I loaded my iPhone the “Apple Way” for 2 years – here is the battery condition now

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ZDNET’s main dishes

• The battery of my 15 Pro Max was horrible after 18 months of use.
• I did everything that Apple suggested keeping it in perfect condition.
• I come back 100% in charge with the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

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When I obtained my iPhone 15 Pro Max in September 2023, I decided that I would do everything I could for the battery to last. Well, an accident destroyed this handset, so I restarted the experience in March 2024.

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I wanted to see how much I could get out of battery life.

Obsession with battery life

According to my experience, no subject generates more articles, blog articles and YouTube videos than how to obtain the best life of the possible battery of your iPhone, both daily execution time and overall lifespan. This is also the subject on which I receive the most questions and comments.

People are obsessed with the life of the battery life of their iPhone from the first day, and the more the metrics and the Apple adjustments add to iOS to dive what the battery does, the worse it has become. Once Apple even added a feature that allowed users to cap the battery load levels to extend the lifespan of their battery.

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But if each minute of execution, each point of percentage of battery life is important, is it logical to sacrifice 20% – or, to put this in another way, one fifth – of the capacity of your battery?

It seems that the temptation of the iPhone for longer than the compromise was worth it. After all, Apple complaint that the iPhone 15, and later, can “keep 80% of their original capacity at 1,000 full load cycles under ideal conditions”. I was curious to say what meant “in ideal conditions” meant, but I was determined to give my battery the best chance possible.

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So I set the limit of my battery charge at 80%, by putting a significant but manageable bump in my daily execution time (at least managed, at least), and I continued my life.

At the start, things were good

Great, actually. After the first days of anxiety induced by the battery, I no longer thought or noticed the reduced battery level, and I rarely ended the day with less than 35% load.

A little over a year and 355 charging cycles – about one per day – in experience, the maximum battery capacity fell 91%.

At this stage, I was already starting to feel the pinch of the combination of the load at 80% and the battery. These days when my iPhone was loading up to 100% for calibration purposes – it sometimes does it despite the limit – was like a breath of fresh air.

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The anxiety of the battery has returned.

I am a heavy user of the iPhone, and he is never more than a range of an arm. And I know that intensive use accelerates not only the deterioration of the battery due to the increase in charging cycles, but also intensifies, reducing the overall lifespan of battery cells.

I persisted

Quick advance until early September.

The iPhone was 17 months old, and the battery had 501 recharging cycles at its belt, almost exactly halfway through these 1,000 charging cycles, with a maximum capacity of 89%. The battery life was horrible. I would start the day at 80%, and by the middle at the end of the afternoon, it hovered nearly – if not immersed below – of the 20%zone. At this stage, electricity banks had become an essential part of my daily transport.

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I even temporarily increased the load limit to 100%, and even if it helped, the battery life was still horrible.

And at this level, I could not even pay Apple to replace the battery, because apart from exceptional circumstances, you must wait until the maximum capacity drops below 80%.

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So, for me at least, the effective lifespan of a high -end iPhone Pro Max is less than two years.

So I abandoned and bought a iPhone 17 pro maxAnd again, I can spend a day without needing load. It is a night difference and day.

A sample of a

Maybe my battery was particularly puny, or maybe it’s me. But I am not the only one to think that sacrificing 20% ​​of the capacity of my battery in exchange for the promise of a better lifespan of the battery is not worth it. And I’m not the only one.

Also: The worse iPhone battery after update to iOS 26? Here’s why, and how I repaired it

Juli Clover, writing for Macrumors, has made a similar experience and came to this conclusion:

“I now have two years of data with my iPhone limited to an 80%load, and I don’t think it was worth it.”

I agree, this is why I come back 100% load and rather use an optimized battery load, a functionality that delays the load from 80 to 100%, which occurs in time so that you start the day (this feature takes some time to activate because it needs time for the handset to learn your models). It seemed to do more to reduce the wear of the battery, at least on iPhones earlier than I had. So, maybe that, as well as the cooling of the steam room, will keep my new battery higher longer.

I can hope.

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