Apple: iPhone batteries are wearing out too quickly, and iOS 13 will offer a possible solution
iOS 13 will include a new feature to help extend the life of your battery. This is welcome news for those who plan of keeping their iPhones for longer than a few years.
CNE
It took my iPhone 8 Plus less than 18 months of use for the battery to show signs of wear. This is essentially a natural by-product of the regular recharging that the iPhone needs in order to keep it running.
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It seems that Apple is aware of this battery wear issue, and is building a new feature into iOS 13 that will try to mitigate some of the damage that the regular charging does to the lithium pack.
The new feature, called "Optimized battery charging," will be turned on by default on devices.
Here's how Apple described the feature:
"A new option helps slow the rate of battery aging by reducing the time your iPhone spends fully charged. iPhone uses on-device machine learning to understand your daily charging routine so it can wait to finish charging past 80 percent until you need to use it."
The idea is that the operating system will fast charge the battery up to 80% and then trickle charge the final 20% in time for when you need it. So, if you charge your iPhone overnight, and normally take it off charge at 7am, machine learning will figure this out and plan a charging schedule so that the battery hits full charge for this time, rather than keeping the battery constantly charged at 100%.
The trade-off here, though, is that you might have your iPhone on charge, but it won't charge beyond the 80% mark.
Do you want the maximum battery capacity possible, or long battery life? You choose.
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This is an interesting solution to the battery wear problem, but a far better and more effective one would be for Apple to fit the iPhone with a bigger battery so it didn't require such regular charging.
But, for those of us who have out iPhones glued to our hands all day, this should help to extend the life of the battery, and delay that inevitable trip to the Apple Store to get the battery replaced… or buy a new iPhone.