Juli Clover’s experiment last month created fertile ground for ample anecdata about whether capping the battery at 80% of its capacity leads to better longevity. This sort of stuff fascinates me.
So here is what I did with my evening: I looked through the first ten pages of the relevant MacRumors Forums thread, the links in Michael Tsai’s roundup, and figures I was emailed by readers. I only looked at reports from the iPhone 15 family of models for a more valid comparison, and only recorded those with capacity, cycles, and an indication of whether limiting was turned on.
Is this data? Barely! I did not factor anything else into this — not charge method, and not the specific iPhone 15 phone model. If someone said they used the 80% charging limit for most of the phone’s life apart from vacationing, I counted that as using the limit. Also, this is a survey of people who felt compelled to comment on a forum thread about battery statistics, so it is wildly skewed. It can barely be called “statistics” because these numbers are so noisy, but it is fun. Roll with it.
People who use the charge limiter seem to also use their phones less but, critically, the 80% limiter appears to help lighter users.