Complaints about battery degradation are stacking up on social media (via iMore). While complaints against tech giant products are not something we’ve never seen before, some users are reporting numbers south of 90% on the battery health status of an 11-month-old phone.
But the level of degradation reported online may be within the limits and specifications expected out of an iPhone’s battery. Battery performance is not constant and it sure changes over time, especially with heavy usage or when exposing the phone to high temperatures. Still, iPhone 14 users appear unhappy with their phones’ battery health.
“This is actually unacceptable”
Sam Kohl from AppleTrack is one of those unlucky users that experienced the degraded battery phenomenon first handedly. In a tweet, he presents a screenshot from his own device that shows the battery health status to be 90%. “I’ve had my iPhone 14 Pro for LESS than a year…this is actually unacceptable”, he says and ends the disclosure with an angry face emoji.
Some iPhone 14 users are reporting even worse battery health scores than that – in the 87% area. “Battery capacity is very annoying. It has become impossible to use the same iPhone for 2 years without changing the battery”, observe annoyed iPhone owners. Other commenters, on the contrary, enjoy 99% and 100% figures: “Well, mine is still at 100 %. So I don’t know what’s the issue with yours. And well, I use only original Apple products like charging cables. They may be more expensive, but they don’t damage your hardware”.
What does Apple say?
Here’s what Apple themselves have to say on the battery performance topic:
A normal battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles when operating under normal conditions. The one-year warranty includes service coverage for a defective battery. If it is out of warranty, Apple offers battery service for a charge.
Think of one charge cycle as fully charging and discharging your phone once (though not necessarily in one go). If 500 complete charge cycles result in a capacity of at least 80%, it’s not too far-fetched to expect that 250 cycles should get you at 90% or more. A user who bought their iPhone 14 on release day and has charged it every night since then may be at 320 cycles already, as of this writing. And an iPhone battery at 90% health after 320 cycles is actually performing within specs.
Another factor that shortens battery health is exposure to high temperatures (like leaving a phone in a car on a hot summer day). With summer being unusually hot in many parts of the world, it’s not impossible to have that play a role as well. Apart from that, lithium-ion batteries chemically age: the amount of charge they can hold diminishes, resulting in shorter amounts of time before a device needs to be recharged.
Whatever the reason behind these numerous battery-related issues, the unfortunate owners of underperforming iPhone 14 phones could soon be faced with the choice of either getting a battery replacement, or… yes, switching to the iPhone 15, which is to debut in September.
