Mine die about every 2 years. (iPhone 4s and original SE - I had one of them long enough to get 2 batteries)
I now have a 13 Mini (bought October 2021). It’s at 83% and capacity has been diminished for a few months. I use the phone more in the summer with bike riding so I will need to get it taken care of soon. It rarely lasts the day if I make a call or two. And it’s always hot.
I always bring it to Apple. Once they argued with me because it was at 85% but finally relented.
I don’t know why iOS doesn’t automatically warn about low battery health. It probably should, but at the same time, I could see it being confusing to non-technical people who don’t understand the difference between battery health and battery charge. It would definitely confuse my mother, for example.
The only iPhone I’ve ever changed the battery in was my old iPhone 7 Plus that I kept forever, and it was changed only once, about three or four years in. (If I was still using the 7, it would probably be due for a new battery about now.) My spouse’s SE (2nd gen) had the battery replaced about two years ago for the first time. Both were done at a local Apple Store. I honestly have no idea what the percentage battery health was on either of them at the time—we did the changes because they weren’t holding a charge as long as they should have, not because of the number.
I replaced the 7 with a refurbished 12 Pro Max about a year and a half ago, and I haven’t had to replace its battery yet. It currently shows max capacity at 96%. So, probably won’t need a new battery for at least another two years or so.
Diane: Die every two years? Like powers off? If so, then I had that in my used 4S since its battery went down fast. Its iOS didn’t shows health either.
I’ve never replaced an iPhone battery - I just buy a new iPhone every 3 or 4 years. So far, I’ve never noticed the battery to be so depleted as to force me to replace it. Sure it might not last as long as when I first got it, but most days, my battery has 40% or more of its charge when I place it on the overnight charger.
I consider the batteries dead when I have to top it off a couple of times a day! It’s kind of useless at that point, and I’ll have to start carrying a battery pack on bike rides.
The 4s did get to a point where it would shut down if I took a phone call at around 30%. That was before I knew about battery health.
Oh - rereading your sentence, I guess we didn’t know about the battery health for a reason back then! But I did have the battery replaced at some point, it was like a new phone.
I am always disappointed when I see the health in the 80s at the 2 year mark. I keep hoping the batteries will get better - and they have, but not in that regard.
I had the battery in my iPad (3, retina) replaced at the two year mark too. And I bought a new iPad also in October 2021 and notice it’s also getting hot when I use it
I have never replaced an iPhone battery. My batteries are always in very good health when I replace the phone. From the 3GS through 6s that was every “S” year, but now I’m on a three year cadence.
What’s my secret? I leave the phone plugged in at when I’m at home. Every minute a Lithium Ion battery is discharging decreases the battery life.
People keep treating Li-ion batteries like they’re NiMH. They think they need to run them all the way down, then charge to full, to avoid a memory effect. That’s not how Li-ion works!
And before you say that my method is bad because overcharging decreases the battery life, my response would be that a) that’s why the iPhone has advanced charge circuitry, and b) the proof is in the results. After 3 years my iPhone 8’s battery was at 97.9% of design capacity, with only 117 cycle counts. My iPhone 12 purchased in 2021 is at 98.2% with only 89 cycles!
An interesting question. I know that, with Macs, the battery menu bar icon gets an alert badge once the battery has degraded sufficiently.
It may be that Apple doesn’t want to be seen as suggesting a battery replacement is necessary at any particular point, and wants to leave the decision to the owner. That reduces the likelihood that Apple would be accused of setting the threshold too high so as to generate more repair business.
Zero to one times; it often happens that I end up having to replace the entire unit before the battery needs replacement.
Now that Apple gives us an official indicator, I figure below 80% is time to start planning for a replacement, or whenever it can no longer sustain “Peak Performance.” I haven’t dropped below that yet with my 2.5-year-old 12 Mini.
I really only worry about running out of power when vacationing or traveling for work; my day-to-day doesn’t involve using my phone long enough to risk running out.
So far it’s always been Apple, since the price is (IMO) reasonable and the service experience has been solid. I’m toying with the idea of using Apple’s new Self Service repair program out of sheer curiosity.
I’ve replaced the battery on an iPhone 4S. That was easy - it just required some jeweler screwdrivers (including pentalobe type) and a little patience.
Later models have adhesive holding the display down (to provide water resistance) and to keep the battery from shifting in the device, but if you’re comfortable working around that (typically involving heat and thin guitar picks to break the adhesive seal), they’re not too much more difficult than the 4. At least according to the various iFixit videos - I’ve never actually done one of these.
That having been said, I did replace the battery on my 6+, but I kept that phone for 7 years. After four years, it still held a charge, but not enough for me to be comfortable, so I had Apple replace it and got another three years before app incompatibilities forced me to upgrade.
Personally, I think Apple’s battery replacement policy is quite reasonable. Their price (which includes labor and a warranty) is only slightly higher than the price to buy a high quality aftermarket battery that you’d have to install yourself.
I don’t leave my phone on the charger all day because I’m not sitting in one place all day - I want to keep the phone on my person.
But that having been said, my 13 mini (purchased shortly after its release - making it 2.5 years old) has 519 charge cycles and is presenting itself at 80% capacity. And I very rarely need to charge it during the day unless I spend a lot of time playing games on it.
I’ll give that a try next time. I put it on the charger every night no matter what the level is, I don’t try and run it down to nothing. (I actually try NOT to run it down to nothing)
So you’d plug it into the car every time you went somewhere too?
I’ve never had an iPhone go below 80%, so I can’t say from experience that they don’t have a notification. Under Settings / Battery / Battery Health the iPhone will tell you the status of the battery - whether it is normal or degraded and should be replaced. Again, perhaps there is a system notification when the battery is degraded? I believe I have seen a notification when the device was powered down and restarted spontaneously because the battery was in a degraded state, but this was either a Mac or an old iPad. (I think iPad.)
I have done battery replacements several times. The first was my iPhone 6s, but it was because of a recall for that device because early 6s phones had problematic batteries. The second was the 6s again, after I purchased my iPhone X and kept the 6s as a backup device for the family, because the battery was degraded to about the low 80s. The third was my wife’s iPhone 8 when we upgraded her to the 13 mini and gave the iPhone 8 to her Mom, who had been using an iPhone 5c, a couple of years ago when Verizon was about to drop all of their 3G cells - the 5c cannot do VoLTE so it would not be able to make calls anymore on LTE (that is literally all Mom uses an iPhone for - everything else she does on an iPad). The last was a couple of months ago when I upgraded my 13 Pro to a 15 Pro and kept the 13 Pro as a backup device.
The battery replacements on the 8 and 13 Pro happened when maximum capacity was in the 80s, anywhere from 83 to 86. (IIRC at the time the 6s was running an iOS version that did not report maximum capacity, so I don’t know what the status was. Maximum capacity reporting started in iOS 11.3, about two weeks after I bought my iPhone X and had the battery replaced in the 6s for the second time.) Every single time Apple did a diagnostic of the battery and the diagnostic passed, so they advised against battery replacement. But we live in a place with poor cell signal and it drains the battery fast, and I couldn’t get through a day with a fully charged phone by the time I changed the battery.
I’ve always had the replacements done at the Apple Genius Bar. It always took 1-2 hours. I’ve always had my original phone returned to me, not a replacement because the battery replacement failed (Apple will give you a like-new phone if they accidentally damage the phone while they replace the battery.) I’ve always had a good backup when I brought the phone in (as Apple suggests; they always ask when you drop the phone off; you also need to disable Find My on the phone), and never had to restore from backup. I’ve always had a screen protector on the phone and the phone still had the screen protector on when I get it back.
I actually did have a phone bricked by Apple, it was my original SE on the second battery replacement. As a matter of fact it’s still stuck in my list of equipment. But they handed me a replacement phone instead, the worst part was waiting for everything to sync to it. I’d be afraid to take it to a third party repair place for that reason - there were NO hassles over getting the replacement from Apple.
“Sorry your phone won’t boot back up, here’s the new one”
I tend to keep using my personal iPhones for their original purposes (daily smartphone usage) for as long as Apple keeps releasing major software updates for them, so probably around four years or so. That usually means one battery change. My main phone is a three-year-old iPhone 13 mini that has 85% battery health after 650 charge cycles. I may get a full four years on a single battery with that one!
For devices that I use as a phone (as opposed to older devices that I might keep around and plugged in as webcams, etc.), I’ve replaced batteries when they no longer last for a full workday (8-10 hrs) on a single charge, regardless of battery health. Unless there is an obvious problem, like a swollen battery, it’s more about convenience than a number on a screen for me.
I’ve comfortably replaced batteries myself on older phones (iPhone 4/5/6), but I prefer to use BestBuy for newer phones.
As noted by the original poster, they are an Apple Authorized Service Provider. They perform the work for the same price as an Apple Store, and quite frankly the experience usually is smoother/faster at my local BestBuy than at my local Apple Store.
For iPhones and iPads, I generally would not recommend using a third-party provider that is not an Apple Authorized Service Provider.
By the way, if you’re interested in tracking the performance of your iPhone batteries over time, the paid version of CoconutBattery does a great job of that.
I found this article, which describes several mechanisms:
Quick summary:
On an iPhone 15 (and presumably later), the cycle count is available in the phone’s Settings.
On iOS 17.4 and later, it’s in Battery → Battery Health
On iOS 17.3 and older, it’s in General → About
On an iPhone 14 and earlier, there’s nothing conveniently built-in to iOS, but the article lists four ways:
Retrieve the value from analytics data
Go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Analytics & Improvements → Analytics Data
Find a recent analytics report (one at least 24 hours old). Copy the text to something you can use to perform a search (e.g. a new note). Then search for last_value_CycleCount or batterycyclecount to find the value.
To be a little clearer about what I meant by using the paid version of CoconutBattery (aka CoconutBattery Plus) to track battery performance over time, see the screenshot attached below.
When CoconutBattery Plus runs and an iPhone/iPad is connected, it will collect and store information about cycle counts, battery capacity, OS versions, and more, and it presents the information in a simple table. It will do it for multiple devices, and it also keeps track of different batteries installed in a single device. Of course, it also collects similar information about the Mac that it is running on.
No. But if you use a USB-A charger, it won’t charge fast. Fast charging requires a Power Delivery specification charger, and those require a USB-C cable.
Also, FWIW, fast-charging only happens up to 80%. From that point on, charging is always “slow”.
