So, we thanked you already for all your help with the survey questions, didn’t we?
Well, thanks again – it has helped us to make the ‘Double your iPhone Battery Guide‘ the definitive manual so that you won’t run out of battery ever again. It’s pretty much all set and we’ll be making it available on 1st October (Update – it’s now available here).
And, thanks as well for all the feedback from loads of readers who checked out the post and pdf about testing your iPhone battery. It seems that there’s a lot of people who benefitted from doing that.
We are very excited to be able to bring this definitive manual to the rescue of those who need it and can’t wait for tomorrow!
But, as promised, we’re now going to look at some of the questions you raised in that survey and give you the answers.
1. ‘Why does my battery drain so quickly?’ or ‘How Can I make my battery last longer?’
OK, so we had this or a version of this question from almost all of the 2400 people who responded in the survey. And, I can’t give you a short answer as we’ve managed to write 80 pages about the reasons and solutions!
But….here’s the short answer.
Your battery drains because of the way you use your iPhone. Part of that use is down to what you do with it – calls, SMS, watching video, listening to music, navigation etc – and there are specific things you can do to limit battery drain for each cause. But, the other part of the battery drain is caused by the way you have your iPhone set-up. The way you have chosen (or left as the original default) to have tens or even hundreds of settings can each have an effect on battery usage. For example, if you allow your iPhone to vibrate every time you receive a call you use up power unnecessarily. The same with the alerts you get from all your apps.
Lastly, the age of your iPhone will also have an effect on how much power it can store and how long that charge will last.
To make your battery last longer you need to learn how it uses its battery power on a daily basis and make the relevant changes to the settings that relate to your use.
2. ‘What processes consume the most energy?’
Again, and as we expected, we got a question along these lines a lot.
And the answer is that it depends on your iPhone, its settings and the way you use it.
You might think that you and a friend are very similar in the way you use your iPhone but, in fact, your settings and behavior will probably be very different.
That’s why, in our guide, we explain how you can identify your own use and rectify your issues rather than listening to hearsay and comparing yourself to others. Your iPhone has lots of data about how you’re using it and that will highlight the problem areas that you need to fix.
3. ‘How do I set up my iPhone to extend battery life?’
This one is a core question. And I’ve kinda answered it above. The only way to set up your iPhone properly for maximum power conserving is to look at your usage and then make the changes that will deliver a result for you.
There are so many ways that you might be using up power that you don’t even realise or you might just be ignoring. The first step is to identify those and then to apply the fixes that we explain in the guide.
4. ‘How long does the original battery last?
This one’s sort of easy.
On average, an iPhone battery lasts for 500 cycles – with a cycle being one full charge and discharge. For most people this will be around 2 years. And, at that point your iPhone battery isn’t likely to just give up the ghost (although for a small minority it does) and will keep working for a lot more cycles yet.
However, at that point you will notice that it doesn’t hold as much charge as it did when new. It may well be at something like 75% – 80% of its original capacity so a full charge will last 75% as long as when it was new.
There’s a lot more on this in the guide.
5. ‘Can the battery be replaced?’ and ‘Do I have to have an Apple Store replace my battery?’ and ”How much does a new battery cost?’
Yes, your iPhone battery can be replaced and, although it may invalidate your warranty from Apple, you do have the option of finding a third party repairer to do it for you or you can do it yourself!
There’s a ‘guy’ or a ‘place’ on most city high streets where you can get repairs done to an iPhone. All we can advise on that is that if you choose to try one of those places do your best to find one that has a solid reputation! They will, though, likely be cheaper than Apple.
We also wrote an article at the start of this year about a website called iFixit that has an awesome reputation that sells iPhone parts, including batteries, but backs that up with toolkits and instructional videos.
If you think you’re up for it, you can try a spot of iPhone DIY. It feels a bit scary but many, many people have replaced their battery themselves with the help of iFixit.
BUT, for most of us, the right thing to do when you have worked out that your iPhone battery has seen better days (the guide tells you how to be sure) is to go to Apple or an Apple authorized service provider.
This is going to be more expensive than going somewhere unauthorised but it’s less risky!
In the UK a replacement iPhone battery costs £59 and in the US it costs $79, unless you’re covered by your warranty, but that isn’t going to be the case with general wear and tear use over a few years.
BUT….there’s another really good reason to go to Apple for battery replacement. Often they will simply give you a replacement iPhone – the same model rather than the latest one – but, especially in the Apple Store, it’s easier for them to simply swap you out a replacement iPhone with a brand new battery in it than it is to physically track, fix and return your old one.
6. ‘Is it OK to leave my battery plugged in charging even when its reached 100%?’
Yes! There’s a lot in the ‘Double Your iPhone Battery‘ guide about charging your iPhone – what is and isn’t a myth. But, for this question, yes, you cannot overheat it or break it by leaving it plugged in and that is NOT a cause of battery damage.
Some iPhone’s can get a little hot whilst charging but that’s not because you’ve left it plugged in.
Oh, and leaving it plugged in doesn’t affect the amount of charge the battery can hold either. And charging it when it isn’t empty also does no damage…but…see the guide for the full lowdown on the ‘memory effect’.
7. ‘Why does my iPhone get hot?’
We had quite a few versions of this question and whether the heat of the iPhone is a sign of battery damage or failure.
This is NOT usually the issue and in most cases an iPhone gets hot because all the processors are working hard on something. It may seem that this is happening when you have left your iPhone alone and you think it’s not doing anything, but it might be chuntering away after a new iOS update or similar – when everyone’s iPhone gets hot as their iPhone is busy reconfiguring everything.
However, if you really know you aren’t doing anything – even in the background (and our guide shows you how to know) and your iPhone is getting hot, then you’ll need to dig deeper to find the cause. It can sometimes be a wrongly seated battery but this is rare.
There’s a lot about heat and your iPhone in the guide since letting your iPhone get too hot is bad for its long term wellbeing. We cover it in detail.
More Questions Answered
Those are the answers to the some of the most common questions that were raised in our survey.
What we learnt most was that a lot of iPhone owners simply don’t have enough information at hand to be able to easily work out what their battery problems are.
That’s alright though because that’s why we created the ‘Double your iPhone Battery Life’ guide to answer all the questions!
Your answers to the survey have helped us make sure that our guide does cover every possible question and cause of battery life problems raised by all our readers, so we are now very confident that it is the only definitive guide to solving this problem so that you don’t run out of battery ever again.
Our guide takes the approach of helping you easily learn the details of how your iPhone works so that you can use that knowledge to fix your battery draining issues. Understanding these causes is the only way to get to the bottom of your problem.
As we said at the top, thanks for your help in getting the guide this far and we are very excited to make it available tomorrow.
Look out for it.
