How To Tell If You Need A New IPhone Battery

If you have a new iPhone (iPhone 8, 8 Plus, or the much hyped iPhone X), battery problems are the last thing on your mind. Battery slowdowns on aging phones are nothing new; lithium-ion batteries are the best option we have for mobile tech today, but they're far from perfect. The more power cycles they go through, the worse their capacity gets. Apple's "fix" is why many people with older iPhones report battery problems whenever a new version of iOS comes out.

It's not just that iOS is written for new devices and runs slower on old models (though that's certainly part of it). It's maddening. But Apple got caught when some older iPhones improved after new batteries were installed and people went public with it on Reddit. Weeks later, the company is being sued, and the battery replacement is its public relations response.

29 battery replacement only applies to iPhone SE, 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, and 7 Plus. 79—except if the battery is less than 80 percent capacity when fully charged, in which case the AppleCare battery swap is free. To get your new battery, take an iPhone to the Apple Store's Genius Bar or mail it in.

But what if you're on the fence about your own iPhone's battery, How do you tell if its capacity is low and it's gone through 500 charge cycles—Apple's somewhat arbitrary number for what it considers the lifespan of an iPhone battery, In other words: how do you tell if you need a replacement battery,

The easiest thing to do is download an app like Battery Life (there are multiple apps with that name, but this version, by RBT Digital, seems to be the most robust). The first thing the app will do is display a giant front page graph showing battery wear level. Here are three versions you can compare. The first one is on a 2-year-old iPhone 6s Plus; the second is a smaller iPhone 6s purchased a year ago; the third is an iPhone X that's barely a week old.