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Iphone Apple

Apple Says the iPhone 15's Battery Has Double the Promised Lifespan (engadget.com) 51

Posted by msmash from the happy-coincident dept.
Apple has updated the iPhone 15's battery lifespan, noting the new handsets can retain 80 percent of their original charging capacity after 1,000 cycles -- double the company's previous estimate -- without any new hardware or software updates. From a report: Not so coincidentally, the change will arrive in time for upcoming EU regulations that will assign an energy grade for phones' battery longevity. Before today, Apple's online support documents quoted iPhone batteries as maintaining 80 percent of their original full charge after 500 cycles. But after the company retested long-term battery health in its 2023 smartphones -- iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max -- it found they can retain 80 percent capacity after at least 1,000 cycles. The company said its support documents will be updated on Tuesday to reflect the new estimate.
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Apple Says the iPhone 15's Battery Has Double the Promised Lifespan More

Apple Says the iPhone 15's Battery Has Double the Promised Lifespan

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  • It's an overheating nightmare and I guarantee they didn't take that into consideration before making that claim. They probably benchmarked it for grandma making a call twice a day at 1C above room temperature.

  • Reminded me of this: (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nrrqshrr ( 1879148 ) on Wednesday February 21, 2024 @10:56AM (#64257310)

    Last year we had this story about facebook killing people's batteries [slashdot.org]. That and, I know that this is an Apple story, but plenty of makers actively throttle your phone's performance with updates to get you to buy the "upgrade", including battery lifetime.
    The EU's battery grading is an amazing idea, but there is no point in getting better batteries physically if their life will be kneecapped on the software side, anyway.

    • Does Apple still throttle based on battery health? I know they were busted for it and I received a $92 check as part of the settlement.

      • No, I'm using an iPhone 7+ and it is not being throttled.

      • It's now optional. Open Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging. If your phone is throttling, there will be a switch to turn it off.

      • Given a choice between throttling (reducing the power consumption) when the battery charge is low or the battery health is bad, and a phone that turns itself off because it runs out of power, I very much prefer the throttling.

        The mistake that they made was not informing users before the phone was sold.

    • I know that this is an Apple story, but plenty of makers actively throttle your phone's performance with updates to get you to buy the "upgrade", including battery lifetime.

      I know calling for a Depression is like cheering for warmongering, but sometimes I feel one is almost necessary so that we consumers can somehow utilize it as leverage to put a dead stop to this kind of arrogant behavior and abuse.

      Companies shouldn’t need to be forced by regulation to suddenly realize they could in fact make damn near every electronic product last longer. And citizens forcibly relocated into a Go-Green environmental mantra grow tired of the blatant hypocrisy of Greed that demands pro

      • I'm using an iPhone 7+, it still receives updates and I am not experiencing any battery related throttling. Sorry to destroy your false reality.

        • That means you either have a still-good original battery, have replaced the battery, or have turned throttling off.

          It doesn't mean that Apple doesn't still do it.

          • I replaced the battery about 4 years ago, still no throttling.

            • So, replaced and the replacement battery is still good. That's not really a surprise. The batteries can last quite a while.

              My current iPhone's battery is about 6 years old and not throttling yet either. Max capacity on mine is down to 85%, so it might make it another year before it starts throttling and I have to put a new battery in it.

          • If your battery is on its last legs, and you are not near a charger, you _want_ throttling so it lasts longer. Would you prefer a slow phone for two hours, or a superfast one for ten minutes?

            • That depends on what I'm doing.

              And the problem was never that the throttling was happening. It was that Apple slipped it into an update and DIDN'T TELL ANYBODY.

              The throttling made the phone significantly slower, with no explanation of what was happening. When it happened to me, I almost got a new phone because of it. Fortunately I wanted the old phone to keep functioning anyway, and battery life wasn't great, so I put a new battery in it. And performance was inexplicably back to normal. The story about

      • In the grand scheme of cost of living expenses, having to replace a $1k smartphone every 2-3 years is rather insignificant. For comparison, two years of a YouTube TV subscription is $1,751.76. Most people pay more money over the same amount of time for things like getting take-out coffee or going out drinking on the weekends.

        If you really are the type to ride a phone until the wheels fall off, it's not the end of the world to have to install a new battery. Yeah, Apple has been a bit anti-competitive with

        • In the grand scheme of cost of living expenses, having to replace a $1k smartphone every 2-3 years is rather insignificant. For comparison, two years of a YouTube TV subscription is $1,751.76. Most people pay more money over the same amount of time for things like getting take-out coffee or going out drinking on the weekends.

          If you really are the type to ride a phone until the wheels fall off, it's not the end of the world to have to install a new battery. Yeah, Apple has been a bit anti-competitive with 3rd party repair shops and that situation obviously needs addressing, but the batteries last plenty long enough when you consider the operating conditions they're subjected to. Yeah, if you designed a phone with a much larger battery to the state of charge between 20%-80% at all times and didn't have it crammed right next to a bunch of heat-producing electronics, you probably could get a decade of life out of the battery. Problem is, your phone would also be the size of a literal brick.

          So maybe it should be the size of a brick. That is, I have wondered about the use cases for a mainframe+terminal paradigm in the story arc of handheld tech. Why haven't we seen an attempt at putting some of the intensive stuff - such as a processor and memory management system that has to perform task switching among many different apps and threads - into something wearable/carryable, and then leave the handheld part as a dumb screen with enough compute power to do the rendering, touchscreen feedback, and s

        • In the grand scheme of cost of living expenses, having to replace a $1k smartphone every 2-3 years is rather insignificant. For comparison, two years of a YouTube TV subscription is $1,751.76. Most people pay more money over the same amount of time for things like getting take-out coffee or going out drinking on the weekends.

          If you really are the type to ride a phone until the wheels fall off, it's not the end of the world to have to install a new battery. Yeah, Apple has been a bit anti-competitive with 3rd party repair shops and that situation obviously needs addressing, but the batteries last plenty long enough when you consider the operating conditions they're subjected to. Yeah, if you designed a phone with a much larger battery to the state of charge between 20%-80% at all times and didn't have it crammed right next to a bunch of heat-producing electronics, you probably could get a decade of life out of the battery. Problem is, your phone would also be the size of a literal brick.

          What $1k? What every 2-3 years?

          First off, Apple's Battery Replacement Service (offered from iPhone 5s to Current iPhone 15) only costs between $69 (for older models) to $99 (for the iPhone 15). If you have Applecare+, it is $0.

          Second, to get to the 80% Capacity where Throttling can occur (if Enabled by the User), generally takes 4-5 years or more. My current seven year old iPhone 8 plus that I use about 18 hours every single day (it is my go-to computing device), is at 76% (it took about 5 1/2 years to get

        • In the grand scheme of cost of living expenses, having to replace a $1k smartphone every 2-3 years is rather insignificant. For comparison, two years of a YouTube TV subscription is $1,751.76. Most people pay more money over the same amount of time for things like getting take-out coffee or going out drinking on the weekends.

          You're missing the point when millions of phone carcasses are poisoning a planet from every crack and crevice we shove our waste in and pretend volume doesn't matter. It's not just "some" people aged 10 - 100 who own phones. It'd damn near all of them today, and will be everyone tomorrow. YouTube TV can fill airwaves for 1,000 years and be insignificant by comparison. This isn't just about mere cost.

      • I know that this is an Apple story, but plenty of makers actively throttle your phone's performance with updates to get you to buy the "upgrade", including battery lifetime.

        I know calling for a Depression is like cheering for warmongering, but sometimes I feel one is almost necessary so that we consumers can somehow utilize it as leverage to put a dead stop to this kind of arrogant behavior and abuse.

        Companies shouldn’t need to be forced by regulation to suddenly realize they could in fact make damn near every electronic product last longer. And citizens forcibly relocated into a Go-Green environmental mantra grow tired of the blatant hypocrisy of Greed that demands profits by prematurely filling landfills with their dead product we replace far too often.

        Sad that all it would take is Pride to make a good reliable product today. Profit would likely follow, since many are fed up over how fucking expensive this disposable society has become.

        You obviously have no clue as to how all secondary (rechargeable) batteries work.

    • Facebook wasn't killing anyone's batteries. They were draining them. Putting up with that behaviour on a device where very detailed battery stats are shown down to a per-app basis is entirely the fault of the user, the user deciding they want that app that is destroying their battery.

      The EU's battery grading is an amazing idea, but there is no point in getting better batteries physically if their life will be kneecapped on the software side, anyway.

      Nothing is being kneecapped. That Facebook story aside our devices are more efficient than ever. This isn't Andy and Bill's law (What Intel Giveth Microsoft Taketh Away), modern OSes and apps are running more efficiently than e

    • They actively throttle old batteries because that's the best solution. I once had a Samsung Galaxy (before throttling), after it got a few years old it used to have a thing where if it got to like 25%, it would suddenly turn off if you tried to use a power-hungry app.

      It's not fair to blame Apple for a basic problem with aging batteries, and anyway replacing the battery is pretty painless.

      • Agree 100%. I had an iPhone 6S which would occasionally shut down if I used it in very cold weather. The infamous throttling iOS patch cured it completely, and I didn't even notice anything was slower.

        Now, Apple should have communicated it better, but it really was a good solution to a problem. It made me much less likely to upgrade when the next couple of Septembers came around, since my phone worked better than it had before.

        • Agree 100%. I had an iPhone 6S which would occasionally shut down if I used it in very cold weather. The infamous throttling iOS patch cured it completely, and I didn't even notice anything was slower.

          Now, Apple should have communicated it better, but it really was a good solution to a problem. It made me much less likely to upgrade when the next couple of Septembers came around, since my phone worked better than it had before.

          Exactly!

          The very software fix that Apple was accused of using to shorten the useful life of iPhone models, actually was intended, and in fact did, significantly lengthen their useful life.

          Just like (IIRC) iOS 13; the version of iOS that was specifically intended, and did in fact significantly increase the Performance of Older iPhones and iPads. Yet Apple got ZERO Kudos around here for that, too.

          Wonder why?

      • They actively throttle old batteries because that's the best solution. I once had a Samsung Galaxy (before throttling), after it got a few years old it used to have a thing where if it got to like 25%, it would suddenly turn off if you tried to use a power-hungry app.

        It's not fair to blame Apple for a basic problem with aging batteries, and anyway replacing the battery is pretty painless.

        This. A billion times This!

    • The EU's battery grading is an amazing idea

      I hope it's better than their vacuum efficiency grading. Because it was so inherently flawed the EU court had to sack it.

  • In a rare mistake, Apple prolongs the useful life of one of their products. Nothing a future software update can't fix..

    • On the contrary; they didn't update the battery, just the lies they tell about it.

    • In a rare mistake, Apple prolongs the useful life of one of their products. Nothing a future software update can't fix..

      Just shut the fuck up with your lies.

  • it found they can retain 80 percent capacity after at least 1,000 cycles. The company said its support documents will be updated on Tuesday to reflect the new estimate.

    So will Apple replace the battery (or phone) for free if it is not retaining 80 percent capacity before the 1000 cycle mark? Will they do that after the normal warranty period expires?

    • Seems like a silly question. They're pointing out the observation that the performance is turning out better than anticipated. Why would you think that should lead to changing a warranty on already sold products?

      • They're pointing out the observation that the performance is turning out better than anticipated.

        This is precisely why the expression "YMMV" is a thing. I'm certain under ideal testing conditions you can get a lot more cycles out of an iPhone battery. Due to a quirk of lithium battery chemistry, even though two cycles of 80% to 30% vs one cycle of 100% to 0% are equivalent on paper, the battery will last significantly longer when operated in the center of its state of charge range rather than fully cycled.

        So yeah, you can change your testing methodology and get a better result. Same way that even fa

        • They're pointing out the observation that the performance is turning out better than anticipated.

          This is precisely why the expression "YMMV" is a thing. I'm certain under ideal testing conditions you can get a lot more cycles out of an iPhone battery. Due to a quirk of lithium battery chemistry, even though two cycles of 80% to 30% vs one cycle of 100% to 0% are equivalent on paper, the battery will last significantly longer when operated in the center of its state of charge range rather than fully cycled.

          So yeah, you can change your testing methodology and get a better result. Same way that even fairly inefficient vehicles will actually get pretty good gas milage when driven at slow speeds on a closed track that isn't actually representative of real-world traffic conditions.

          I don't remember when it started; but Apple has been using an "optimized" battery charging algorithm for a few years now. And unlike the version on my Samsung Laptop, Apple's version actually seems to work.

    • They probably will, as they did for the 500 cycles - but only for the meagre one year of warranty they offer - so you'd need to go through three cycles a day for that.

  • Uhh (Score:2, Troll)

    by paul_engr ( 6280294 )
    1000 cycles to 80% capacity is an abysmal figure. 500 is just laughably bad. People pay over a thousand bucks for these pieces of shit?
    • 1000 cycles to 80% is a great figure for a LiPo. 500 is normal.

      You are perhaps thinking of LiFePO4, which aren't well suited to phones due to their low energy density. They can withstand thousands and thousands of cycles with little degradation.

      Or maybe you were just talking out of your ass?

      • Oh noes 5-10% less battery life when my $200 phone gets five days on a charge, how unsuitable.

        Who's talking out of what now?

        • I don't think an iPhone can go five days on a single charge. For an iPhone, you will have a daily charging cycle. You will qualify for battery replacement under Apple's programs in less than three years. It sounds like Apple needs to make the battery warranty period slightly less than three years.

          • So Apple is worse at making phones than Lenovo, who'd have thought.

            Everyone but Apple fanboys? I see.

            To be fair, my phone does get more like a mere four days of battery life now, but it's three years old.

            Daily charging? How pathetic. It does pretty much square with what I know from iPhone users, though.

            • God, you're a dense fucker.
              Lenovo ThinkPhone [gsmarena.com]
              iPhone 14 [gsmarena.com]

              The Lenovo has a 5000mAh battery, the iPhone has a 3279mAh battery.
              In testing, the Lenovo gets an endurance test score of 116h. The iPhone gets one of 90h.
              For the Lenovo, that's 23.2h/Ah The iPhone is 27.4/Ah.
              All Lenovo has done here is managed to build a significantly less efficient phone with a much larger battery.

              I used an iPhone 14 for comparison, because the iPhone 15 test uses a new test with different quantification, so it would be unfai

              • The better device is the one that does what the user wants and makes it as easy and reliable as possible.

                In case you didn't notice, that's the Android phone.

                You can call me dense all you like, it won't change the idiocy of your brand worship.

                • The better device is the one that does what the user wants and makes it as easy and reliable as possible.

                  You just changed the criteria.

                  In case you didn't notice, that's the Android phone.

                  You are not the authority on "what the user wants". You are the only user for which you are that authority.

                  You can call me dense all you like, it won't change the idiocy of your brand worship.

                  And you can gloss over the fact that I demonstrated that the iPhone is a better phone by your own initial criteria all you want, it won't change the fact that your hypocrisy is hilarious.

        • Don't be stupid.
          If your phone has 1/5th the power requirements of an iPhone, it's a shitty phone.
          Whatever phone you have, the iPhone is wildly more power efficient than it, in terms of work done per watt-hour, period.

          So the question is, did you just try to compare things that are in different classes to make your point? Go home, drinky. You're drunk.
    • Nothing states that the battery wont keep 80 percent charge after 2000 or maybe even 3000 cycles either. This might have to do with the stop charging at 80% feature in 15s.. maybe it keeps the battery super healthy for decades.

    • 1000 cycles to 80% capacity is an abysmal figure. 500 is just laughably bad. People pay over a thousand bucks for these pieces of shit?

      People still buy batteries that only last one discharge cycle and then you throw them away. You can find them for sale at most supermarkets.

    • 1000 cycles to 80% capacity is an abysmal figure. 500 is just laughably bad. People pay over a thousand bucks for these pieces of shit?

      Prove it or GTFO.

  • Just throw it away and buy a new one. Fill up the landfills. Do not repair your device. Obey.

    • Just throw it away and buy a new one. Fill up the landfills. Do not repair your device. Obey.

      Three years?

      My 2017 iPhone 8 just went out of "Fully Supported" when iOS 17 came out late in 2023.

      Six years of Full Support. That's TWICE what you claimed in your Subject Line.

      Liar.

  • Wireless charging on a car for a long trip with carplay can keep phone hot if using the screen in direct sun light and max brightness, even worse. Recording 4K movies on the beach in a sunny day. (max screen brightness, high CPU usage, possibly alternating with a power bank charging). Those are just 2 examples of intensive usage that can kill battery faster than "normal" usage, so either you don't take advantage of phone's powerful hardware because it can shorten battery life, or replace the battery after

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