iOS 12 iPhone Battery Life

TidBITS Talk
41

In settings in iOS 12, the group that begins with General and ends with Privacy. Just above Privacy is a Green icon labeled Battery. Tap it and wait a few seconds to populate. Scrolling down you can see a couple of graphs. Below that it will list all the apps using battery with the worst offenders at the top. You can change the display from percentage to actual usage by tapping on any one of the apps listed.

Scrolling back towards the top, you’ll see an item labeled Battery Health, tap it to find out the condition of your battery,

Hope that helps.

1 Like
42

Hi Louise,

Settings, Battery, then Battery Health towards the bottom of that page.

HTH,

Diane

43

Oddly, neither my iPhone 5s nor my 2017 iPad Pro display the Battery Health item, but otherwise the Battery Settings are identical to Richard Rettke’s description.

44

Settings, Battery, then Battery Health towards the bottom of that page.

Thanks, Diane. I was hoping you were right and I had just overlooked it,
but there is nothing like that on that page. I am running an older ios.
Was it not available in earlier versions? At the bottom of my page is Time
Since Last Full Charge … Usage or Standby, but they are not available.
Underneath it says “Usage times will be shown after iPhone is fully
charged.”

Louise

45

Oddly, neither my iPhone 5s nor my 2017 iPad Pro display the Battery
Health item, but otherwise the Battery Settings are identical to Richard
Rettke’s description.

Maybe it’s the same situation I’m in … just checked my iPad (older than
yours) and it shows the same information my iPhone does for the battery.

46

Oddly, neither my iPhone 5s nor my 2017 iPad Pro display the Battery
Health item, but otherwise the Battery Settings are identical to Richard
Rettke’s description.

Maybe it’s the same situation I’m in … just checked my iPad (older than
yours) and it shows the same information my iPhone does for the battery.

47

I’m pretty sure this showed up in iOS 12 or 12.1, so if you have an older version it won’t be there.

48

Well, I just checked my iPad Air running iOS 12.1, and it DOES NOT have a Battery Health item either. I would appear, based on anecdotal evidence, that only iPhones have that item.

49

Both of my devices are running iOS 12.1. Maybe, if it doesn’t show up in iPads, the 5s is too old to support it.

50

Battery health is shown only on iPhones from the iPhone 6/6+ and newer.

51

I think Doug said iPhone 6 or newer and it may have also been an iOS version. I have an SE and don’t think it was available right away.

Diane

52

iPhone SE is newer than the iPhone 6, so it gets battery health. And battery health started (as a beta feature) with iOS 11.3.

53

With any luck I’m getting a new battery Thursday. My laptop charger decided to stop functioning yesterday, so I made an appointment while I was up there. Fingers crossed they don’t give me a hard time about it being at 85%, and that it solves the problem :slight_smile:
Diane

54

I did get a new battery a year ago.

3 weeks ago, I started having crazy battery drain issues again. I thought I’d done my battery in December but it looks like I’m right at the one year mark for end of November.

I have NOT updated to iOS 13

Last week I drove from my house, unplugging the phone before I left. I went 3 miles, just listening to music via BT. I was in my location for 15 minutes, on wifi. Came back home and the phone was at 82%. No phone calls, just listened to probably 3 songs.

I’ve had the phone go down to 35%, pick it up to use it, and have it shut down. Turing it back on brings battery life back up, until I use it again and it drops like crazy.

I’ve double checked location services and nothing looks out of the ordinary. I’ve changed my mail settings to all Manual (they were manual and push before)

Today I unplugged the phone as soon as I got up. I’ve taken two pictures with it and Airdropped them to my Mac. I also scanned 5 books into an app called Collectors (5 mins screen time). I’ve gotten a few texts and weather notifications, none of which I’ve answered. The battery is now sitting at 70%

Most of my hourly stats say Home and Lock screen 1 minute, or no time used that hour.

Battery health was at 91% 3 weeks ago. It dropped to 90% the other day. I fought with Apple on this a year ago at 85%.

There is a note on that screen that it’s experienced an unexpected shutdown due to the battery not being able to deliver necessary power. It’s happened twice, I’ve not disabled the feature.

I uninstalled Garmin Connect, as I’d just updated it and thought it may be causing an issue. I also made the phone forget my Garmin. That didn’t help.

Essentially this phone is unusable when it hits the 90% mark, unless it’s plugged in. Looks like I’m doing a full backup and heading to the Apple store first thing tomorrow. Anyone else have a similar experience with a battery at 90%? I also saw a post where Apple will do this repair once and here I am asking for a second battery replacement.

Thanks
Diane

55

We saw a lot of this sort of behavior with Tonya’s iPhone 6s, which also got a new battery in 2018. I’m not really sure when that Battery Health percentage gets worrying, but it’s not like a grade in school, where a B+ is pretty good. :slight_smile: Remember too that cold weather makes weaker batteries seem more unreliable because the power management software may interpret cold-triggered weakness as general lack of power and shut down the phone.

A new battery very well may be the solution, and I’ll be curious if it is for you.

56

I’m going to say that Battery Health at 90% plus cold weather is an issue. But cold is still relative - while my house is colder than most, it’s still not like being outside when it’s freezing.

Does Tonya still have her 6s?

It is much much better with the new battery, but I still think I have a drain somewhere. I was poking around in MyRader and had made some changes to the radar settings, which I just changed back. All 3 weather apps showed up in my usage while I was out in the last hour.

I know having 3 seems overkill, but I’m outside riding a lot and it’s important to get warnings, and they all seem to give different warnings. I wish Apple would do a weather app with radar, then maybe I could get rid of MyRadar or Weather.com. I rarely update Weather.com as it’s pretty bloated IMO.

Diane

57

No, she “upgraded” to the iPhone 7 that Tristan had been using, and he took over my iPhone X. The iPhone X was just too large for her. The iPhone 6s works fine for testing and short uses, so we’ll keep it around for that.

58

I get it - my SO has an XR and it’s a monster! Inevitably I’m going to have to get a new phone at some point and I’m really dreading it just because of the size. (well, cost too, but the size is a killer for me)

Diane

59

Here I am a year later wondering why my I had to plug my phone in twice today. I couldn’t remember when I got my last battery. Apparently it was 2018 and 2019. My battery health is at 91% and I had it replaced at 90% last year.

I’ve made some changes to apps running in the background and will see how it goes. Except for random days here and there it hasn’t been that bad considering I used Glympse a lot while riding this summer.

Does anyone know if Garmin Connect or Glympse need to be on Always for Location Services? My GPS connects to the phone via BT so I am guessing that Connect is considered on at that point. I did a 1:20 ride today and Connect shows 1:01 of background usage.

OTOH since my laptop charger is once again going, maybe I should just make an appointment and get both battery and charger replaced again. :frowning:

Diane
Still on iOS12 and a SE

60

Connect is set to “Always” for me, although I don’t know why it needs to be. You can’t record activities with it. Garmin devices connect to the Internet via Connect and Bluetooth. Depending on what ConnectIQ things you’re running or if you’re using Live Tracking, 1:01 of background on a 1:20 ride seems plausible, and it might be checking location for things like real time weather info or Live Tracking.