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I have an XR and as I am indoors a lot of the time, my phone does spend a few hours charging at 100% (although I unplug at night). It's rare that I let the phone run past 80% and even rare that it goes past 60%.

Is this likely to damage the battery?

This Macworld article says isn't optimal, although it won't necessarily damage your battery. However, I've seen other people stating that charging to 100% is very damaging which is why Ios 13 will have measures to prevent it. Further still, I've seen articles state that iOS 12 already is designed to cope with charging at 100%, and the iOS 13 improvements are more to do with overnight charging.

What's the correct answer? Also, as should I shut down the phone at night if it is not charging?

IconDaemon
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fluffykittycute
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  • https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/180615/is-charging-my-iphone-all-night-harmful https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/17303/what-are-the-best-practices-for-battery-longevity – anki Sep 05 '19 at 18:25
  • @ankiiiiiii Those older answers are wrong and aged. I’d go with my newer linked question as the current generation / current iOS status. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/361066/ – bmike Sep 05 '19 at 18:27

2 Answers2

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No it doesn’t. Any 2018 or newer hardware and iOS can handle kiosk mode / constantly charged batteries much better than the old controllers so you should just keep it charged if you like that.

Your XR can be kept 100% topped off without any long term harm.

I disagree with Mac World and only think you should shut down the phone if you don’t regularly do that from time to time (you should do that weekly IMO) and it’s no problem to connect to charge and then power it off. The charging runs without the OS but there’s no benefit to being off while charging in all but some weird edge cases (where the software is so broken it’s running CPU constantly).

Also - some older questions here have old advice for the previous design, when this was in fact a problem if you didn’t care about having a fully charged battery and only cared about years and years between the battery being consumed.

Those above questions should probable be locked as “historical” and not used for the iPhone X and newer and corresponding new MacBook / iPad / Apple Watch and more smartly engineered devices that preserve the battery longevity much better than could be accomplished in the past.

bmike
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  • Can you please elaborate a bit more what from your perspective a new device/iOS and what old device for you are? – Robert Jun 24 '20 at 17:05
  • Thank you for the good question on clarification. Let’s say 2018 and newer is new. IPhone X isn’t “new” anymore but probably is just fine in Kiosk mode too - that was evolution newer in 2017 than most of the gear out that year. Does that help @Robert ? – bmike Jun 24 '20 at 17:11
  • Thanks bmike that helped me a lot. I assume that you are always using the latest iOS version hence you can't tell how much of the positive effect is caused by the hardware and how much by the software, right? Because I am mainly interested in jailbroken phones with certain older iOS versions. – Robert Jun 25 '20 at 06:59
  • I typically run N+1 through N-2 OS on Mac and iOS. I still have the first iPhone so I don’t make this answer based on always the newest. My personal “collection” goes pretty deep so thanks for asking if there were any assumptions, @Robert Perhaps you want to ask a linked follow on question with your specific case? the reason I focus on new relative to 2019 is that’s when the hardware specific to this question XR was made. – bmike Jun 26 '20 at 00:34
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Here is the best article I've found on the subject of how to care for your Phone battery. It's brief, but authoritative.

The main points are this:

1) Don't keep it plugged in when it's fully charged
2) don't "try to reach 100%"
3) Plug in your phone whenever you can

In reading it again, I see keeping it cool is also important -- I'm glad I reread it to notice that.

Also, checking on Settings-->Battery to see the graph showing exactly what apps are draining battery helps me realize what causes the most battery stress. You can click on each bar of the graph to see what Apps cause the most use.

Tony M
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  • This seems to be in contrast to the advice provided by Apple (references in Bmike's answer). – fluffykittycute Sep 08 '19 at 11:13
  • I think there are different ways of understanding this subject. There's applying current to the battery to charge it, there's drawing current during phone use, and in each case there are intelligent ways to govern how much and when those things happen. But on another level, there's the aspect of the chemistry that goes on within the battery and the best conditions for that chemistry to take place, long term. Ultimately, that chemistry determines performance. Although I haven't looked into it in detail, as a professional chemist, it seemed to me that the article I shared made a lot of sense. – Tony M Sep 08 '19 at 14:56
  • I don’t see how the three points go together. 1 and 3 seem to be exact opposites. – bmike Jun 26 '20 at 00:36
  • @bmike In the linked page my items (1)-(3) are the bold headings. I agree that if you only read the headings it appears opposite because they are, well, just headings, and perhaps could have been worded differently. But if you read the text it makes sense. One key sentence is this: "It keeps the battery in a high-stress, high-tension state, which wears down the chemistry within." This shows the author has at least some insight into the underlying chemistry -- and I believe, a lot more than just some. – Tony M Jun 26 '20 at 09:47
  • I love it @TonyM you have identified the core conflict. Not using a battery is best, using it depletes it. How we make compromises is exactly why short answers are incomplete. Hit me up in [chat] if we want to find a new question to explore this more deeply. Especially if fluffy kitty cute wants a specific answer tailored to XR and we can cover the complicated reality of trade offs in general and then how Apple changes their solutions over time. – bmike Jun 26 '20 at 16:51