What happens when you limit iPhone charging to 80% for a year? Answer

On the iPhone 15 series, Apple offers a setting that allows you tolimit battery chargeat 80%. For what ? If this limit reduces the autonomy of the device, it theoretically allows you to extend the life of the battery, to the extent that recharging above 80% can accelerate degradation. But does activating this setting make a noticeable difference? To answer this question, Juli Clover, journalist at MacRumors, decided to limit the charging of her iPhone 15 Pro Max to 80% for a year.

“The idea is that never charging the iPhone above 80% will increase battery longevity, so I've kept my ‌iPhone‌ at that 80% limit from September 2023 until now, without cheating”, she writes. According to this, a year later, iOS indicates that its iPhone 15 Pro Max has retained 94% of its capacity, with 299 recharge cycles. But for a good part of the year, this battery had retained 97% of its capacity. To find out if limiting charging to 80% makes a difference, Juli Clover compared the state of her battery with that of colleagues who bought the same model and did not activate this limit.

What difference?

A colleague had an iPhone 15 Pro Max with a battery at 87% capacity, over 329 cycles. And another has a smartphone whose battery has retained 90% of its capacity, after 271 cycles. To draw real conclusions, we need more data. However, the MacRumors journalist believes that the difference is not significant and in her article, she wonders if it was worth it to limit the charging of her iPhone to 80% for a year.

However, she also admits that it is possible that larger differences could be observed after two or three years of use. Furthermore, it should be remembered that thanks to Apple's software support, an iPhone can be used much longer. The iPhone XR, for example, was released in 2018, but it still hasreceived iOS 18 update, and continues to receive security updates.