Users complain of 'unacceptable' iPhone 14 battery degradation — how bad's yours?
Some are going bad, and quick.
The iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro went on sale on September 16, 2022. That means that the earliest most people could have bought one was less than 11 months ago. Yet a ton of people report that their batteries are already starting to show serious signs of degradation.
A number of people have been taking to social media in recent weeks to note how bad their batteries have gotten. Not in terms of how long they last, necessarily, but how bad their iPhones report their battery health to be. After less than 11 months some are finding figures below 90%.
Whatever's going on, it doesn't seem to be affecting everyone. My iPhone 14 Pro Max reports a battery health of 95%. But there have been plenty of people with much lower figures, and they'll only get worse.
Going down fast
People complaining on Twitter about Apple is nothing new of course. But sometimes their complaints have merit. Like the one from AppleTrack's Sam Kohl whose iPhone 14 Pro is fast on its way to needing a new battery. He wasn't alone, with people in the replies noting figures that were just as bad, too. Some were worse — one commenter shared a screenshot with the 87% figure.
Same pic.twitter.com/G950MMNOy2August 1, 2023
It isn't just on Twitter, either. I've seen people complain of similarly poor battery health on Mastodon as well. And again, these are iPhones that are less than 11 months old, surely they should be lasting longer than this?
As for why new iPhone battery health is proving so problematic, one guess points to the extremely hot summer in some parts of the world. Another option is that the batteries themselves just aren't up to the usual standard. Whatever the reason, there are going to be a lot of iPhones that need new batteries relatively soon.
Unless their owners upgrade to a new iPhone 15 or iPhone 15 Pro, that is.
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Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.
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EdwinG My iPhone 11 Pro’s one-year old battery is already at 84% health, and lasts 5-6 hours on a single charge.Reply
It used to last 10-12 hours just 2 months ago 😥
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flappah Pretty weird. My iPhone 14 Pro still stands at 98%. I’ll take it from the charger at 6.30am and put it on the charger at 11pm again. And at that time it still has a 20-30% charge left.Reply
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Just_Me_D As of today, August 1, 2023 the battery health of my iPhone 14 Pro is still at 100%.Reply -
EdwinG @flappah , @Just_Me_D : Are the two of you using a wireless charger (Qi, MagSafe)? Or some form of wired charging (5W, 20W, other)?Reply
In my case, it’s a wireless Qi charger. And I think that could be the reason for the quick degradation for the battery. -
ksassy My iPhone 14 Pro Max (9 months old) is still at 100% battery health and both of my kids’ iPhone 14 Plus (9 months old) are still at 100% battery health too.Reply -
Just_Me_D Ed7789 said:@flappah , @Just_Me_D : Are the two of you using a wireless charger (Qi, MagSafe)? Or some form of wired charging (5W, 20W, other)?
In my case, it’s a wireless Qi charger. And I think that could be the reason for the quick degradation for the battery.
I use a 5W charging block to charge overnight. When I had an iPhone 12 Pro (I believe) my battery health degraded a bit from what I suspect was the wireless charger I was using at the time. -
gian posatiere 2 Months ago I was at 100% health. As of today I'm at 88% so my battery degraded 12% in the last 2 months.Reply -
DoyouFanBoyBro Don’t use wireless chargers you guys…. Anyways mine is still at 100%. - I don’t use a wireless charger.Reply -
Lee_Bo DoyouFanBoyBro said:Don’t use wireless chargers you guys…. Anyways mine is still at 100%. - I don’t use a wireless charger.
MagSafe charging since day one with my 14PM.