How to Improve iPhone Battery Health

We use our smartphones for a wide variety of tasks these days, and sooner or later your phone’s battery life might start to show the strain. Considering how often we’re on the move, the last thing you’ll want is to see that bar hit 0% before you reach home.
Stay away from 0%
It may sound obvious but keeping your phone away from 0% battery is considerably more beneficial than just preventing your phone from turning off. The batteries in our phones operate on cycles; draining from 100% to 0% is 1 full cycle. Most phone batteries today have between 500-600 cycles in them before they bite the dust.
It is good practice therefore to keep your phone charged up; recharge before you head out or during the day with a wireless charging pad, such as our Goji Wireless Charger. This will lengthen the life of your phone’s battery and keep it in top condition for longer.
Beat the heat
Heat is not a battery’s friend; in fact, neither is the cold. Both can damage a phone’s battery and dramatically reduce its lifespan. iPhone can operate in temperatures up to 95 degrees Fahrenheit according to Apple; exceeding that can result in permanent damage to the battery and phone.
In the summer months, try and keep your phone out of direct sunlight, especially if wireless charging. It can be tempting when sitting outside or on the train to charge up your phone, but try and do so only in shade, to avoid overheating. This also applies to phones used in cars, particularly those attached to dashboards as music players or GPS systems.
Check your settings
Within the settings of your device is a tool called Battery Health; a handy piece of performance management built into iPhones running iOS 11.3 and later. From here, you can see the maximum capacity of your phone’s battery and its peak performance capability.
This tool is a great way to identify if your phone is experiencing an issue with its battery health. It will inform you if the iPhone has experienced any unexpected shutdowns and as a result, and is now running at reduced capacity. From here, it would be time to get your phone in for a service to find and fix any issues.
Regularly checking this feature in your settings will help you keep on top of your battery’s condition and get ahead of any problems that could cause long-term damage.
Avoid overcharging
It can be extremely convenient to charge up your iPhone overnight whilst you sleep, but this is detrimental to your phone’s health. Overcharging at 100% battery pushes current into already-full cells inside the battery and risks damaging them.
To combat overcharge, iPhones have a nifty feature within the Battery Health settings page that optimises your phone’s charging pattern. If you take your phone off charge at the same time every morning or night, the phone will gradually learn this pattern and not fill it to 100% until it is needed.
Turn off features and settings you aren’t using
iPhones have so many bells and whistles that it can be tempting to have them all turned on and expect the best possible performance. In reality, many of the features and settings within iPhones only need to be on when you’re using them, such as the Background App Refresh setting, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi/mobile data. Having these on all of the time is a sure way to drain your battery.
Brightness is also a killer of battery charge. Having it cranked up, particularly on higher resolution displays, will sap the battery in no time. Many devices now have automatic brightness calibration depending on your surroundings. For example, if it is dark, the brightness will be scaled so it is visible but not blinding. This can also be adjusted manually, based on your needs.
Always use a Lightning charger
Apple uses Lightning charging cables as the primary means to power up their devices. Consequently, using any other charger not only will charge slower and therefore be less efficient but can also damage the battery due to power surges.
Only use the accessories Apple recommends when using your iPhone to avoid any damage to its long-term health.
Keep iOS updated
iPhones will let you know when an update to the operating system is ready to download and it is vital to keep the OS up to date. Not only do updates keep your iPhone’s security in top form, but they also can introduce new features that improve how it runs, such as Screen Time, which debuted with iOS 12. This handy tool tracks which apps are used the most and how long, helping you to adjust your app usage and optimise the battery’s health.
If these tips don’t resolve your battery woes and it’s time for a new phone, check out our selection of the latest and greatest iPhones at e2save.