Apple’s new iPhone 15 series has the option to limit battery charging to 80%. Of course, this would limit the amount of time your iPhone battery will last between charges, but it will also make your iPhone’s battery last longer.
Richard Priday for Tom’s Guide:
This new option joins the Optimized Battery Charging setting that exists already in the Battery Health & Charging menu, found under the main Battery section of the Settings menu. This long-standing iPhone setting pauses charging at 80% during your habitual charging times and then charges the remaining 20% just before you’re likely to unplug the phone so the phone sits at fully charged (a strenuous status for a battery) for as little time as possible.
Alternatively, there’s still the option to have no charging limits at all, ensuring you get a full charge every time your iPhone’s plugged in for long enough. However doing this increases strain on the battery, likely reducing the phone’s battery health, and therefore its total maximum capacity, at a faster rate.
When the iPhone 15’s 80% charging limit was initially noticed, it was thought that it may be a previously unknown feature within iOS 17. However, it’s now been confirmed that this feature is not available on other phones running the software, which has just been fully launched. Older iPhones simply have the option to turn Optimized Battery Charging on or off, as they did previously.
MacDailyNews Take: Yet another great reason to upgrade to a new iPhone 15 model!
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Getting the Ultra 2 Apple Watch and fully loaded iPhone 15 Pro Max on Friday 9-22-2023. Christmas comes early.
I wonder if this feature was released to combat the complaints people made about the battery capacity of the iPhone 14 in recent months. This way, if people complain about the battery capacity diminishing, Apple can say “oh, if you had capped it at 80%, then you’d be seeing better results now.” Of course, it’s hard to say that while simultaneously advertising the phones as being able to play X hours of video, etc.
Why is this limited to the 15? Obviously they could do it with any phone, as they already do with Optimized Charging feature.
Apple would be smart to publish an in depth iPhone battery life 101 document for all users to read and refer to. How many users even know to go into Settings > General > Background App Refresh? Every new app installed is set to “ON” for this setting.
Have 20 to 80 apps on your phone all doing background refresh when not using them, that’s battery being drained, CPU cycles used and cell data consumed. Social media and games are bad about this. Some get buggy and hammer the internet constantly. Phone gets hot, battery life drops quickly.
Another action that I have yet to see reviewed and tested. Take 100 pics in one day while out and about. Arrive at home. Phone connects to wifi and starts to upload 100 photos. How much battery life does that use? The end user may think the phone is just sitting there screen off and doing nothing. But it is uploading potentially hundreds of MBs. Slow Internet at home, it will take longer.