How to tell if your iPhone or iPad needs a battery replacement

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Built-in iOS functions or third-party programs can help you.

As with any mobile device, autonomy is very important for the iPhone and iPad. Every year, user requests are growing, use cases are expanding, and the capabilities of batteries in mobile gadgets remain the same due to the ever decreasing thickness and weight.

Complaints about insufficient battery life can be heard from many users, but how do you know if the battery of your device needs to be replaced or if you are just using it too actively? This will be discussed further.

Discharging or not

This will sound trite, but first you need to understand whether the device is discharging itself or you are discharging it. To do this, it is enough just to refrain from active use for a while and observe the charge level. It is best to fully charge the device and leave it overnight, after taking a screenshot with the charge level at the current time. Do not forget to also turn off notifications to eliminate the possibility of a discharge due to a lot of push notifications.

Check the charge level in the morning. If it has not changed or dropped by a couple of percent, then everything is fine with the battery and the accelerated discharge is caused by active use. If the charge has dropped by more than 10%, something is still discharging it. In this case, go to the next item.

Determine the cause of the discharge

We need to determine where the charge goes: whether background processes and services “eat away” it, or whether the discharge is caused by a decrease in the battery capacity due to wear and tear. It's quite easy to do this through the built-in battery usage statistics feature. Starting with iOS 7.0, we have not only meager usage and expectation figures (although there are enough of them), but even detailed application statistics.

The bottom line is that in standby mode, the iPhone and iPad should not be discharged, which means that the waiting time from the statistics menu should be significantly longer than the usage time (despite the fact that the device is at rest).

If your waiting time is equal or almost equal to the usage time, then there is background activity of applications or services, which is the cause of the discharge. It is worth checking the apps from the list and their access to content updates, geolocation, and more. And here are some more useful tips for you.

If everything is in order, and the battery still holds very little, even with sparing use, go to the next point.

Testing the battery

The problem is almost certainly the wear and tear of the battery, which is inevitable with prolonged use. In the process of charging and discharging, the capacity of the battery decreases. In the iPhone, it drops to 80% after 500 recharge cycles, the iPad can withstand twice as long - 1000. Find out how much the maximum battery capacity on your device has decreased. If the fall is too large and the current autonomy does not suit you, it is time to change the battery.

If your device has been updated to iOS 11.3, then you can find out how much its battery capacity has decreased over the entire period of operation, without additional programs. To do this, open the section "Settings" → "Battery" → "Battery status". The device will show the current value of the maximum capacity as a percentage of the original.

If your device has an older version of iOS, you can check the battery status using the free Battery Life Doctor app. Launch it and click Details next to Battery Raw Data - in the next menu you will see the Design Capacity parameter. Next to it, the current maximum battery capacity will be displayed as a percentage of the original.

Another way to check the battery status is in iBackupbot for macOS and Windows.

Download the program from the link, open it, connect the device to the computer and click More Information. We are interested in DesignCapacity (initial maximum capacity) and FullChargeCapacity (current maximum capacity). It remains to calculate the difference yourself. If it turns out to be too large, consider replacing the battery.

What to do next

75-80% of the factory capacity is still not fatal and you can live with it calmly, but if such autonomy is not suitable for your use case, then you will have to replace the battery.

It is better to do this in official or trustworthy services. If you decide to replace yourself, then do not buy suspiciously cheap batteries and keep in mind that, unlike the iPhone 4 / 4s in later devices (and all iPads), the replacement procedure involves a complete disassembly of the device, which requires appropriate skills.

And further. Before going to the service center, try to calibrate the battery. It helps a lot of people, and trying is not torture.