On iPhones there is a mysterious problem that involves the battery, which after doing research in specialized forums and blogs I understood it is a mysterious bug that not even Apple can explain. The problem concerns the percentage of the iPhone battery charge indicator, which can be completely unpacked, go from 45% to 12% in a second or, vice versa, go from 18% to 43% a second after putting it in charge .
In practice, the iPhone discharges immediately, although theoretically it should have lasted longer, as if the battery had failed.
Still, in other cases, it may happen that after having kept the phone in charge all night, take it in the morning and find it drained or almost empty.
Looking around I was able to see how that of the busted percentage of the iPhone battery charge indicator was a widespread problem, especially of the iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 and 6S models.
Apple gives many tips to optimize the battery life on the iPhone so that it can last as long as possible and, in particular, it is recommended to:
- Keep the iOS system always updated to the latest version.
- Check the apps that remain in the background to terminate, if necessary, the applications that consume too much energy such as Facebook and Instagram.
- Use the power saving mode when going to the battery reserve.
On some websites it is also written that every percentage problem with the battery should be solved by calibrating the iPhone battery .
To calibrate the battery on the iPhone, proceed as follows:
First wait for the battery to discharge up to 1% and for the phone to switch itself off due to lack of energy.
Then put it in charge keeping it off, waiting for it to fully charge and waiting for an additional hour (in total, leaving it in charge for 2 hours and a half or three hours approximately).
At the end, turn the iPhone back on while holding down the Home button and the power button until the Apple logo appears on the screen.
After the calibration of the battery, the percentage indicator on the iPhone should be aligned to the real charging situation, even if the problem of sudden falls and of the incorrect calculation of the energy detection left is not solved at all.
Basically, I was left with the iPhone at risk of shutting down every time the battery reaches a percentage of 20% or 30%, which is not a good thing.
In the support forums, Apple is full of reports of this type, and Apple has admitted the problem only for iPhone 6S, which if brought to the official Apple store for assistance, should still be eligible for replacement today.
For me who have an iPhone 5S, however, all that remains is to hope that the bug occurs less frequently as possible, trying to check the battery charge status often and always carrying a portable emergency charger.
Regarding the lithium-ion battery of smartphones it can be interesting to understand how they work and how complex they are, also in order to make them last longer in general.
Each lithium ion battery is made up of lithium oxide and cobalt plates for the positive cathode and negative carbon electrodes, with perforated separators between them, wrapped in tight overlapping spirals.
During charging, the ions move in the direction of the negative electrode while during discharge, they move in the direction of the positive electrode.
Lithium batteries are lighter than nickel cadmium batteries than they used to be and offer more energy density, even if they have the disadvantage of degrading even if they are not used, losing about 5% of their charging capacity every month (for this if you buy an old smartphone that has been on the market for years, you could end up with a battery that already lasts less than its initial potential).
Lithium batteries last longer if they are never fully charged or recharged.
A typical lithium ion iPhone battery should last for about 500 full charge cycles.
These and other recommendations have already been described in the guide on how often to charge the battery to extend its life
The detection percentage can be wrong because it may be a relative indication, therefore if on a new phone 100% indicates a duration of 24 hours, after a few years 100% is a duration of 8 hours.
The percentage of battery life that we see is then, in reality, only an estimate .
The only information that a phone or laptop can use to calculate the percentage of residual charge, in fact, is the battery voltage, but there is not necessarily a 1-to-1 correspondence between the cell voltage and the amount of energy remaining inside.
The temperature, battery degradation and the amount of energy being processed are factors that can influence this estimate making it wrong.
Having said that, the only explanation of sudden shutdowns, rapid discharges and busted measurement of battery life can simply be traced back to a defect in estimation and detection and not a hardware defect in the battery (in fact, even those who replaced it can suffer from the same bug).
When the percentage goes from 10% to 40% in one second or vice versa, the detection of an intermediate discharge has simply not been detected.
The good news, for what it's worth, is that it is a common problem and that even experts recognize that there is a problem with reading the remaining battery charge on the iPhone.
Article source: survey freely translated from the Mashable website.
