Do iPhone cables and chargers really matter when maintaining battery health?

[Kargo]

Hi all,

I've just bought an iPhone 13 and trying not to make the same mistakes as I did with my SE 2020 which saw it's battery capacity go below 85% in just a year. I know the 13 has a bigger battery and I'm already noticing that I don't need to charge it as much as I did with the SE 2020 but I've heard conflicting things in terms of maintaining battery health as much as I can.

One of the things I've heard is to always use the Apple 5W charger and always use Apple's official cables. Is this really necessary? I guess I can understand that statement to some degree in terms of chargers, as some wall outlets and USB charging stations will output more power than 5W but do third party cables really matter? I've been mainly using Anker cables over the past few years as I found they tend to be more durable than Apple's ones are.

 

[Splitrail]

Is there really a definitive answer to a 5W vs 20W charger?
I've seen a lot of opinion and conjecture on the topic, but it there really an answer?

 

[reppans]

Cables don’t matter much - if anything a low quality cable will restrict current/amperage and slow the charge. Worth getting a $10-15 USB multimeter to test stuff (cable, charger, power banks, phone, etc), turns all the guesswork into math exercises. Slower chargers help, but are pretty far down the list of things you can do extend battery life.

Real question is why do you want to preserve battery? - you seemed to have upgraded in 2yrs. If you think you fried the SE2020 batt, why didn’t you just swap the batt for $70 and take better care of the new batt? I’m a battery/efficiency hobbyist and keep my phones for ~6yrs before I can’t stand the old tech anymore. Here’s my 3yo XR @ 93% batt health run on a automated custom optimization. My point is that battery management done right does work, and there’s no effort when automated, but there’s a big learning curve, and a rare customer that will see the benefits of it, which really start to show after 3yrs.

 

[Splitrail]

Cables don’t matter much - if anything a low quality cable will restrict current/amperage and slow the charge. Worth getting a $10-15 USB multimeter to test stuff (cable, charger, power banks, phone, etc), turns all the guesswork into math exercises. Slower chargers help, but are pretty far down the list of things you can do extend battery life.

Real question is why do you want to preserve battery? - you seemed to have upgraded in 2yrs. If you think you fried the SE2020 batt, why didn’t you just swap the batt for $70 and take better care of the new batt? I’m a battery/efficiency hobbyist and keep my phones for ~6yrs before I can’t stand the old tech anymore. Here’s my 3yo XR @ 93% batt health run on a automated custom optimization. My point is that battery management done right does work, and there’s no effort when automated, but there’s a big learning curve, and a rare customer that will see the benefits of it, which really start to show after 3yrs.

What's your take on the 5W vs 20W charger benefit/disadvantage potential?

 

[reppans]

What's your take on the 5W vs 20W charger benefit/disadvantage potential?

Well my take from the batt research is that slower is easier on the battery and the batt gurus I followed on Candlepowerforums liked 0.5C charge rate or 1/2 capacity, so my ~3000mah batt means 1.5amps or 7.5watts. I just use the 5W charger once/day when time doesn’t matter - while sleeping, or usually during my morning B’fast surfing/get ready routine.

 

[johny328i]

Battery degradation is mostly due to fully discharging the phone and doing it often.

Phones that have smaller batteries and need frequent charges will degrade their batteries faster than phones that last longer.

It's most likely that your SE degraded faster just because it has smaller battery and needs frequent charges.

 

[Lekro]

A MFI certified cable has a chip inside that talks with the USB IC on the phone's motherboard and if a voltage spike is detected by the cable, current is sent straight to ground to avoid damage to the motherboard. A low quality cable has a chip that only mimics the identity of an original one, while not doing any voltage regulation, making the USB IC inside the phone a punching bag. Overtime, this kills the IC and the phone won't have USB communication until the USB IC (Hydra) is replaced.

Wireless charging goes through a different circuit and a cheap charging pad can't harm the board and it's respective charging IC.

TLDR: Only buy certified MFI cables if you are not sticking with the original Apple one.

 

[jav6454]

Hi all,

I've just bought an iPhone 13 and trying not to make the same mistakes as I did with my SE 2020 which saw it's battery capacity go below 85% in just a year. I know the 13 has a bigger battery and I'm already noticing that I don't need to charge it as much as I did with the SE 2020 but I've heard conflicting things in terms of maintaining battery health as much as I can.

One of the things I've heard is to always use the Apple 5W charger and always use Apple's official cables. Is this really necessary? I guess I can understand that statement to some degree in terms of chargers, as some wall outlets and USB charging stations will output more power than 5W but do third party cables really matter? I've been mainly using Anker cables over the past few years as I found they tend to be more durable than Apple's ones are.

Lower capacity chargers will extend a battery's life. As per cables, I tend to stick to Apple branded ones exclusively.

 

[JPack]

Cables don’t matter much - if anything a low quality cable will restrict current/amperage and slow the charge. Worth getting a $10-15 USB multimeter to test stuff (cable, charger, power banks, phone, etc), turns all the guesswork into math exercises. Slower chargers help, but are pretty far down the list of things you can do extend battery life.

Definitely false. The Lightning cable has an NXP chip to make sure the voltage, current, ripple are all within spec before allowing power to pass to the iPhone.

 

[reppans]

Definitely false. The Lightning cable has an NXP chip to make sure the voltage, current, ripple are all within spec before allowing power to pass to the iPhone.

I can’t argue about any chips or technical aspects of these cables, but I’ve tested my iPhone with lots of different cables, chargers, and solar panels using USB multimeters and the only thing I notice is that the old/cheap cables can restrict current flow down to ~0.5-1A. My EDC/backpacking/travel cables are actually all micro-USB (to charge other gadgets), and I just attach a lightening adapter to it for the iPhone. Been doing this for almost a decade between an iPhone 5 and XR with no ill effects.

That said, I tend to always slow charge (as the OP wants to) so perhaps the issue with is these non-Apple/cheap cables is that they will never be able fast charge… but that wasn’t the original question.

 

[Resist]

Lithium Ion batteries prefer to be no lower than 20% and no higher than 80%, charing to 100% every so often isn't an issue as long as it becomes a habit. And charging slower is always better for the batteries. Apple can claim all they want but it makes sense they would want people to charge to 100% often so the battery health would decrease and need replacing, while many would just buy a new phone.

 

[Splitrail]

Lithium Ion batteries prefer to be no lower than 20% and no higher than 80%, charing to 100% every so often isn't an issue as long as it becomes a habit. And charging slower is always better for the batteries. Apple can claim all they want but it makes sense they would want people to charge to 100% often so the battery health would decrease and need replacing, while many would just buy a new phone.

Where did this info come from?

 

[Resist]

Where did this info come from?

From facts with Lithium Ion battery science. Lithium Ion batteries all react the same, no matter what device they are in. Yes, software can help with battery health for longer periods of time, the chemistry and how it reacts is all the same. Doesn't matter if they are in an iPhone, MacBook or a Tesla vehicle. They don't like to be at 100% and left there. They also prefer to be stored at around 50% for long periods of time. So if you have a old retired device and want to keep it, charge it to 50% and that will maintain the battery health, if it was good when you retired it. With all that said, if you replace your iPhone every few years then all this doesn't matter.