> It's difficult to see when the 80% will ever pay off.
Two words: resale value
Aside from lack of scratch and dent wear, showing a 98% - 100% battery health is very convincing that the phone is "like new".
This gets you back up to the "refurb" price levels instead of the "trade in" price levels from Apple or Gazelle.
I made may own 70% limiter for Android. After 5 years the battery was like new. AccuBattery also said it was at 95% capacity.
But scheiße, I had to buy new phone anyway, because banking app refused to work on Android 6.
I bet the collection of potions you've managed to accumulate after you've beaten the final boss must be really impressive!
ChatGPT: "Yes, the sentence contains humor. The basic idea is a playful comment about how, after finishing a game (especially after defeating the final boss), players often end up with a lot of items or potions that they might not have used or needed during the game. Such a collection is somewhat pointless after victory since all the challenges have already been overcome.
The humor comes from pointing out the irony of having this "impressive" collection, which is no longer useful: the player has already completed everything important, but still managed to gather many potions they might not need anymore."
I’m at 89% health on a 15 Pro after a year of 80% limited charging – which is less than what my 13 Pro ended up with after a year of optimized charging. I wonder if this is due to regular deeper discharges (I often end the day on 5% or less).
Seems like it’s not worth the hassle at all at least for me.
I suspect it would work for me as I rarely dip below 50%. My current phone doesn't support it though.
15 pro optimised charging still at 100% health
Edit: since first use Sep 2023
Just to add a data point: my iPhone 12 Pro Max stands at 82% with optimised charging after 4 years.
Not bad at all.
It's difficult to see when the 80% will ever pay off. They're a year in and he's got 94% health - but with that limit in place that's an effective battery capacity of 73% (0.94*0.8). At the rate that the others' batteries are degrading it's going to be close to 2 years before they even hit 80% capacity let alone the 60-70% that would make the 80% limited battery have better total real battery time. And at that point what are we saying? You're trading a good chunk of your battery in the first two years of its life for a few percent more several years into owning the phone?
It seems difficult from these numbers to see when, if ever, this choice is going to pay off for the people who opt in.
I suspect it was conceived for Apple to prevent having to replace batteries under warranty.
Seems like if that was Apple's goal, it would be easier for them to just reduce the quoted battery life of the phone, limit the charge to 80% for everyone, and relabel the 0-80 scale to 0-100.
Presumably, they've already effectively done this by choosing voltage amounts that balance warranty repairs with battery life. e.g. the iPhone 15 charges to a max of 4.48V, but the battery presumably physically supports some higher voltage for "100%" that would give more capacity and less lifespan. (Notably, different iPhone models have different voltage ranges.)
I came to pretty much the same conclusions.
My iPhone 15 Pro is at 97% battery health after 287 cycles. My "normal" usage with "optimized charging" will usually result in a phone with 95% - 98% health after a years.
I think the major thing here is number of cycles. I normally charge once per day, at night while sleeping, and with optimized charging i almost never need to charge my phone during the day. With 80% limit enforced i found myself needing to charge late afternoon 2-3 times per week, especially towards the end of the 12 month period.
My point is that i use the same amount of power during a day, regardless of charge limit on the phone, so the number of cycles will be somewhat identical, with the only difference being that with optimized charging i start with 100% battery and plug in around 30%, and with 80% limit i plug in with ~10%, and low SoC (<20%) is almost as bad as high SoC (>80%) for Lithium batteries in EVs, and i doubt it's any different in phones.
A cycle is just a full charge/discharge. If you use 50% today, charge to 100%, use 50% again, charge to 100%, then that's one cycle, not two.
A battery is just a bag of chemicals. Starting to charge it doesn't have any kind of startup cost.
I turned off all the charging optimizations on my day 1 14 Pro and I'm still only at 82% battery health and everything 'seems' fine two years in.
13 mini here, 2.75 years in, 83% health. Similar stats, but I'd say NOT fine - it feels like it runs down fast and I don't trust it to last all day.
I literally discharged my 12 mini so fast in last couple of months of its two year applecare warranty, just to get a new battery. Got it done. Phone is visibly lasting so much longer now.
iPhone likes to stay on single battery percentage for such a long time for no apparent reason that it feels like a misleading number.
I tried to get my wife to use the feature day one on her new 16 Pro. She turned it off that night. It was going to be too inconvenient to her.
Why? Does she drain her phone to under 20% often?
Can’t speak for OP - but yes, my wife drains hers almost twice a day due to 6+ hours of phone calls plus normal casual usage.
Probably could be more diligent with planning and charging while using near a desk, but that adds mental overhead for very little gain. Her time and mental capacity is best spent towards focusing on her extremely high stress job. The entire point of apple ecosystem is to not have to think about it.
I rarely use the 80% feature of my iwatch since I have no idea which day out of 30 or so I actually end up needing that last 20%. Not worth the extra battery towards end of life since I will very likely be trading in and upgrading by the time it’d ever be useful to me. Even a single day of not having a dead watch offsets the cost for me.
YMMV of course!
As someone who at points has had high phone call work, I found it much better to use a VOIP line with a wireless desk phone. The ergonomics are better than a cell phone, the 40-hour talk time doesn't run down my phone battery, voicemails don't clog up my cell phone, I can programatically forward the number to my cell number, etc.
Biggest downside I've found is around recording calls. I'm sure there are ways to do that with VOIP, but I've found it easiest to just use my cell when I have the occasional call I need to record.
In regards to the mental overhead of charging at a desk, I have found that a charging stand helps me not think about it, compared to plugging in a cable. It becomes the default place to put the phone when seated. A non-Magsafe solution might be better since there aren't cables that can be accidentally yanked.
Wow. I wonder if a non-smart phone would do better? Too bad batteries aren't removable anymore. I recall some "battery cases" that could go 48-72 hours in exchange for more bulk.
Does iOS have charge-rate limiting?
I usually only have regular "fast" charge enabled on Android not super fast charge. (10w vs a ~18W on my Samsung S22).
I'm curious how much effect the charge rate limit has. It's not a huge charge rate difference on my phone, 10 vs 18W; I'd imagine higher rate charge devices might benefit more.
I just turned that off immediately. It’s not that expensive to have a shop replace the battery and it will eventually need replacing anyway. I’m not living my life at 80% and milking the battery to avoid something that is inevitable anyway. Glad to see this confirm that it didn’t do a lot anyway.
> is inevitable anyway.
The part that's NOT inevitable is it going bad during Apple's warranty window. It was such a self-serving policy to begin with. After all, the primary symptom of the kind of decay they're supposedly avoiding, is a battery with 80% capacity!