iPhone 18 Pro Max’s Big Battery Triggers New Shipping Requirements

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Originally published at: iPhone 18 Pro Max’s Big Battery Triggers New Shipping Requirements - TidBITS

Apple writes:

iPhone 18 Pro Max offers a huge increase in battery life, in part due to increasing the battery capacity to over 20 watt-hours (Wh). Devices with a single-cell battery over 20 Wh have additional shipping requirements in most countries and regions. To address these requirements, iPhone 18 Pro Max uses an innovative battery-firmware solution that limits battery capacity to below 20 Wh from the time it’s manufactured through its transport from the factory. When you activate your iPhone, the limit is removed and the battery’s full charging capacity is available.

After activation, if you need to ship your iPhone 18 Pro Max for a repair, trade-in, return, or as a gift for example, use the Prepare to Ship feature in Settings. This feature discharges your battery to below 20 Wh and sets a charge limit so your iPhone stays below this limit while shipping. This can be reversed and you can reset your charge limit after shipping.

The battery in iPhone 18 Pro Max is safe, including for shipping and air travel. This process is needed only to meet shipping requirements and isn’t required while traveling or for any other iPhone model.

I had no idea there were shipping requirements for battery capacity, but given the fire hazards surrounding lithium-ion batteries, it’s not at all surprising. The 20 Wh threshold is an IATA regulation for shipping single-cell lithium-ion batteries by air; multi-cell batteries are limited to 100 Wh. The iPhone 18 Pro Max is the first iPhone to exceed it at 21.751 Wh—the iPhone 17 Pro Max was just under the limit at 19.772 Wh. If you’re wondering, Apple’s laptops aren’t affected because their batteries are under 100 Wh and no single cell is 20 Wh—the 16-inch MacBook Pro has a 99.6 Wh battery, just slipping in under the limit.

Keep the Prepare to Ship feature in mind if you ever ship an iPhone 18 Pro Max privately to another individual, since you won’t have Apple prompting you, as it would if you were sending it in for repair, trade-in, or return.

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Is there a specification that says what the maximum charge is in shipping mode? For example, is it 19.75 Wh or 9.75 Wh? If the maximum charge is just under the 20 Wh limit, this could be a way to avoid charging to full while still getting almost a full charge.

If I recall correctly, there was a discussion on TidBITS Talk about whether avoiding charging a cell phone battery to full consistently would result in a longer battery life, but I do not recall any conclusion. Was there such a discussion? Was there a conclusion?

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In one spot in Apple’s document, it suggests that limiting the charge to 80% will keep it under the 20 Wh limit. Since it’s only slightly over that at 100%, I think Apple is basically reusing its existing capability to limit battery charge for increased longevity. Apple says:

If you’re enabling Prepare to Ship to send to Apple or an iPhone reseller or carrier to repair, trade in, or return, the battery charge limit will be capped at 80 percent for 14 days, so that it remains below the 20-Wh requirement.

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