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New charge limit behavior?

P

pgoelz

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 20, 2017
247
94
iPhone 16 Pro

Just curious.... until recently, with charge limit set to 90% and the phone on the wireless charger stand, it would stay exactly at 90% as expected. But lately, I have seen it drop to 87% or lower (all the while indicating it is charging) before eventually charging back up to 90%. And no, clean energy charging is not enabled.

Anyone else observe this behavior? It might seem trivial, but all those 3-4 percent excursions while supposedly charging will eventually add up and take full cycles off the battery life.

Paul
 
As long as you don’t see “slow charging” on your battery graph, it’s not your setup. It’s still charging, so turn off optimized charging and it should get to 90% when you need it.
 
I don't use optimized charging and it is not enabled. Neither is clean energy charging. In spite of the fact that it says it is charging, it is in fact NOT charging..... it has been at 87% for the last six hours, all the while on the charge stand with the lightning bolt next to the battery percentage.

I just answered a couple texts and the battery has dropped to 86%. I'm waiting to see if that triggers it to actually start charging.
 
Since when? Until just recently, that was NOT the behavior I observed since new. It would charge to 90% and then stay there as long as it was on the charger. It did NOT cycle down and then recharge.

The behavior I am reporting is very new. And undesirable, since it adds useless cycles to the battery.
 
Well, this is puzzling! It does indeed say that the battery will cycle when charge limit is in use. But that is absolutely NOT the behavior I have observed ever since I bought the phone a week after launch. Until the last couple days, it has remained precisely at 90% with no observable cycling whatsoever. I'm retired and the phone spends much of its life on the charger next to me. Whenever I pick it up it has ALWAYS been exactly 90%. The only exceptions have been once or twice when it (I believe by design) charged to 100%.

Trust me, I am very battery aware and I do look. Until now, it has NEVER cycled while charge limit is in use.

Another confirmation of that behavior is that in the ~120 days I have owned it, the battery shows a cycle count of 35. If it were cycling like the description implies, that should be much higher? My phone in standby drains about 0.5%/hour, or one full cycle in ~2 days. That would be ~60 cycles in 120 days.... more actually, since the phone is not in standby 100% of the time.

I don't mean to belabor the point..... just surprised at the change in behavior.
 
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Did you recently install 18.3.1? Maybe Apple modified the algorithm slightly. I have it set to 80% on my iPad and usually the battery is 79-81% when I take it off the charger, but I haven’t noticed any behavior change and I don’t really use it while charging.
 
Yes, I am on 18.3.1 and yes, the change seemed to be roughly coincident with that update. That was my initial suspicion as well. I've been using 18.* betas until 18.3 RTM dropped. I'm pretty sure it consistently stayed at 90% on 18.3 (beta and RTM).

The change in behavior does not seem to be consistent. Once it actually charged back to 90% this afternoon, it stayed at 90% on the charger for the rest of the evening. At ~0.5%/hour in stand by, it should have dropped a couple percent in that amount of time if it truly stopped charging once it reached the limit.

Since I am not on a beta, I don't have the feedback app. Not that Apple likely cares.....
 
Maybe something is running that is excessively draining the battery. Unfortunately, Apple is useless in this area with their battery monitor.
 
That sounds like a slow charging issue.
How is it charging?
Wondering if it is MagSafe through a MagSafe-compatible case and some magnet is not lining up right anymore.
Or it could be a failing cable or power supply that can't keep up or is also failing.
I would mix up how you are charging it and see if you can pinpoint if anything in your setup needs replacing.
 
It charges via an Anker Qi charging stand that I have used for years. I doubt that is the issue but I can't say for sure.

Mysteriously, it has lately resumed its original behavior of always charging to 90% from any charge level (including 89%) and holding there.
 
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