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iPhone Battery Charge Issues

Thursday July 12, 2007 3:34 pm PDT by Arnold Kim
Several iPhone users are seeing various battery-related issues. An ongoing thread about it discusses the various problems.

All the problems are not the same, but one common issue appears to be an apparent inability to charge the iPhone to 100%.

Wirelessinfo.com shows photos how two of their three iPhones would not charge to 100%, but a followup from Apple PR suggests that this issue may simply be a software related issue alone, and not representative of any hardware defect:

So, we contacted Apple PR about this, and they told us that "Your battery is fully charged, but the UI (User Interface) is just not correctly reflecting this. We expect to fix this in a software update."


Wirelessinfo.com claims that their early testing of this suggests that this may be true, and they've found that "after an intense series of charging/discharging sessions, the problem batteries on our test iPhones seem to be lasting for longer periods".

In addition, a myth going around is that the iPhone's battery will die after 400 charges, this is not true:

Apple estimates that the iPhone will lose 20 percent of its capacity a darn sight less than 100 percent after 400 full charge and discharge cycles.

[ 11 comments ]

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megfilmworks
Posted: 64 months ago
I can confirm that there are times when my Battery icon shows less than full with the bolt. When I take it off the cradle it then starts "time since last full charge" and when I put it right back on the cradle it shows full with the plug icon. I am getting very good battery usage by the way.
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nagromme
Posted: 64 months ago
In addition to not being dead after 400 cycles:

“And by a complete charge cycle, I mean completely draining the battery, a full chemical cycle.” In other words, using a little battery and then putting your iPhone back in its dock doesn’t count as a charge cycle. If you use a quarter of your iPhone’s battery and then re-charge it, Joswiak said, that’s the equivalent of a quarter of a charge cycle.

“If you top it off, you’re not wasting a charge cycle,” Joswiak said.

So it's 400 FULL cycles--which could be many more than 400 partial charges. And then, you're left with 80% capacity anyway, as the article states.
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strangelogic
Posted: 64 months ago
Yeah - I couldn't get it up to full the first 2 days - then I powered it off to charge it overnight and finally the next day is the first time it started recording time since the last full charge. Haven't had any problems since - well, other than at&t as expected, but none with the charging. :p
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SirOmega
Posted: 64 months ago


So it's 400 FULL cycles--which could be many more than 400 partial charges. And then, you're left with 80% capacity anyway, as the article states.


Yes, but if you recharge 80% or more of your battery every night, then once the battery is down to the 80% number you run out of battery every day. Essentially requiring an additional charger (at the minimum) or a battery replacement. This is something I explain in my review of the phone that I had several people email me and not seem to comprehend properly.
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neps
Posted: 64 months ago
sorry for the cross commenting - but just trying to spread useful info:

flickr'd this a week ago: http://flickr.com/photos/neps/715755491

though since then, I fixed it. On friday I restored the iPhone with the original SW, and since then I've had 4 complete charges.

Another side affect of the original issue is that you don't have anything listed for Usage & Standby times, just '--'. Restoring the phone also fixed this for me.
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cire
Posted: 64 months ago
Ah, so that's why Apple designed iPods to attract lightning! After 400 charges when our batteries only charge to 80%, we just go listen to our iPhone iPod in a storm and recharge!!!! We all missed the hidden symbol: the bolt used in the charging display. So now we know one of the features of the first update.

UPDATE: I just got this confirmed by a JPM analyst in Taiwan.
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DoFoT9
Posted: 64 months ago
wow 20% capactity loss after 400 cycles. thats pretty good, if this is true the battery might last you 2 years.. before starting to need a replacement. thats way better than i expected !!!
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aaarrrgggh
Posted: 64 months ago

wow 20% capactity loss after 400 cycles. thats pretty good, if this is true the battery might last you 2 years.. before starting to need a replacement. thats way better than i expected !!!


It's the standard for how batteries are rated-- end of life is 80% of initial capacity.

The bad news is up to "end of life," you have a linear decay in capacity; it becomes exponential at that point. While the details depend on the battery, you could expect 800 cycles to have 30-50% capacity if it is still working.
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ibwb
Posted: 64 months ago
For me personally, this issue is 100% consistent with whether the phone is set to check for emails automatically. If I set it to manual the battery charges to full each time, but if it's auto checking (even at once per hour) the interface never shows a full charge.
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CaptSaltyJack
Posted: 64 months ago
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/07/14/apple-confirms-iphone-battery-problem-as-bug

It's a confirmed software issue. I had a feeling it was, since day 1. This is good news!
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