTOH, I have a 6 Plus I just bought (only iPhone I ever traded in and I wanted it back) with an intensely bad battery. I can use it on battery for about 20 minutes and then it just switches off. I'm going to get the battery replaced, but for now it sits on charger all day. All my other, older iPhones don't have battery issues like this.
I have absolutely no idea how hard the phone was used and the battery (according to Coconut Battery) is 8.5 years old. It's on iOS 12.7.8.
Replacement will run around $75 (including the tax) and the phone cost $65. Not a bad price for a 6 Plus in pretty good condition (one minor little dent and some scratches on the back, but the casing is otherwise fine and the screen is fine). Everything works, except the headphone jack and I don't typically use that.
Once I get the battery replaced I can see how usage affects it.
This is why comparing battery stats is really useless.
MacBook User A: Clamshell mode, plugged in all day to an external monitor, reads websites and books.
MacBook User B: Uses their laptop on battery, games heavily on battery on World of Warcraft, can use 2-3 cycles a day easily.
Comparing the above 2 battery stats - one will have a higher state of health with almost no cycles, the other will most likely have a lower state of health with a high % of cycles.
iPhone User A: Barely uses 15% of their battery capacity per day, spends most of their time on their iPad/MacBook.
iPhone User B: Their iPhone is their primary device - they use 2+ cycles per day - use it out in the summer sun all day - using it while charging wirelessly.
User A will probably have 100%+ health (assuming their battery came over provisioned from factory) after 2 years while User B will have closer to 80% health and a high # of cycles.
Usage matters significantly.
The OP's case - I believe the above to be possible for a light user and someone who doesn't use their device heavily. I've seen it on my own iPhones (though I haven't used an iPhone past 3 years).
Oh, yeah, I’ve read about people just using them while plugged in and results aren’t good. My devices spend a lot time of a high SoC (which I know isn’t the best) but they’re never left charging all day. I always unplug them. My cycle count to health ratio is neither the best nor the worst, but honestly it’s decent enough.
Yeah, it’s probably that then, AlDente sounds like a cool solution for this, thank you! I use my Mac occasionally to stream sports to a tv through HDMI and the one time I tried to do that on battery power it went from 100% to 28% in an hour. I said “I’ll burn the battery down like this so I’ll do it while plugged in”, but if I can keep the battery at 70% whilst doing this and afterwards just charge it to full, that would be great. I’ve always played games on my iPad while plugged in and never cared much, but then again, an iPad hasn’t had 92% health after 100 cycles... I knew keeping it at high SoC turned off had been touted as one of the worst possible things, but I didn’t think it would be this bad. It’s just one example, but it’s the only difference with every other device I’ve used, and all of those are very decent. I’m inclined to think that keeping it off while full is the reason.
You said that either using a device always plugged in or burning through cycles in a year would degrade battery health, and I’d even say that using it always plugged in is far worse: check iPhones for instance: many are very heavy users which put like 1000 cycles in two years, and the iPhones are surprisingly fine. An iPhone that’s been plugged in 99% of the time for two years would fall apart I think.
Yep exactly - agreed. Plugged in models at stores don't last very long I've been told. I remember reading somewhere that Apple specifically designed the 80% optimized charging for devices always plugged in (display models).
Yes, leaving a MacBook plugged in all the time was/is FAR more detrimental than using cycles. When AlDente came along, that helped those of us who needed to alway stay plugged in significantly.
I've used AlDente since it was a free GitHub project. Now they charge a little money - https://apphousekitchen.com/
Wish iPhone had the ability to lock charge % (especially cuz I'm a light user)
Totally! I’d also add one more thing: The cycles-to-health ratio will be infinitely better for iPhone user B. And I am 99% sure that it will far surpass Apple’s 500 cycles to 80% ratio. I’ll go further: it’s likely to reach 1000.
You mentioned time earlier? See what happens with iPads! Almost nobody reaches 1000 cycles with 80% health. Because nobody uses an iPad like an iPhone, people have and use their phones all day. So what happens? The cycles-to-health ratio of 99% of iPads is absolutely abhorrent. Too many years go by.
I’ve said that my 9.7-inch iPad Pro has surprisingly remained stable, but I reckon it’s just an exception: I’ve seen a lot of users with very poor ratios, and from every 10 Coconut screenshots I see, at best one is half-decent. The rest? 80% after 300 cycles and 7 years; 85% health after 240 cycles; 70% health after 600 cycles, and so on.
I haven’t seen enough Mac results to draw a conclusion, but I reckon that the numbers would be similar: heavy users? They can easily surpass that 1000 cycles to 80% health. Users like myself? Impossible. Many cycles quickly is probably one of the best things that a user can do to reach spec. Of course, that will degrade the battery faster than someone who doesn’t use a Mac. No heavy user will have 92% after 7 years, but the ratio will be far better.