Your iPhone once held a charge all day. You could talk, text, stream videos, and snap pictures without draining your entire battery. Those were the good days where you hardly ever fell into the red, low battery range from regular use. Recently, your phone has been out of juice every time you need it.
How can you tell if your iPhone battery is bad?
Learn more about your iPhone’s battery and what signs may tell you it’s time for a battery replacement.
iPhone Battery Lifespan
The lithium-ion batteries inside most smartphones aren’t meant to last forever. As your iPhone battery ages, its ability to hold a charge decreases. Apple states that its iPhone batteries will retain only 80% of their capacity after 500 complete charge cycles. Your iPhone battery will only be able to hold 80% of the power it once did and will continue to lose battery capacity over time.
You may only get 14 to 18 months of full capacity battery life. Some people may get less time than that before their batteries start to fade. How you use your device affects the battery. The more you use your iPhone to stream videos or play games for hours, the more you decrease your battery’s capacity to hold a charge.
When to Replace Your Battery
Won’t Hold A Charge
You just charged your iPhone, but somehow you’re already nearing the low battery mark. As batteries chemically age, they aren’t able to hold the same amount of charge. Older iPhone models, like the iPhone 5 and 6, may experience extremely short battery life because of this.
Are you always connected to your charger? It’s time for a battery replacement.
Overheating
All batteries generate heat. Your iPhone will warm up as you use it, and this is normal. Downloading multiple apps at once, streaming video, and playing games are activities that may cause your phone to feel warm. Like any computer, your iPhone gives off heat with prolonged use.
If your iPhone is too hot to touch, you should shut it off immediately. You may have a software problem if it doesn’t cool down. You’ll want to update your iPhone and delete any apps you recently downloaded that could be causing the issue. If your iPhone is consistently hot during use, you may need a new battery.
Unexpected Shutdowns
No one wants their phone to shut off in the middle of an important call or right as they level up in a game. An unexpected shutdown is your iPhone’s way of saving itself from damage.
Your phone pulls power from its battery at all times, and your battery’s impedance affects your phone’s ability to draw this power. An older battery will have a high impedance and cause the battery’s voltage to drop. Your iPhone will shut down if its current battery cannot support the device’s operating system.
Slow Performance
Older batteries lose the ability to provide the same amount of power they once did. In some cases, this can affect your iPhone’s performance. You may notice that apps take longer to launch or that your screen stutters when you scroll. These are signs that your current battery can no longer handle the phone’s operations.
Apple’s iOS can also cause slow performance. Once your iPhone experiences a shutdown, its iOS slows your device down to keep shutdowns from happening again. If you have an iPhone 6 or later, your iOS will implement “performance management,” which controls the power to your device’s CPU.
With performance management running, users may experience dimmer backlights, lower speaker volume, no app background refresh, and slow app launch times. You can turn performance management off after a shutdown.
Check Your Battery Health
With iOS 11.3 and later, you can now check your iPhone’s battery health in your settings. Apple provides two metrics to measure the health of your battery: peak performance capability and maximum capacity.
Your peak performance capability will tell you if performance management is on. You can disable performance management from your settings.
If your maximum capacity is below 80 to 85%, it is time to replace your iPhone’s battery. Any messages about your battery will also appear in this section of your settings. Your iPhone will tell you when your battery health is “significantly degraded.” It’s definitely time for a battery replacement if you receive this message.
iPhone Battery Replacement
Are you ready to replace your iPhone battery?
Whether you have an iPhone 5 or an iPhone XR, Elite Device Repair can replace youriPhone battery so that you can get back to longer battery life and better performance. Contact us to learn more about our iPhone battery replacements or drop by our store today!