- YouTube tells us that a lot of people
who watched our channel also watched a video called
My iPhone Battery Health Increased
From 88 to 94% Using This Battery Health Fix.
- Today we're going to explain why that video
is total bull (beep) and tell you the truth
about where the battery health percentage number
actually comes from.
- And by the end of this video,
you'll know why it's impossible
to maintain a 100% battery health let alone increase it.
- Back to the video David mentioned.
According to that video,
all you need to do to maintain a 100% battery health
is go to some sketchy website,
download some sketchy app with no reviews.
- Stick around to the end.
Actually gonna install this app on an iPhone
and show you what it does.
- [Narrator] It asks you to download a configuration profile
and that's a major red flag.
- Configuration profiles used by beta testers like us
as well as many legitimate schools and companies
but they can be abused.
- What a configuration profile absolutely cannot do
is change the chemical composition of the battery
inside of your iPhone.
- Let's talk about the maximum capacity
in the iPhone battery health and how it's calculated.
This is what Apple says.
"Maximum battery capacity
measures the device battery capacity
relative to when it was new.
A battery will have lower capacity
as the battery chemically ages."
- Let's go to math world.
- Divide the current battery capacity
by the maximum battery capacity
and that's what should be the number
next to maximum capacity in iPhone settings.
- But it isn't.
- Your iPhone is designed to retain up to 80%
of its maximum capacity after 500 charge cycles.
It's about 1% per 25 charge cycles.
- One charge cycle is when you've used
a total of 100% battery life.
- And this is where some people get confused.
They think they can cheat the system
by not charging their iPhone up to a 100%
or letting it go down to zero.
- But batteries are smarter than that now.
- [David] Let's say you start at 100%
and you drain it down to 40, that equals 60%.
You charge your iPhone back up to 90%
and then it drains down to 50%.
That is 40 total percent giving you 100%
or one charge cycle.
- You won't maintain a 100% iPhone battery health
by charging your iPhone in a specific way
to avoid hitting 0% or 100%.
- All you'll do is inconvenience yourself.
And let's touch on another myth real quick
that you shouldn't charge your iPhone overnight.
- Macworld recently wrote an article
about a viral TikTok that proves
charging your iPhone battery overnight
is bad for battery health.
- That article is absolute garbage.
Why doesn't anyone write articles about our viral TikToks?
- Because good press doesn't rely on TikTok
to find subject matter experts.
- You're right, they go to YouTube,
hit that subscribe button below our video.
We'll get into more details later, but take it from Apple,
"Charge your apple lithium-ion battery whenever you want."
- This is where we talk about why dividing the iPhone's
current battery capacity by its maximum capacity
doesn't give you the number that you see in battery health.
- Batteries aren't digital.
They're all unique because of their chemical composition
and some of a higher capacity than others.
- You'd think 100% battery health
would be your battery's maximum capacity, but it isn't.
- Let's talk about how to see your maximum capacity,
your current capacity, and your cycle cap.
- And your future capacity.
Wait, that's not a thing.
You could bet though it's gonna go down
and you could do this by going to iPhone analytics.
- [David] Let's open up the sightings app,
scroll down and tap privacy and security.
Scroll down and tap analytics and improvements.
Then tap on analytics data,
and look for your most recent analytics file.
- If you have an Apple Watch be careful,
Apple Watch analytics logs look almost identical
to the iPhone analytics logs.
- So let's tap into that file
and there are three things we're looking for.
Number one is maximum FCC.
That's the original charge capacity.
FCC stands for full charge capacity.
Nominal charge capacity.
That's the current charge capacity
and cycle count that's your number of charge cycles.
- Trying to skim through this mess is nearly impossible
but fortunately there are a few things you could do
to make the process easier.
- Option one, you could tap the share button
the upper right hand corner of the screen
and airdrop the file to your computer.
Then use the search function to find those three categories.
- Option two, you can copy and paste the text of the file
into the Notes app and then search for the analytics.
- Or option three, you can just download a shortcut
on your iPhone that does all the hard work for you.
- I like option three.
- To download the shortcut,
click the link in the section below the subscribe button.
- [Narrator] It'll open in the shortcuts app.
Tap add shortcut.
Now we're gonna go back to the settings app,
tap the share button in the upper right hand corner
of the screen.
Scroll down to battery stats, tap on that.
- [David] So my full charge capacity
is 3345 milli amp hours.
My nominal charge capacity is 3259 milli amp hours
and I've gone through 50 charge cycles.
- To start to make sense of some of these numbers
we need to know the difference
between what Apple calls a 100%
and what the actual capacity of that battery is
which is different than that.
And every battery, as David said earlier,
has a slightly different maximum capacity
because of the chemical composition.
So David's maximum capacity is that maximum FCC number.
What was that, David?
- 3345.
- So I'll pretend to be Apple and I'm testing batteries,
and David's 3345.
Let's say my phone is 3215,
somebody else 3450, some lucky guy.
And then Apple's running all these tests
and these are all different phones,
all these different dots, okay?
So what Apple wants to do is pick a 100% number that's safe.
They want all the iPhones that are made
to have the same a 100% battery health
'cause they don't want people to take it outta the box
and all of a sudden it's 97 or 99 even,
because then people are going back to the Apple Store.
Apple's safe number 3200 milli amp hours
equals 100% capacity.
To find David's original maximum capacity,
we take his number 3345 and we divide it
by what Apple calls a 100%, which is 3200.
And we get what David?
- [David] How about 104.5%?
- 5%, it's an A plus plus for you.
What's your current capacity?
- 3259 milli amp hours.
- 59 divided by 3200 equals what?
- 101.8.
- And how many charge cycles?
- 50.
- After 50 charge cycles, David has lost how much?
2.7%.
According to Apple, you should lose about 1%
for every 25 charge cycles.
So David is actually outpacing that number a little bit.
- Just great.
Yeah, not ideal.
- So he's still at 101.8%.
Is that what your battery health number says?
- [David] Well, let's go back to the main page
of the settings app.
(upbeat music)
Scroll up, I don't scroll up.
Just tap battery.
Tap battery health and charging
and it says 100% maximum capacity.
- Lie in because it's impossible
to maintain a 100% battery health in real life.
Every time you discharge the battery
you lose a fraction of a percentage.
It's not anything you're gonna notice, but it happens.
- Ultimately maintaining 100% battery health
comes down to reducing the number of charge cycles
your iPhone goes through.
- So should I just turn on low power mode all the time?
- No, it's great when you're at a pinch,
but what low power mode does
is it turns off a bunch of great features on your iPhone
to try and preserve battery life.
- So you're also saying it doesn't matter
if I charge my iPhone overnight?
- Your iPhone doesn't care what time it is.
- We'll tell you about some real battery saving tips
in just a minute,
but first we'll download that BatteryPro app
to see how it actually works.
- I'm gonna go to that weird website of my iPhone.
I'm gonna search for BatteryPro.
Tap install and look at that bar.
It's going nice and uniform across the screen.
- Hit hint if you see a progress bar on a website
and it looks like it's way too smooth.
It's not doing anything, it's just saying,
okay, I'm gonna take one minute ticket from here to there.
It's just a graphic.
Why do they do that?
- To make it seem legit.
And this website is trying to download
a configuration profile.
Do you want to allow this?
Of course, allow.
- [Narrator] Don't actually do this.
- [David] Profile download review.
- [Narrator] He's a professional.
- [David] Review the profile in settings.
Let's close outta that.
Let's go over to the settings app.
We're gonna tap back to the main page of settings,
to the scroll up, profile downloaded.
Let's tap on that.
- And see that web clip over here,
that's how I knew the whole thing was BS.
- Well, we're gonna tap install.
Enter my passcode.
Are you sure? Yes.
Okay.
Consent; no Special permissions required, tap next.
Profile not signed.
Is that an issue?
- Not more than any of the other problems with this.
- [David] Let's tap install.
Tap install and we're done.
BatteryPro is installed, so let's tap done.
- Alright, so now David's installed the app.
- [David] Well, let's go to the home screen.
We're gonna open up the BatteryPro app, missing files.
We need more files.
- Now, it's a...
- We'll download additional files to continue.
So you need to download more apps.
When you tap get next to iHeartRadio for example,
it shoots you over to the App Store.
This is called an affiliate link.
- If you make a purchase after clicking on this link,
then the scammer whoever's behind all this BS
will get a commission.
- [David] Yeah, let's go back to our BatteryPro app.
Oh boy.
Let's see if we can just do all of these and-
- I bet it works after you do all of them.
Wonder if the guy who made the YouTube video
is actually getting his commissions?
- Probably. It still says zero three.
So as you can see,
this is not fixing your iPhone battery health.
It is a scam to get you-
- It's a scam.
- To give them dollars.
- Just to peek behind the curtain here,
you can see at the top of the screen here,
David's got the black bar going on all the way across.
That's because it's a web clip.
It's not actually the settings app that that guy
was showing you in the video.
It's a website with a picture of the settings app
with a 100% on it.
- What would Apple do if you walked into the store
and you showed 'em this app?
- They would run a diagnostic on your phone
and realize that your battery was actually fine.
- Let's talk about some real iPhone battery tips
that'll help you reduce the charge cycles
your iPhone goes through.
Open up the settings app, scroll down,
and tap at battery,
and then tap battery health and charging.
First let's talk about peak performance capability.
- To understand peak performance capability,
we need to get in our time machine,
go all the way back to 2017.
In 2017, Apple was caught throttling back
people's iPhones if they had older batteries
in a scandal that has now become known as-
- Batterygate.
- At the time we said it was BS.
It was, Apple said that they were doing it
because they wanted to protect older iPhones
and they totally didn't do it to slow down older iPhones
just so that they could sell new ones.
And how correct were we, David?
$500 million, correct.
- How much of that did we get?
- None. - [David] Zero.
- None.
In 2020, Apple agreed to pay over $500 million
as part of a class action lawsuit.
We told you so.
- The results of all this
is that Apple built in the ability
to turn off performance and management protections.
If you have an older iPhone, have that option,
go ahead and turn it off.
- Next, let's talk about optimized battery charging.
- Optimized battery charging
says it'll help reduce battery aging
by learning their charging habits
and not charging your iPhone only when you need it.
But it requires you to leave on two settings,
we recommend turning off.
Those are system customization and significant locations.
- So it's gonna optimize the battery charging
but it's gonna use more battery throughout the day
which is gonna increase your cycle count.
That's why we typically leave this off.
- The same is true for clean energy charging.
This is a new iOS 16 feature that selectively
charges your iPhone and lower emission options
are available.
- We don't really know how it works.
- Yeah, I mean it's another one of those settings
where you need to have other settings turned on
for it to work,
and I'm as prone environment as the next guy.
But to think that turning on this switch
is gonna drastically reduce your carbon footprint is-
- Ludicrous.
- Misguided.
Next, let's talk about background app refresh.
This is one of those features that low power mode turns off
for all of your apps,
but instead you can just go in ahead of time
and turn it off for the apps that don't need it.
So if we go back to the main page of settings,
scroll up and tap general,
and then tap background app refresh.
Which apps do you want to be able to download new content
in the background of your iPhone?
- At the top of this list, tap on background app refresh,
and you'll see the option to choose just Wi-Fi.
And that in itself can be a battery saver
because if you're out and about during the day
and your phone is constantly trying to connect
to cellular networks, it's gonna drain your battery faster.
- Let's step back, back up our left hand corner
of the screen and ask yourself,
"Which of my apps need to be able to download new content
in the background of my iPhone?"
Most of the time the answer is gonna be no.
- For me, I leave on Slack, and Discord, and Messenger,
and then I turn everything else off.
- Let's talk about what setting the low power mode turns off
and that is push mail set back to the main page of settings.
Scroll down and tap mail, then tap accounts,
and then tap fetch new data.
- Your email lives on a server.
Your phone maintains a connection to that server
to check to see if there's new mail with push,
it's always connected.
With fetch, you decide how often your iPhone wakes up
to check to see if there's new mail.
So saves battery life.
- Yep.
Turn off the switch at the top of the screen next to push
and then choose every 30 minutes, 15 minutes, every hour,
whatever works for you.
- I choose 15 minutes.
- And anytime you open up the mail app,
your mail will fetch for you.
Let's bring this discussion of bad internet advice
and iPhone myths full circle
by talking about closing their apps.
- But they like us David,
we don't wanna talk about this 'cause most people think
that if you close out your apps it doesn't make a difference
in battery life but in real life,
based on my experience as an Apple employee,
it does make a difference, you should close out your apps.
- Also, just from a usability perspective,
the point of the app switcher
is to be able to quickly navigate between apps.
If you have 30 apps open in your app switcher
it's gonna take you forever to scan back and forth.
- [Narrator] Yeah, it's useless.
- Nobody ever talks about that.
- Next step is setting that even Apple recommends
leaving on.
- Let's tap back to the main page of settings.
Scroll up and tap accessibility.
Tap display and text size and scroll all the way down
and turn on the switch next to auto brightness.
- Auto brightness is another word
for please join our channel.
There's a join button below the video.
It says join and it's in a little oval now.
It used to be blue, it's not anymore.
- Yeah, click that button, see what you can get.
Auto brightness instead of having your display
cranked up all the way all day long.
Drain your battery.
This will adjust it for you.
It'll be nice.
- And what about you iPhone 14 Pro users out there,
you're always on displays.
You think you're special but your draining battery
but you don't have to.
- [David] Let's step back to the main page of settings
then tap on display and brightness.
Scroll down and tap on always on display
and turn off the switch next to show wallpaper.
- Apple listened to me and David in our iPhone 14 Pro review
and we said,
"Apple, what are you doing here
with this always on display?
We don't need to see the wallpaper,
we just wanna know what time it is
and maybe see some other stats."
So Apple built the switch for us.
That is, show wallpaper-
- Yep. - Turn it off.
- Save a little bit of battery life.
Also if you just don't like always on display like me,
I'm gonna turn that off
and I think they'll save a little bit of battery life
when you do that.
- It will technically.
You don't like always on display, David?
- I don't, no.
What I would really love
is if you watch our iOS 16 battery tips video
for a ton of more battery tips
that'll help you reduce the number of charge cycles
your iPhone goes through,
and helps you preserve your maximum battery capacity.
- Oh, I have my iPhone 14 Pro,
and I don't like the always on display.
Meanwhile, there are people out there, David,
who have phones that don't have always on display
and they'd love to be able to turn it on.
- Grass is always greener.