I limit my laptop battery charge to 80% with a third party software tool. Laptops can generally bypass the battery and directly power themselves from the wall.
Does this new 80% battery limit setting imply that the new iPhones are able to do the same? Implication would be less battery wear while docked on a desk/in a car or due to long “AAA” gaming sessions, since it will draw power direct from the wall rather than using the battery as a middleman.
Alternatively, this just means it will keep draining/charging to keep it at a steady 80%, with the battery still fully involved with providing power to the phone.
My question is why only on a new model? Can’t this be done at the software/firmware level so it can work on earlier models that are still supported with updates?
The charitable thinking was that it’s only on the new models because they actually modified the power delivery circuitry to allow bypassing the battery for power. As in, a reasonable hardware limitation that prevents any older models from doing it.
The less charitable thinking is that it’s arbitrary software lock, which is unfortunately not entirely out of character for the Apple either 😅.
Apple has the same feature on their laptops, but it’s “AI” driven so it can decide for you if you want 85% or 100%. Except it’s a fucking joke and almost always charges it to 100% and they don’t give you a way to say fuck the AI let me decide.
The worse it is, the more money they make on battery replacements.
That sounds like the same “Optimized BatteryCharging” option already available on older iPhone models.
For me it’s even worse: it will charge to 80% during the times I’m working. So, when I unplug the MacBook to work somewhere off a power source, I’m left with 80%. Then, when I finish my work day, it immediately charges to 100% and stays that way until the next morning. It’s the complete opposite of what makes sense.
When you plug your phone in you are already “bypassing” the battery. It’s just how batteries work, they can’t be powering a device while being charged at the same time since the current can only go one way at a time. Batteries can’t charge and discharge simultaneously. So what happens when you plug your phone into power is that the Power management circuit directly powers the phone and excess power charges the battery.
It’s just a software decision only the people in charge at Apple know why they would limit this to new models.
You’re right that batteries can’t be both in a “charging” and “discharging” state at the same time. However, a workload drawing 1 A from a battery and a charger supplying 2 A leads to net gain of 1 A, aka “charging”.
It isn’t both charging and discharging, it’s just in a state of charging, despite the workload it’s performing. Likewise, the battery can provide 2 A while only being charged 1 A, leading to a state of discharging.
So, a battery can totally power a device while simultaneously being charged, which I believe is how iPhones currently operate. The battery is always in the power path. Willing to be wrong, that’s just my current understanding.
I don’t have an iPhone and don’t really know what goes on inside of them, but on my 2018ish Android phone battery passthrough / battery idle isn’t supported because it lacks the required hardware to do it (take a look at Advanced Charging Controller if you’re interested in this for your Android phone). Old iPhones may not have that circuitry either.
I really want all devices to have this option. I have it on my phone, and it’s really nice- I just wish my asus laptop, steam deck, and other devices could do it.
What’s the 3rd party tool for the laptop battery? Is it for macOS?
I’ve been using AlDente for awhile:
Good feature set, some cool visualizations of charging activity (as cool as watts going into a battery can be…). Been very happy with it so far, keep my laptop at 80% pretty much all the time (mostly docked).
Ahh dang, it’s only for Macs. I never knew this was an option, it’s something I’d love to use on my PC, and phone too - currently I use AccuBattery to monitor battery health and alert me when it reaches 90% charge so I can unplug it.
Using this method, I’ve kept my phone battery at around 80%+ original capacity even after 3 years of rather heavy use. I’m very pleased.
