Apple should offer full battery control on iPhone, iPad, Mac

Apple introduced a new software feature with iOS 13 that helps extend your iPhone’s battery life called “Optimized Battery Charging.” I’d like to see Apple not only extend it to iPad and Mac, but also take a page from Tesla’s (and Dell, Samsung, others) book and adopt a feature of its charging strategy.

Update 22/01/21: After two months, my 13-inch MacBook Pro M1 has learned my charging schedule and limits the charge to 80% with the optimized battery charge.

It’s good to see the feature finally take effect, but I think it’s further proof that manual control to set a battery limit is needed.

In my case, since I work from home connected to a Thunderbolt display during the day (and unplug it at the end of each work day), the optimized battery charge has “learned” that my Mac can stay at 80 % during the day and finish charging at 100% by 7 p.m. (if I left it plugged in).

I also try to drain the battery a bit after work by playing a movie so she doesn’t sit with a full battery overnight consistently.

Update 12/24/20: It’s now been over a year since Apple released its Optimized Battery Charging feature and it hasn’t really been improved. And looking back to 2020 – a year with the pandemic and the launch of the first MacBook M1s, full battery control for charging is definitely out of date.

With macOS Big Sur launching this fall, Optimized battery charging is activated by default. It’s great, but interestingly, I noticed it never worked on my 13 inch M1 MacBook Pro. Granted, I work from home and use an external Thunderbolt display that charges it simultaneously, but still can’t get it to 80% pause. I’ve tried a variety of things including running my MacBook under 80% and plugging it in around 10am for a week consistently, still nothing, it always directly charges 100%.

I guess more people are in the same boat as me than ever before as remote / home working has become a norm during the pandemic.

And that’s only part of it. The MacBook M1s have dramatically improved battery life and it’s odd to say, but longer battery life is actually part of the problem here, haha! It’s really hard to get my MacBook battery to run below 80% if I don’t do half my work day without my Thunderbolt display.

As 9to5Mac readers have already pointed out in the comments (thanks everyone!), Dell has been offering manual battery charge control since around 2012. Samsung and other Android OEMs also offer similar options.

This year has truly proven that it’s past time for Apple to give users the option to prioritize long-term battery health. A simple manual opt-in control to limit the battery charge would do the trick. And notably, with people being at home a lot more than ever (at least for the first part of 2021), manual control on iPhone and iPad would come in handy now and even when life is back to normal.

In the meantime, there is a nice third-party option available on GitHub called AlDente developed by David Wernhart. However, it is not compatible with M1 Macs. “AlDente does NOT currently work on Apple Silicon (M1) MacBooks due to some SMC key changes!”

If you’re just catching up on all of that, check out full details in the original article below:

Apple’s optimized battery charge feature for iPhone in iOS 13 works by putting a temporary 80% battery limit on the device when charging overnight. Then, closer upon waking, it will finish charging the remaining 20%. Apple describes how it works in Settings> Battery> Battery Status:

To reduce battery aging, iPhone learns from your daily charging routine so that it can wait beyond 80% to complete charging until you need to use it.

The bottom line is that fully charged batteries will deplete cells faster, so Apple’s feature increases battery life by interrupting charging.

Tesla electric vehicles have a similar ability where they learn your schedule like the iPhone and will be charged at the desired level by the time you need to leave in the morning. But Tesla goes further than Apple’s optimized battery charge feature and allows owners to manually set a battery limit in the Tesla app.

Left: Tesla app with a simple slider to manually control battery charge. Middle and right: iPhone battery settings and optimized battery charging screen

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said it’s best to charge at 80% for regular use and then tap into the remaining battery for long trips. And a battery expert who did research for Tesla even suggested that using a 70% limit might be ideal for battery longevity.

Even though some of Apple’s batteries in its devices may be user-replaceable, they are not designed that way and it can be a risky option in some cases. Giving users the option to set a battery limit and further extend the battery life would be a great way to extend the useful life of a battery / device, reduce waste and make it more likely to customers to give in or swap when ready to be upgraded. While it might reduce some of Apple’s revenue overall, I think such a move is in line with Apple’s sustainability values.

Although I think it would be a great feature for iPhone, iPad and Mac could benefit even more. Many Mac laptop owners leave them plugged in all the time (or at least most of the time). Introducing a Tesla-style battery limit feature would deliver the benefits we talked about and educate all users who don’t realize that leaving a battery at 100% charge shortens its lifespan.

And people tend to keep iPads and Macs longer than iPhones, which could provide a better overall experience by eliminating the need to replace the battery or at least pushing it further in the lifecycle of the battery. apparatus.

Much like the current optimized battery charge feature, Apple could implement the ability to set a limit in the battery settings and give users a notification about the option, which would make it opt-in.

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