Battery for PC Blog

QUESTION: Why do I have occasional days where my iPhone battery is suddenly low on power by midday when I’m not doing anything unusual?
ANSWER: The single biggest issue for every smartphone user is battery life. No matter what type of device you have, it’s going to diminish over time.

How old is it?Whenever I’m asked this question, I always start by focusing on the age of the device. If it’s relatively new, it’s probably related to app usage. If it’s older, it’s probably suffering from diminished battery capacity.
Start by checking the battery’s maximum capacity, which is a measure relative to when it was new or at 100%.

Tap Settings, then Battery, then iPhone Battery Health to get your current status. If it’s under 80%, it may be time to replace the battery. If it’s well above 80%, your issues are probably app usage related.
chemical ageAll rechargeable batteries are considered consumables, meaning there’s a finite limit to their usefulness. As time goes on, the physical age isn’t as important as the chemical age of the battery, which is primarily determined by charge cycles and how it’s been cared for .

Charge cycles

Apple’s guideline for battery lifespan is based on 500 complete charge cycles. A charge cycle is when you’ve discharged 100% of the battery’s capacity, but not necessarily in one day. For instance, if your battery level is at 50% when you recharge on two consecutive days, that would represent one charge cycle. If you are down to 25% every day when you charge, you’re using just over five charge cycles a week.

After 500 charge cycles, your battery will likely be at or near 80% capacity. For most users, that’s two to three years of regular usage.
Temperature’s impactOne of the easiest ways to quickly increase the chemical age of your battery is through exposure to high ambient temperatures.

Temperatures above 95 degrees can permanently damage the battery’s capacity, which can be a constant challenge if you live in a warm climate.
Another big thing to avoid is charging your phone when it’s hot, which can further damage the battery.

More from Ken Colburn:Here are 6 free alternatives to Microsoft Office
Your app usageWhich apps you use and how you use them can have a big impact on daily battery life. Apple makes it easy to see this by going to Settings, then Battery and scrolling down to the list of apps by battery usage.
The default is “Last 24 Hours,” but you’ll better understand your regular usage patterns by tapping “Last 10 Days.”

The app that uses the most battery power will be at the top of the list along with the percentage of iphone battery consumption. This should reflect the apps you use the most, but there’s more helpful information available if you tap the “Show activity” option.

This will give you more details, including how many hours and minutes you’ve used the app and how much of that time was in the background.
If the background usage is very high, you should start manually shutting down those apps when you aren’t using them.

Battery replacement

If your capacity is below 80%, Apple provides a relatively affordable replacement option for most current iPhone models ranging between $89 to $99. To get an estimate on your exact device

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Owners of the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro are complaining about battery health — but it’s not at all clear yet if this is an actual issue. Apple Insider looks at the data.Reports in August started to surface about battery issues for the current-gen iPhone 14 and the iPhone 14 Pro, with claims that the battery is degrading far quicker than it should be.

According to the various complaints, if you check the iphone Battery Health & Charging section under Battery in the Settings app, the Maximum Capacity figure is a lot lower than people want it to be. While you could easily expect that the maximum capacity will go down over time, it’s eroding a little too fast for some.Is there an iPhone 14 battery problem?A vocal group of iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro users have raised issues with the Maximum Capacity number, claiming that its dropping at a far faster rate than they would want. These complaints have surfaced on social media, and over the summer, have become more prominent.
In July, Apple Track’s Sam Kohl pointed out via X that the capacity of his iPhone 14 Pro after less than a year of ownership is at 90%, deeming the number to be “actually unacceptable.” John Rettinger passed comment in August, sharing that his iPhone 14 Pro Max, bought at launch, has a capacity of 90% too.
I’ve had my iPhone 14 Pro for LESS than a year this is actually unacceptable pic.twitter.com/rKkvW6Z60v

The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern also chimed in during August, questioning why her iPhone 14 Pro is down to 88%, and an Apple Store Genius said that he personally had already hit 450 charge cycles. By contrast, a three-year-old iPhone 12 Pro held by Stern’s wife was at 80% capacity, and her editor’s two-year-old iPhone 13 Pro was at 90%.
Others have also pointed out low percentages, including The Verge’s Tom Warren at 91% and Max Weinbach tweeting at 89%.

While these are prominent examples, there are many others on social media complaining about the Maximum Capacity for their iPhone 14-era smartphones. Excluding trolling responses, the typical query for those affected by this phenomenon is for a battery that’s mid to low-90’s in percent, or high 80’s.
The general opinion is that the Maximum Capacity shouldn’t be getting close to dipping down below 90% under a year after release. At least, that the percentages shouldn’t be dropping at a rate faster than the batteries of earlier iPhone releases.
Apple’s iPhone 14 battery expectationsApple does attempt to set healthy expectations for the batteries in its devices, as outlined in its Battery Service and Recycling page.
For the iPhone, Apple insists the battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity after 500 complete charge cycles. By a complete charge cycle, that means effectively depleting the battery then recharging it to full capacity.
Apple’s expectations are for an 80% battery capacity after 500 complete cyclesBy comparison, the Apple Watch, MacBook, and iPad lines are thought to hold on to 80% after 1,000 complete charge cycles, while the iPod does so for 400 cycles.
Apple also includes a clear warning that if you “need to charge your battery more and more frequently, it might be time to service it,” and to do so via Apple or an authorized service provider.

There’s also a one-year warranty for the iPhone, which includes service coverage for a defective battery that’s hit that 80% mark. AppleCare+ will extend this warranty out to two years for iPhones.
For out-of-warranty devices, there’s a battery replacement service.
A common problem?Failure rates for the total number of products manufactured is a bell curve. The early failures are numerically pretty low, with a peak at some point in the middle of the curve, followed by a slow rate as the population declines.

An example of a bell curve graph [Wikimedia]What varies between manufacturers and products is when the peak of failures lies in the timetable of the product. We have it on good authority that Apple has engineered the 80% battery depletion mark average — meaning the peak of the bell curve — at just over two years, and has for at least the last five years of iPhone models.

This means that an about-10% per-year depletion is normal, according to Apple.
For years, we’ve had access to a large amount of service data from within Apple’s repair chain, and iPhone battery replacement rates are included in that set.
We’ve grouped battery replacements into two groups — the iPhone 14 non-Pro models, and the two iPhone 14 Pro models in another group.
Instead of comparing per capita failure rates, we can compare total replacements, given that the total population of iPhones sold in that first year of live is a bit less in 2022 to 2023, than it was in 2021 to 2022.

For the lifetime of the iPhone 14 grouping and iPhone 14 Pro grouping, the number of battery failures, meaning that 80% threshold has been met, or Apple has decided 
to replace the battery in a response to a consumer complaint even if not at 80%, is a hair less than it has been in the past. This is consistent with what is believed to be a lower population of iPhone 14 models sold in total, than the iPhone 13 line.
The iPhone 14 Pro family has slightly more failures in total than the iPhone 14 grouping. It’s also believed that the population to date of the iPhone 14 Pro models is higher than that of the iPhone 14.

If there was a massive problem, there would be a giant deviation in the failure quantity, and a corresponding large deviation from that bell curve. To date, there is not that giant deviation in any iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Pro model.
It’s still early in the device’s life, though, and the iPhone 14 is still on the left side of the bell curve. We’ll revisit this in about six months.

How a battery works, and what’s happeningAppleInsider has previously covered what happens to a battery to cause wear and tear, and how to care for the battery life.
In short, lithium-ion batteries use an anode and a cathode separated by a generally flammable electrolyte, with charged atoms moving from the anode to the cathode through the electrolyte. This process frees electrons, which return to the cathode, completing the circuit.
Recharging effectively reverses this chemical reaction, at the expense of some wear on the battery.
These reactions generate heat and can wear the battery, which eventually degrades the battery to exhaustion in a combination of physical and chemical effects beyond the scope of this article. To users, this wear is represented by a reduction of battery capacity over time. No battery is eternal.Replacing an iPhone battery

As for why the percentage change is faster for some users, this could be down to a number of factors. Most obviously the reason for the decrease could be an increase in battery usage, with intensive apps like games more likely to require higher rates of power consumption in a short space of time. And, that always-on display does draw some power.

A worn battery can be an operational issue, as Apple did introduce safeguards in iOS 10.2.1 that throttled the CPU to minimize the chance of shutdowns from excessive CPU power draws. However, this did lead to multiple class-action lawsuits that resulted in a $500 million settlement.
There is the possibility that, with reduced capacities, iPhone 14 owners may encounter these safeguards far earlier than they may have expected, especially considering the multi-year lifespan of an iPhone 14 Battery in many cases.

Attention, Android phone owners: Stronger smartphone stamina is well within your reach . All you’ve gotta do is reach out and grab it.
If there’s one question I hear more than any other here in the land o’ Googley matters, it’s how to grant oneself the invaluable gift of better battery life on Android.
Hey, we all struggle with stamina some days. Our favorite phones are no different.
Here’s the good news, though: While the notion of achieving better Android battery life may sometimes seem like rocket science, it’s actually just regular science — and the secret to making it happen actually isn’t all that difficult at all, once you understand the mechanics around it.
[ How to switch from iPhone to Android ]In fact, all it requires is a touch of careful planning.

Let me explain.
[Get Googley goodness in your inbox every Friday with my free Android Intelligence newsletter. Three fresh tips every Friday — straight from me to you!]
The Android battery life mechanicsThe main thing to know about your phone’s physical battery is that it’s a limited resource that loses capacity over time.

That’s an inherent quality of that type of technology, unfortunately, and the same is true no matter what type of mobile device you’re using: The more you use it — and, specifically, the more you stress it via ongoing charging — the less power it’s able to hold, and thus the worse battery life it gives you over time.
That’s at least in part why even a year-old phone often lasts for noticeably less time than a brand new out-of-the-box model. But once you’re aware of that unavoidable reality, you can take some smart and relatively simple steps to address it.
And here’s the easiest and most effective one of all: Stop charging your phone all the way to 100% and letting it sit on the charger indefinitely.

Ask most any Android   phone battery expert, and they’ll tell you the same thing: The fastest way to shortening your battery’s life and making it perform more poorly is regularly charging it all the way to full — or, worse yet, keeping it plugged in and maintaining that fully charged state for extended periods.
There’s a bunch of technical gobbledygook behind that, but the basic idea is that the higher your charging state, the faster the electrolytes — the components that make the battery work (which, fair warning, are far less tasty than the kind mixed into Gatorade) — degrade. And the more they degrade, the less charge they’re able to maintain.
In human terms, the takeaway is this: Letting your phone go super-high or super-low in charge is bad, mmkay? Instead, what you want to do is stay in the middle as much as possible.

And luckily, that’s almost shockingly easy to do. You just have to take a teensy shred of time now to make some simple changes to your charging habits, and you’ll set yourself up for a longer-lasting battery for months or even years to come.
Your better Android battery life options

All right — enough about the mechanics. Let’s get into the actual answers, shall we?
We’ll tackle three separate categories and associated options for boosting your Android phone’s battery life and setting yourself up for lasting stamina success:
1. For the Google Pixel owners among usFirst, if you’ve got a Google-made Pixel phone from 2019 or later — so the Pixel 4 model and up, in other words — take 20 seconds now to dig up your device’s Adaptive Charging setting:

Open up the Battery section of your system settings.Tap “Adaptive preferences.”Find the line labeled “Adaptive Charging” and make sure the toggle next to it is in the on and active position.Android Battery Life: PixelJRThat’ll allow your phone to take a slow ‘n’ steady approach to charging when it knows you’re gonna have it plugged in for a while, like during the overnight hours. That way, at least in theory, it’ll reach the 100% mark at the end of your charging period instead of getting there quickly and then continuing to maintain that full-charge state with ongoing power pushing.

Now, notably, this feature originally worked only when you charged your Pixel between 9 pm and 4 am and you had an active alarm set for somewhere between 3 am and 10 am That’s a pretty significant limitation, to say the least.
More recently, some Pixel users have noticed the system being far more flexible and working in the same way even when an alarm isn’t set, based solely on typical charging patterns. The official documentation for the feature hasn’t been updated to reflect that change, though, and it isn’t entirely clear how widely available it might be at this point.
Either way, this setup is a smart start — and leaning on it is absolutely a good first step. But if you really want to take your Android battery life to the max and allow for the best possible battery health and thus best possible stamina over the long haul, you’ll want to keep reading (to number 3 in this list, specifically).

2. For the Samsung Galaxy gangGot a reasonably recent Samsung Galaxy-flavored Android
d device? Your phone has a similar sort of system in place that can automatically limit charging, though with a bit of a different twist:

Head into your system settings and search for the word battery.Find the option labeled “Protect battery” and tap it.Turn the toggle on the line labeled “Protect battery” into the on position.Android Battery Life: SamsungJRThat’ll stop your phone from charging anytime it hits the 85% mark, which is a sensible limit for long-term battery health and maximum ongoing stamina. That does mean you’ll have a little less battery power to work with on a day -to-day basis, but as long as you can make that work — or even do a midday top-off, if you need to — you’ll get better battery life over the lifespan of your device as a result.

3. For anyone and everyone using AndroidEven if you’re already using a battery-saving system from Samsung, Google, or any other Android phone-maker who offers a similar sort of setup, you’d be well-advised to consider this last step as a stamina-protecting supplement . And if you’re using a phone that doesn’t offer any sort of built-in battery protection feature, you’ll definitely want to do this:

Install an excellent app called AccuBattery onto your Android phone of choice.Open the app up and, on its main Charging tab, look for the blue slider floating off the percentage circle at the top.Slide that little blue flag left or right to land on the value you want. I’d suggest starting at 90%; if you find that works okay for you, you can then inch your way down closer to 85% or even 80% and see how you do.Android Battery Life: AccuBatteryJRWith that step finished, AccuBattery will now sound an alarm anytime your phone reaches the level you set — and that’ll be your indication that it’s time to take it off the charger.

If you really want to go all out, there are also some physical accessories that can manage this for you and essentially cut off the power for every charge completely once a certain battery level’s been reached. That’s a fine enough option, if you don’t mind dropping the extra dough and charging only in a spot where that specific apparatus is available. But I’m telling you: Taking your phone off the charger when it hits a certain point is something you’ll get accustomed to quickly, provided your schedule supports it.
However you go about it, the ultimate ideal is to keep your phone between 20% and 80% of its battery capacity as often as possible, without any extended time sitting on a charger and constantly being fed fresh power. The same is true whether you ‘re using an Android phone or any other type of battery-dependent gizmo.

And with any combination of the tactics we just went over, you’ll be able to make that happen — and enjoy better  Samsung Android battery  life for longer than ever as a result.