iPhone 13 mini Should We Move Away from Wireless Charging for the Sake of Battery Health?

[tedley]

Less heat, yes. But there is an optimal temp for charging as well and depending on the ambient temp may not always be possible to achieve that with less than 5w.

Hmm. It does take a long time to charge. I wondered about heat loss being a factor. I usually just put my phone on the charger at night and take it off in the morning and I've had pretty good luck not damaging the battery. 80% at 3 1/2 years is acceptable to me.

 

[Taz Mangus]

I think I will stay with wired charging with my 12 watt charger.

 

[iStorm]

Keep in mind that there are so many other factors affect the battery health as well... How often are you charging? How low do you let your battery get? How fast are you draining your battery? Are you interrupting the charge cycles? etc.

When someone says wireless charging killed their battery, you don't know it was the wireless charging because of all the other factors that can contribute to it. Maybe they drained their battery to 5% on a regular basis.

If wireless charging truly is "bad" and wired charging is "good", a person doing wireless charging from 50% is still going to have a better battery health than someone else doing wired charging from 20% or 10%. It's just a matter of finding the right balance for you that optimizes the battery health.

 

[one more]

FWIW, the battery of my 12 mini is at 84% of its initial capacity now, according to Apple’s own measurements in Settings > Battery. I have only charged this iPhone with Apple’s 5W socket adapter (overnight) and in my car via its dedicated USB socket. Go figure. ??‍♂️ It does not worry me too much, though, as the battery swap normally takes around an hour at an Apple Store.

 

[JCCL]

heat from wireless charging degraded my 12 Pro battery far quicker than I'd have liked, so I use wired charging (ideally with lower powered chargers) with my launch day 13 Pro Max wherever possible & it's still at 100% capacity, albeit we're only on the last day of January so far.

I've got a Philips Hue smart plug at my bedside & an iOS Shortcut to switch off charging at 80% to avoid it slow cooking all night, but that was more for an experiment (and I can use it for other things too).

Personally I don't like the idea of replacing a battery sooner than would otherwise be necessary, but understand different people will have higher or lower tolerance for that, as well as any necessary behavioural changes.

This always cracks me up....people so scared of Battery degrading that they artificially degrade it themselves by using only 80% if its capacity.

A battery with 90% health charged at 100% will last longer than a well preserved battery at 100%, if charged only to 80%. What's the point of preserving it since you're not even using to its fullest? Gadgets are meant to be used...

 

[OhMyMy]

Hmm. It does take a long time to charge. I wondered about heat loss being a factor. I usually just put my phone on the charger at night and take it off in the morning and I've had pretty good luck not damaging the battery. 80% at 3 1/2 years is acceptable to me.

Don’t think you can do much damage even with a 15w and wireless as long as you try to avoid the heat. That’s usually a factor when you’re using your iPhone while charging or charging till 50% w/ a case.

Your iPhone will charge at normal rates once it reaches 50% which doesn’t generate any excess heat.

 

[Taz Mangus]

Don’t think you can do much damage even with a 15w and wireless as long as you try to avoid the heat. That’s usually a factor when you’re using your iPhone while charging or charging till 50% w/ a case.

Your iPhone will charge at normal rates once it reaches 50% which doesn’t generate any excess heat.

Enable low power mode when you charge your phone and use it while it's charging. That should help reduce the instance of the phone getting hot.

 

[tedley]

Don’t think you can do much damage even with a 15w and wireless as long as you try to avoid the heat. That’s usually a factor when you’re using your iPhone while charging or charging till 50% w/ a case.

Your iPhone will charge at normal rates once it reaches 50% which doesn’t generate any excess heat.

Maybe I'll increase the wattage and give is a shot. I'm really not worried too much about it but am willing to take 'reasonable' measures to extend battery life. My 'homegrown' metric is just by feel of how hot the phone gets wile charging.

 

[OhMyMy]

Enable low power mode when you charge your phone and use it while it's charging. That should help reduce the instance of the phone getting hot.

I don’t use my phone while it’s charging. I’m merely listing out the scenarios to avoid to preserve battery health.

 

[Taz Mangus]

I don’t use my phone while it’s charging. I’m merely listing out the scenarios to avoid to preserve battery health.

I did not mean to imply you were doing that. I was making a general statement about using low power mode during charging. Sorry.

 

[Taz Mangus]

Maybe I'll increase the wattage and give is a shot. I'm really not worried too much about it but am willing to take 'reasonable' measures to extend battery life. My 'homegrown' metric is just by feel of how hot the phone gets wile charging.

My 13 Pro Max stays cool using wired charging with the 12 watt charger.

 

[Taz Mangus]

Has anyone tried enabling low power mode while wireless charging? I am curious if the phone would stay cooler. Low power mode shuts down the 2 performance cores and down clocks the 4 efficiency cores to 1.37GHz. In theory, the phone should stay cooler.

 

[one more]

Enable low power mode when you charge your phone and use it while it's charging. That should help reduce the instance of the phone getting hot.

An assistant at an Apple Store once mentioned to me that iPhones will charge slower in low power mode? I remember founding it strange at the time, but never actually followed up on that. Does anybody know if it’s true?

 

[martin2345uk]

I've literally never given any thought to my phone and how to charge it - I plonk it on the wireless charger every night, use it till either it's bed time or it's about to run out, and after 3.5 years my XR is still perfectly usable on 86% health - when it gets below the threshold I might just replace the battery and use it for as long as I can.

 

[Taz Mangus]

An assistant at an Apple Store once mentioned to me that iPhones will charge slower in low power mode? I remember founding it strange at the time, but never actually followed up on that. Does anybody know if it’s true?

Some report that charging is faster with Low Power mode enabled during charging. I am going to test this and see if there is any difference either way.

 

[one more]

Some report that charging is faster with Low Power mode enabled during charging. I am going to test this and see if there is any difference either way.

Keep us posted! 🖐

 

[reppans]

This always cracks me up....people so scared of Battery degrading that they artificially degrade it themselves by using only 80% if its capacity.

A battery with 90% health charged at 100% will last longer than a well preserved battery at 100%, if charged only to 80%. What's the point of preserving it since you're not even using to its fullest? Gadgets are meant to be used...

I know this is rare, but I averaged over 6yrs service life with my previous 3 iOS devices. My XR is spec’d-at/capable-of 15hrs SOT, while I only have the time/patience for ~half that. Hence, I only require a ~65% charge to meet that (incl a couple hrs reserve power).

At this low SoC cycling, time-decay displaces cycle-count as the primary wear factor. As my capacity is lost to time-decay, I’ll gradually need to increase charge level. Based on past experience, I should reach 100% charging sometime after 7yrs service life to meet my ~10hrs (avg+cushion) SOT needs, although I expect to upgrade earlier. 2.4yrs is too early to say for sure, but it seems on track to me.

The other common argument is that battery care is much more of a hassle than simply replacing a battery. That may have been true pre-iOS13, but now, a $10 smartplug plus simple Shortcut/automation, is a fraction of the cost, time, effort of a hour appt @ Apple for a batt replacement.

Course, YMMV and all.

 

[one more]

The other common argument is that battery care is much more of a hassle than simply replacing a battery. That may have been true pre-iOS13, but now, a $10 smartplug plus simple Shortcut/automation, is a fraction of the cost, time, effort of a hour appt @ Apple for a batt replacement.

Could you share your “simple Shortcut/automation” part of this recipe, please?

 

[Taz Mangus]

Could you share your “simple Shortcut/automation” part of this recipe, please?

I use a Wemo HomeKit smart plug. This is Shortcut Automations script I use.

 

[reppans]

Could you share your “simple Shortcut/automation” part of this recipe, please?

THIS is mine w/Vocolinc

 

[randolorian]

I have a 3.5 year old XR that has only been charged wirelessly. Battery is at 87%.

 

[Hexley]

I'd trade wireless charging for a larger mAh battery.

My dream is to have a more than 8,700 mAh battery for my 13 Pro Max to get nearly 2 weeks of battery lfie

 

[Danoc]

The question is: are you using your phone while it's being wirelessly charged?

If you don't, that should be ok for the battery health.

If you do use the phone, even passively, like playing music, charging via magsafe will deteriorate the battery health.

I was using magsafe only on the iPhone 12 while using it, playing YouTube video, playing radio or playing tunes, and I lost 10% in the first 6 months. Since I stopped using the phone on magsafe, battery heath has stabilized at 89% for now 3 months in.

 

[one more]

THIS is mine w/Vocolinc

Impressive, thanks! ??

 

[tedley]

The question is: are you using your phone while it's being wirelessly charged?

If you don't, that should be ok for the battery health.

If you do use the phone, even passively, like playing music, charging via magsafe will deteriorate the battery health.

I was using magsafe only on the iPhone 12 while using it, playing YouTube video, playing radio or playing tunes, and I lost 10% in the first 6 months. Since I stopped using the phone on magsafe, battery heath has stabilized at 89% for now 3 months in.

Keep in mind that battery health decline is NOT linear. My phone dropped from 85 to 82 percent in one week. Once it hit 81 percent it stayed there for about 6 months. It's been at 80% for about 4-5 months now. This is with no change in charging habits.

I'm not saying that charging while using the device is not harmful to battery health, it may well be. What I am saying is that this example does not conclusively prove that charging while using decreases battery health at an increased rate.