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Iphone IT

iPhone 14, 14 Pro Owners Complain About Battery Capacity That's Already Falling Off (theverge.com) 53

Posted by msmash from the growing-concern dept.
Some iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro owners have complaints reminiscent of the bad old days of "batterygate," reporting that with less than a year of service on the clock, their phones are already reporting more battery degradation than expected. From a report: Sam Kohl of AppleTrack tweeted in July that his iPhone 14 Pro had already dropped to a maximum capacity of 90 percent, a much faster dropoff than previous iPhones he'd owned, and the thread shows many other people with the same experience. Kohl followed up with a video posted yesterday about the issue, saying it makes it hard for him to recommend the phone, especially considering how much it costs with a price of $999.

Officially, Apple says iPhone batteries should "retain up to 80 percent of its original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles." The iPhone 15 series is expected to launch soon, and recent rumors have claimed those devices will see a battery size increase of 10 - 18 percent compared to current devices. He's not the only one seeing these kinds of numbers. Verge alum and Wall Street Journal senior tech columnist Joanna Stern wrote in her newsletter just this week that her iPhone 14 Pro is showing 88 percent battery capacity. Around The Verge, reports are mixed, with two 14 Pros down to 93 and 91 percent and another at 97 percent. In previous years, most haven't seen a drop in reported capacity until two years of use, at least.
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iPhone 14, 14 Pro Owners Complain About Battery Capacity That's Already Falling Off More

iPhone 14, 14 Pro Owners Complain About Battery Capacity That's Already Falling Off

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  • I'm experiencing this problem on my iPhone 14 Pro, and my battery "Maximum Capacity" indicates 93% of the original charge - but there is no way in hell that I'm getting anything remotely approaching 93% of the original charge.

    I can't quantify it, because I didn't save any data, so I have nothing but my anecdotal evidence to offer, but I would guess I get maybe 60% of the original capacity.

    I got this phone in November, so it's been a pretty rapid degradation.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ls671 ( 1122017 )

      Not trying to defend apple at all here but I think if you recently updated the OS, you need to let the battery drain in order to let the OS re-calibrate the battery % it displays. Keep in mind that the % displayed is just an approximation. Letting the battery drain gives a chance to the new version of the OS to give you a better approximation I heard...

      Don't let your battery drain too often although! In general, it's bad for battery life I also heard...

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by ls671 ( 1122017 )

        I forgot to add: Don't let the battery charge to 100% !!! It's also bad for battery life!

        I usually keep charge between 83% and 60% with very rare full charge/discharge cycles. I intentionally do full charge/discharge cycles once every 2 months if it didn't occur otherwise.

        • Aren't the phone OEMs supposed to set up their batteries so they never go above or below the safe charge thresholds for the battery anyway? Which is usually something like 80-90% on the high end and 10-20% on the low end? Unless Apple is being stupid, their batteries should never charge to 100% anyway (100% on the display should be 80-90% in actuality).

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ls671 ( 1122017 )

            Yeah. that must be why my iphone has an "optimized charging" mode in settings that is supposed to never charge above 80% but still does sometimes so I just set a timer whenever charging even if I am in "optimized charging" mode...

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by irp ( 260932 )

            Aren't the phone OEMs supposed to set up their batteries so they never go above or below the safe charge thresholds for the battery anyway? Which is usually something like 80-90% on the high end and 10-20% on the low end? Unless Apple is being stupid, their batteries should never charge to 100% anyway (100% on the display should be 80-90% in actuality).

            There are no such thing as "0%" or "100%", only charge and voltages. You could charge the battery to "200%", but probably only a few times before the battery died. Just as you would damage the battery if you discharged it to "-20%" (if the phone could use the too-low voltage).

            What the companies do, is defining e.g. "this battery should be at 80% after 500 full charge cycles" and then they set the "0 to 100%" charge respectively. They could also have requested "this battery should be at 80% after 2000 full c

            • The current charge rating would be based on the manufacturer's rating for the battery. So there is an objective 100% and 0% based on the ratings provided by the manufacturer.

            • You could not charge the battery to 200% of rated voltage even once. You would let out smoke at least, and quite possibly fire.

            • The phone would last longer. But who cares, no one purchases the phone for the battery capacity it will have 3 years from now..

              Right, because if they did, Apple would never sell another device. In reality people buy SHINY or "FREE"* (*with contract which is so expensive you're paying for it anyway)

        • I forgot to add: Don't let the battery charge to 100% !!! It's also bad for battery life!

          People keep repeating this nugget, and I don’t doubt its veracity, but how true is it? For instance, I’d charge my iPhone 5s back to 100% every night and I was still getting full-day battery life six years later when I bought an iPhone 11 and finally retired my trusty 5s. I could tell it was worse than it had been years prior, but it still got me through the day.

          I’m reminded of how I grew up hearing that different parts of our tongues taste certain flavors more strongly. While true, it tur

      • Why on earth would it not ask you to do something like that to re-calibrate? Moreover, why would battery voltage (the thing that a device would measure to determine remaining battery charge) be affected by an OS update? I've literally never done this on ANY of my devices and they're all fine.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ls671 ( 1122017 )

          Good for you then, it means you can safely ignore ant tips total strangers might give you on /. /s

        • i agree, i think ls671 is fullashit when it comes to iphone batteries

        • The charge/voltage curve on lithium ion batteries is super non-linear (voltage drops very little over most of the charge range before nose-diving), so there actually is a bit of smarts in the battery management to make a linear charge %. That said, I would assume that battery management is its own IC that ships the linearized charge % to the CPU for display, and even if the math is done in the CPU, the data would carry over an OS update just like wallpaper selection does.

          I have found that if a device was le

        • Re:The battery capacity indicator is bunk (Score:5, Informative)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Tuesday August 15, 2023 @06:49AM (#63768500) Homepage Journal

          Phones primarily determine state-of-charge by counting the power in and the power out of the battery. Battery voltage is only used as a backup, e.g. when it drops below a certain threshold the phone will shut down regardless of what its coulomb counter says.

          The reason it works that way is that battery voltage varies with load, and the amount it varies changes with age. Rather than trying to calibrate all that, the battery just counts the energy in and the energy out, and notes how much energy was available between when the battery was fully charged and when the voltage hit that low threshold.

          To recalibrate your battery, just run the phone down to 5% or even until it powers itself off, and then fully charge it.

          Of course you don't want to do that very often, because charging above 80% and discharging below 20% causes dramatically more wear on the battery. Apple don't want to tell the user to recalibrate because that goes against their "just works" philosophy, and because they don't want to remind people how consumer hostile it is to have a non-user-replaceable consumable part.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      Usage and recharge cycles I believe are mainly the cause of poor battery life when I first got a smart phone I used it for mainly calls and texting like I did my previous phone It would last for days. Now its my goto device for searching the internet reading the news listening to music and a myriad of other things. Now i need to be able to charge during the day despite it having a bigger battery than the first phone luckily I drive between jobs and this helps however the batteries need replacing more often
    • I don't understand why you're complaining. Apple is giving you the perfect excuse to buy the iPhone 15 Pro when it becomes available in the near-future. Congratulations, you lucky dog!

    • Perhaps you're doing a lot more with your phone now?

      I once noticed an issue with battery draining very quickly after a major iOS update, but updating all apps and fiddling with other settings (such as background app refresh) fixed the problem.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      I'm experiencing this problem on my iPhone 14 Pro, and my battery "Maximum Capacity" indicates 93% of the original charge - but there is no way in hell that I'm getting anything remotely approaching 93% of the original charge.

      I can't quantify it, because I didn't save any data, so I have nothing but my anecdotal evidence to offer, but I would guess I get maybe 60% of the original capacity.

      I got this phone in November, so it's been a pretty rapid degradation.

      I'm ~100% certain that Apple made some software change that is massively destroying battery life, some time within the last year. I'm still using an iPhone 6s (not on the original battery), and right after one of those software updates (I forget which one), it suddenly started running down at breakneck speed. Turning on low-power mode helps somewhat. Without low-power mode, I've literally seen it drop from 21% to 12% in the time it took for me to hear somebody say that it is warning about the battery bei

  • Had my iPhone 14 Pro Max since release day and battery health is at 95%. Always lasts all day without issue.

  • I'm still getting decent uptime on my s21 ultra. It's probably had some degradation, but it still lasts around 2 days per charge under frequent use conditions.

    • It sounds like a software issue, not an issue with the battery. The article speaks of reported capacity; if they charged the battery, they’d probably still get about 2 days use out of it (what I get on my iPhone 12).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by martinX ( 672498 )

      iPhone 13 Pro, just on two years old. Battery health is 89%. At that rate, it should be good for another two years, but I think the 15 will have my name written on it...

  • Put down the "phone". For good. Engage with reality. It is good.

  • So what? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by RitchCraft ( 6454710 )

    Just replace the batt ... oh wait.

  • 16 will be awesome
  • For comparison - I bought my SE2 in Sep 2020, so it is almost 3 years old - the battery reports 83% max capacity.
    I charge it every night and it gets me through the day, but I would characterize myself as a light user - I don't have many apps and I don't spend much time on my phone during the day.
    I was contemplating replacing it with 15 (or 15 pro) when it is released, but now I think I'll wait until I hear how the new battery compares and how easy it will be to replace it.
  • Just give us user replaceable batteries again. I miss my Nexus that I built a custom back for and soldered in a couple of 18650's on its ass (yeah it was bulky but that sucker *lasted days*.)

    • I miss my Nexus that I built a custom back for and soldered in a couple of 18650's on its ass (yeah it was bulky but that sucker *lasted days*.)

      My Nexus 4's digitizer failed and it cost more than buying a new phone to replace it. My budget-ass Moto G Power 2021 lasts "*days*" on a charge. Like, 4-5 of them. Even using it for a couple extra hours a day during a commute on the bus. I do have slightly more case on it, but I had a Ringke Fusion on the N4 so it's not like I ran it naked.

  • Don't buy that crap!

    My Samsung Galaxy S10 Note+ lasted years and the battery was freakin' bulletproof. It actually amazed me how much charge it would hold for so long. I only got rid of it because the induction charging circuitry failed and Verizon was trading them in at some outrageously high percentage of their original selling price. Now have Galaxy S22 which seems to have the same sort of bulletproof battery. Haven't had it long enough for a real test, but so far, so good.

  • Absolute nonsense. I've had countless iPhones since they gave an option to see battery health. Every one started showing degradation after a year, and most were down to 80-90% by year two.

  • My GF and I have the same phone (iPhone 12 mini). Mine is always charged plugged in, her is on QI charger a lot of time.

    Her battery is far worse than mine and I had my phone for a lot longer than her.

    Take what you will. Wireless charge heats up the battery. I guess it wears it down more in the long run.

  • iPhone [ringdd.com] battery is still something inferior to Android

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