The iPhone 15 and 15 Pro’s battery will live for twice as long as expected, according to Apple.
This week, Apple said that its newest iPhones will keep 80 per cent of their original charging capacity after 1,000 cycles. That is double the previous estimate, which said that it would keep 80 per cent of its charge after 500 cycles.
Apple said the new number was the result of detailed testing on all versions of the iPhone 15, under a range of different conditions.
They also came just ahead of new EU regulations that will grade batteries based on how long they last for. Those tests will give new devices a grade between A to G, which will rank them on a range of criteria including battery longevity, and the process requires batteries to keep 80 per cent charge for at least 800 charging cycles.
A battery’s lifespan does not refer to its capacity, or how long it will last on each charge. Instead, it rates how long it can keep that charge: as batteries age, they will lose their capacity, but they can do so at different rates.
Apple also said that a new update will make it easier to see the health of a device’s battery. It will be taken from the “General” part of the Settings app and put into the specific “Battery” part of that same menu.
Shortly before the release of the new iPhone 15, some owners of the previous iPhone 14 said their batteries appeared to be losing their capacity unexpectedly quickly. Last summer, less than a year after the iPhone was released, some said their batteries had already lost 15 per cent or more of their capacity.
