So… iPhone is getting more and more complex and I am using its features less and less so I mention up front, I may not be on top of every last new development!
A family member claims that iPhone will lose all its data if the battery goes to 0% and shuts down. She can’t recall where she heard this but is ever since is fearing battery drain so insisted I plug her phones in to charge them even though one was at 100% and the other at 70%.
She also claims that neither phone has ever gone to 0% though I know personally of multiple occasions.
Anyway, I don’t let my iPhone get that low and so have not paid attention to online articles that might mention this is a new ‘feature’. I read about iPhones not touched for 2 days shutting down or something so maybe she is confusing the issues.
Does anyone know if this IS a new ‘feature’, or a rumor on The Social Medias or something? I am supposed to be her go-to tech guy so I lost some esteem when telling I hadn’t heard of this.
I would say that perhaps there have been a very small number of cases when this happened coincidentally (in other words, there was some sort of hardware failure that happened and appeared like a shut down when the battery drained), but, no, this is not the case.
But it probably is a really good idea to prevent shut down due to battery drain - it’s really bad for the battery when this happens.
The iPhone has two kinds of storage: volatile (memory) and non-volatile (“storage”). The “storage” aka “capacity” is flash storage, same as in an SSD drive. This storage retains its data without power, for at least a year. It is the same as when you unplug an external SSD or flash thumb drive.
So, the iPhone isn’t going to lose its data when the battery has no charge.
But.
Can you still start the phone? That’s a different question. It has two parts:
Can an iPhone charge the internal battery that is completely drained?
Can an iPhone start without a working battery?
The answer to the first one, and this is me saying this without bothering to Google first, is… it depends on what “completely” means.
From what I’ve heard, you can’t charge a Li-ion battery that is completely drained. But, you’d expect that Apple would design its devices so they’d shut off before the battery gets drained that far. So I’d say, you’re going to be able to plug-in and power up an iPhone that shut down because it ran out of power.
The second question – can an iPhone start without a working battery – depends on how it is designed. Consider how Mac laptops used to work with removable batteries; you could still start them up even without any battery at all. But I’ve heard that some hardware designs require a working battery, even if they’re plugged in. So, I don’t know about an iPhone.
But that’s a moot point, because as I said, you’re not likely to be in a situation where the iPhone can’t charge up the battery enough to start up, while still plugged in. And that means that you can get to your data.
I had an iPhone I kept in storage for too long without charging it and it was not able to be started. I think I even tried to plug it in, but the battery had gotten too depleted, and I found that is a no no with some lithium batteries. I think iPhones now keep some charge so they are not totally depleted, but I am talking about a device that was in storage for years and never charged. I can’t imagine a phone that gets depleted by sitting around for a week or longer would be unchargable and dead. We would have heard about this before.
So, though it may be technically true that a severe depletion may affect your access to your phone eventually, it is a very rare occurrence that does come into play in normal use.
And if they back up to iCloud, they can recover their data anyway.
Not true. An iPhone’s storage is flash memory - the same tech that’s in an SSD or thumb drives.
She may be thinking of older PDAs, like those from Palm, which used battery-backed-up SRAM for storage. They’d lose everything in the event of a dead battery, making it critically important to make regular backups to a computer via its software and HotSync cable.
She may also be thinking of the fact that if a Li-ion battery will become unchargeable if it drains beyond some bottom threshold. But this doesn’t usually happen - iOS will force a shutdown before the battery drains that low and won’t restart until it is recharged at least a little.
But if the phone sits disconnected from a charger for an extended period of time, the battery might drain that low. You won’t lose your data, but you may have to replace the battery in order to turn it on again.
I have experienced a few iDevices whose batteries have been so exhausted the device wouldn’t start up or charge, one would charge enough to try, show the Apple logo, then stop, over and over. Did an iFixit battery swap and the device worked as best I recall with all previous apps and data, until the iFixit battery died shortly after that.
Others have as you say, apparently shut down before total exhaustion but have recovered after recharging without data loss. I have so many of these gadgets and old laptops I’m sure I’m not charging them all correctly.
But as far as I can tell none have lost data.
Even the iphone 6 she uses, which I personally changed the battery for when it was so exhausted it had the same, for lack of better term, ‘charge-boot-charge loop’ as the other device just mentioned, and it appears to have the same apps and data and all after battery replacement.
I have been surprised that some quite old iPods still work and retain their data, like the Shuffle series and early mini touch models. We had them in storage for many years, moved overseas and left in boxes another couple years, plugged in and they work!
I have 2 regular sized iPod Touches in regular use, one tends to lose battery power from 100 to 0 in a couple of days if left untended, and that is a fairly recent purchase, made when I became aware they would be discontinued few years ago.
Family member was backing up to iCloud’s free tier but doesn’t have a clue what it is or does or is good for. I tried many times to explain but as she has no computer/digital device experience/knowledge other than owning 2 iphones and using a couple of Apps.
She doesn’t have a credit card so I’m not even sure we can sign her up for more iCloud storage. No computer to back them up either. Also its iCloud is using another family member’s account, and we don’t have the password, so it’s kind of challenging in many ways.
I can assure you she is not thinking of any of the cited possibilities as iPhone 6 was her first digital device (oh, wait, there is an iPhone 4ish model but she doesn’t use it regularly) and she can barely remember how to operate it and gets frequently confused about the interface, but yes all good points!
She sometimes, prior to the current anxiety about data loss, would leave the phone(s) untouched for many days at a time and yes then I would get notified with the other phone that it was broken, driving there and find it needed to be plugged in and when restarted, it needs the SIM PIN, which she also couldn’t understand.
This used to be a thing for handheld devices; I remember moving really quickly to replace batteries on my Palm III so that the memory didn’t clear itself.
Glad I read this topic. When I got my MacBook Air last year, I just shut down my old MacBook Pro and put it away. So I just now got out the MBP and plugged it in to charge. It is working fine. Thanks for the prod!
Do not fully charge or fully discharge your device’s battery — charge it to around 50%. If you store a device when its battery is fully discharged, the battery could fall into a deep discharge state, which renders it incapable of holding a charge. Conversely, if you store it fully charged for an extended period of time, the battery may lose some capacity, leading to shorter battery life.
and
If you plan to store your device for longer than six months, charge it to 50% every six months.
I think Apple needs to change this advice for iPhones and Apple Watches. For the last several years these devices never power off completely (I think mostly so that they can continue to be tracked in FindMy) so batteries drain from 50% a lot faster than before.
Based on my experience with my spare Apple Watch SE 2, I need to charge about once a month to prevent it from draining completely, and it’s not much different for my spare iPhone 16e.
I’m not sure if iPads and Apple Silicon Macs have the same issue - maybe not?
My old iPod nano still works great, although its battery can no longer hold a charge (so it shuts off as soon as I disconnect the USB cable).
You may be able to buy an Apple gift card and add it to her account if she doesn’t want to add a credit card. That works fine for single purchases. I used my account this way for a very long time. I don’t know if you can pay for a subscription this way - if you do, she’ll need to make sure the balance doesn’t run out, or it may mess up her subscription.
as iPhone 6 was her first digital device (oh, wait, there is an iPhone 4ish model but she doesn’t use it regularly) and she can barely remember how to operate it and gets frequently confused about the interface, but yes all good points!