As you can tell if you read through our shiny new iPhone 15 review, Apple’s latest flagship phones are an appealing mix of hardware and software prowess – and it’s emerged that the handsets come with a couple of useful features for preserving battery health.
First up, via MacRumors, all the iPhone 15 models come with a new setting that prevents them from being charged above 80%. This adds to the existing Optimized Battery Charging feature, where iOS is selective about when the battery gets charged beyond 80%, based on the device charging history.
Reducing the amount of time that a phone battery is fully charged for can help it to stay healthier for longer: basically, it reduces the wear and tear that comes with chemical aging. You can read more about it on Apple’s support page on Optimized Charging.
You can find the new option by opening up Settings on iOS 17, then tapping Battery, Battery Health & Charging, and then Charging Optimization: You’re able to pick from None, the previous Optimized Battery Charging option, and the new 80% Limit. It’s worth noting that there’s still some debate about exactly how it works.
See the cycles
That’s not all, iPhone 15 owners: your new handset can also give you some extra information about battery health, which you can find by going into iOS Settings and choosing Battery and then Battery Health & Charging.
Alongside the information that was here previously, you’ve got new entries for how many charge cycles the phone has been through, when the battery was manufactured, and when it was first used – which should help in keeping tabs on the state of your battery’s health.
These new features may well be a response to grumbles about battery health on the iPhone 14. Reports from users suggest that battery performance on the 2022 flagships has been deteriorating faster than it did on the iPhone 13, so we’ll have to wait and see how the iPhone 15 handsets hold up over time.
Sadly, there’s no sign yet of these new features appearing on older iPhones, even running the same iOS 17 software. Apple hasn’t officially commented on them yet, so it’s possible we’ll eventually get an explanation of why they’re exclusive to the newest models.