Anyone know anything about replacement iPhone batteries?
My phone is an iPhone 12 Pro that I’ve been using for about 4 1/2 years. The maximum capacity on the Battery Health & Charging screen says it’s at 82%. I had some time this weekend so I booked an appointment at the Apple Store Genius Bar to get the battery replaced. (For this model phone, their standard charge for this is $89 and I was prepared to pay that.) But the guy who met me there advised against it, saying that a replacement battery wouldn’t last any longer. He said that only once the maximum capacity dropped to 79% or less would a replacement battery help. Does that sound right? It doesn’t to me; if a battery with maximum capacity of 79% is worth replacing, why isn’t it worthwhile to do so for one at 82%?
Thanks but that doesn’t answer my question. And the ifixit kit is $45, or about half the cost of paying a (presumably) trained person at the Apple Store to do it. I’ve done computer repairs and sometimes you make mistakes the first time you do something. So I figure they’re not likely to screw up the repair on mine.
It will make a difference in run time per charge. However it won’t make a difference in performance - yet. iPhones will reduce the performance when the battery runs weak which is set at lower then 80%.
So at this point if time if you are not running out of charge, practically you will see no benefit in swapping batteries (you may be recharging at maybe 40% instead of 25% at the end of the day, but either works) and better to wait till either you see degraded performance due to a degraded battery and thus iPhone throttling, or it doesn’t hold enough charge anymore for your needs.
Though with the current political climate if you are in the US (tariffs), and the likely cost rise, and if you plan to keep your current model long term, it may make sense to upgrade the battery now.
For Apple’s policy, it is right. iPhone 12 is designed to get 500 charge cycles and still retain 80% of the charging capacity from when it was new. So 80% is the official cutoff for Apple. The Apple guy is basically saying that right now your battery is still working as it is supposed to.
Thanks. It sounds like he was thinking of that 80% threshold. And note that he wasn’t declining to go ahead with the battery replacement but just advising me against it. Previously I replaced my phone every three years but didn’t replace this one then or even at four years, so I fully intend to do so this autumn, when it will be roughly five years old.
The Apple rep did suggest I disable Background App Refresh on as many apps as possible, saying that doing so will do more to maintain battery charge. I did go through and disabled that for most of the apps.
Some of the more meaningful ways to extend the battery life are
— turning down the screen brightness
— if you’re a big email person, turn off push data and switch from automatically fetching new email to manual (or at least hourly).
— turn of notifications
— switch Voice and Data from 5G to LTE
I think switching to Low Power Mode automatically does all those (and others) except for notifications.
You can do other stuff like turning off location services, but then you’re kind of beginning to get into the “why bother have a smartphone” area.
I’m wondering if the percentage reported is (intuitive to me) actual capacity / label capacity = %* or something else. If the former, what the guy is telling you doesn’t make sense. But maybe they calculate something else
*The 12 has a 2815 mAh battery. 82% suggests it’s dropped to a 2308 mAh capacity.