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Why are iPhone batteries so shit?

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If you only get 2 hours of use on a full charge, something is wrong with your battery. That is by no means normal degradation over time.
 
In general the battery tech isn't where it needs to be compared to everything else. It's something that you're charging and consuming at least once a day or more. Of course the battery is going to deteriorate faster than what you would imagine, it is under constant and heavy usage. Not a hard thing to understand.

That's not to say that batteries don't fail or have issues.
 
demon said:
Wow that's interesting, never knew about that.

Currently it's at 42%. I've probably done about 2 hours of internet browsing since last night when I unplugged it at 100%. It says the full charge capacity is 6126mAh with 2461 remaining. Is that enough to get a new battery through Applecare?
Click to expand...

I don't know if there's a hard cutoff, but I've mostly used Mac laptops going back about 15 years now to the iBook G3 and basically any time I've been under warranty and had a real battery problem they've solved it. 6126 is not awful, but it's more of a decay than I'd normally see after a year of use.

How many cycles do you have on your battery? They're generally rated for about 1000. Normally after a year 100-200 would be a reasonable number, 300 maybe if you're a very very high user.
 
Stumpokapow said:
I don't know if there's a hard cutoff, but I've mostly used Mac laptops going back about 15 years now to the iBook G3 and basically any time I've been under warranty and had a real battery problem they've solved it. 6126 is not awful, but it's more of a decay than I'd normally see after a year of use.

How many cycles do you have on your battery? They're generally rated for about 1000. Normally after a year 100-200 would be a reasonable number, 300 maybe if you're a very very high user.
Click to expand...

Oh I didn't even notice it shows the # of cycles. It's 201.
 
My 6s+ Doesn't seem as good as it used to. Don't game on it, mostly just browsing while on my commute and listening to podcasts through headphones. It uses my location for dark sky (don't know how heavy that is), and my apple watch should actually mean I use it less during the work day - it sits on my desk ignored mostly.

Still get to the end of the day and its on 20% or so
 
Always so weird to me that people have so many issues. I have a two year old iPhone 6 and I still get through my entire day with it on a charge and thats with 1-4 hours of podcasts/music over headphones and bluetooth in my car plus regular web, twitter, work e-mail, instagram etc. My iPhone 5 was about the same and my iPhone 4 would be sub 10% by the end of the day but always made it.
 
demon said:
Oh I didn't even notice it shows the # of cycles. It's 201.
Click to expand...

I think if you have a 25% reduction in max battery capacity after 200 cycles, that's a bad sign. I'd certainly pop over to an Apple store if you have one near you (make an appointment, otherwise you'll have to wait forever) and see if they'd do the replacement!
 
My iPhone 6 for work has an insane battery life.. It can go like a week on one charge. Though i dont watch videos in it or anything intense.
 
Stumpokapow said:
I think if you have a 25% reduction in max battery capacity after 200 cycles, that's a bad sign. I'd certainly pop over to an Apple store if you have one near you (make an appointment, otherwise you'll have to wait forever) and see if they'd do the replacement!
Click to expand...

sweeet.

thanks stumps.
 
iPhone 6 Plus here. While the battery isn't as good as it was the first year or so, it still lasts a whole day and then some.
 
depends what apps you have, some apps run and just kill your battery. like its better to just use your browser for facebook and twitter instead of the apps, that's what I heard
 
Well batteries don't last forever. If you use your phone more often then you are gonna drain it and then charge it and everytime you charge it, it's life cycle decreases. And each time it holds a little bit less charge than last time.

That's why new phone hold a charge longer as opposed to a used phone. Just replace your battery if it can barely hold a charge anymore. This isn't just an iPhone issue.
 
Never had any problems with battery life on the iPhones I've had which were the 4S, 5S and currently the SE. I know you can see what's apps are using the battery by going to Settings > Battery in iOS 10. It will tell you the current 24 hours and past 7 days. If you click on app it will also tell you a little more details about what it's doing. If you look below the apps you'll see Usage and Standby. If the numbers are the same something is wrong. I would also recommend you try backing up your device to iCloud and or iTunes then do a complete restore of the device using iTunes. An Erase All Settings isn't the same as an iTunes restore since it doesn't reinstall iOS completely. See if that helps as updates may cause some weird issues including battery life.
 
My iPhone 6s battery went to complete shit after the ios 10 update. People kept saying to just wait and it would be better after a few days, well it's still complete shit.
 
I have a quite good experience with batteries in Apple devices. So far I've owned 4 iPads and 3 iPhones and none of the batteries have failed me. Ok, the 3GS battery turned into a balloon due to deep discharge, but while I used the phone there was no problems.

To be honest, I don't understand how people can mess up a phone battery in one year. But if you keep your phone in the pocket (heat) or run multiple cycles a day, it WILL degrade faster than with light use.
 
If it's within the first year (or within two years if you bought Apple Care), take it to the Apple Store and they'll swap out the battery for free. It's covered under the warranty.
 
I have a 6s plus and I use it heavily and gets me a whole day.
You either have a defective battery or you need to do a recovery reset on it.

Recovery did improve my battery so much.
 
I just replaced my 6 battery myself. It cost 85 at the apple store and only 35 from ifixit. damn thing stopped holding a charge at all. I had to keep it constantly plugged into my external battery, I was so patient carrying that damn thing around.
 
The ONLY phone I've had with truly reliable battery life in most cases was my Xperia Z2. My S7 isn't anywhere near as good as I expected it to be. Anyone I know with iPhones basically has the phone on an umbilical cord during the work day cos the things are a piece of shit (perhaps not the Plus models though).

I find it weird Apple has one of the worst an also one of the best performers of battery life. iPads are absolutely epic. My mini just lasts for hours and hours, the standby is amazing, losing maybe 1% a day battery life. Why can't everything be like this. With phones you just look at the thing and you're all too aware of the battery dropping a percentage point every minute or so.

Apple could easily put a double size battery in their phones, still have a small enough phone and everyone would be happy. They charge a huge premium that they would still make a huge profit and charge customers the same as before. Why they're so adamant to keep making phones thinner and less ergonomic as a result is beyond me.
 
While I don't disagree, people are mishandling their battery like you won't believe. "Hey lets charge THE WHOLE NIGHT"
 
For me it wasn't bad at all with the iPhone 4 and 6 Plus.

The iPhone 5, however? Well, that was notorious for battery issues in the second year. Bascially, once it got under 30% it would unpredictably turn off, especially in cold temperatures. It did this inconsistently, however, so it was a bit frustrating.

I have a 7 Plus now and I'm hoping it holds up. I mean, bigger phone, bigger battery, and I've heard good things. We'll see.
 
Zukuu said:
While I don't disagree, people are mishandling their battery like you won't believe. "Hey lets charge THE WHOLE NIGHT"
Click to expand...
->
Stumpokapow said:
This is not true. Basically any belief you have about magic things you need to do to keep your battery safe is false. Just charge your phone when you're not using it and and then use your phone when you want to. You don't need any further strategy.

http://lifehacker.com/smartphone-battery-myths-explained-1735327089
(See #2)
Click to expand...
 
No idea what you do with your batteries, OP. I had my iPhone 4s for 4 years and the battery life was like 70-80% of the new device.

My 6s is basically same as new after a year.

I also own a Macbook which still lasts 12 hours after 2 years.


Compared to the devices I've owned before (like my HP ProBook), that's like 1000% better. It was actually a reason for me to switch to Apple :P

Zukuu said:
While I don't disagree, people are mishandling their battery like you won't believe. "Hey lets charge THE WHOLE NIGHT"
Click to expand...

Uhh welcome to the new millennium where chargers are intelligent. I do charge every night and my devices are fine.
 
I just upgraded to an S7 Edge from an HTC One M7 that I had for over 3 years.
By the end the M7 would last maybe 4 hours of light use but I consider that pretty good after over 3 years.
 
I got the SE and the battery is great for a compact phone. Coming from the 6plus, I was
scared, but my battery lasts a whole day and more.

Do you use any apps that consume battery in the background? You can check battery usage in settings.
 
What? My iPhone SE normally lasts 1 and a half day after fully charged. Battery life is the main reason I move from Android to iPhone.
 
The battery on my 5S goes crazy sometimes. At times it's amazing, losing only a couple percentage of charge in like 7 or 8 hours on standby. At other times, I lose 20% of the charge in an hour when I didn't even touch the phone.
 
GSG Flash said:
The battery on my 5S goes crazy sometimes. At times it's amazing, losing only a couple percentage of charge in like 7 or 8 hours on standby. At other times, I lose 20% of the charge in an hour when I didn't even touch the phone.
Click to expand...

Do your text notifications turn your screen on? I had to turn that off.
 
GSG Flash said:
The battery on my 5S goes crazy sometimes. At times it's amazing, losing only a couple percentage of charge in like 7 or 8 hours on standby. At other times, I lose 20% of the charge in an hour when I didn't even touch the phone.
Click to expand...
The Apple programmers has implemented a clever "trick" where the 100% charge will show until about 93-94% actual charge to make people feel like there's less battery drain.

We used to be able to check it with Coconut Battery pre-iOS10. But the good people at Apple has disabled the app now...
 
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