Apple has finally rolled out iOS 11.3 and along with it a new ‘Battery Health’ feature for iPhone that can tell you how old your battery is and even if it needs replacing.
This new feature was promised after it was revealed late last year that Apple was lowering the performance of its older phones in order to prevent unexpected shutdowns. In plain English: your phone dying even when it had 20% of battery left.
While the feature was designed to help prevent these shutdowns, many felt it wasn’t particularly transparent of Apple to reduce the performance of its devices without telling users.
At the time the company put its hands up and promised it would release a new software feature that would not only let you disable the performance throttling but also let you see the ‘health’ of your battery.
Well that feature is here and available to anyone who has updated their iPhone’s software to iOS 11.3.
How to check your ‘Battery Health’
Head to Settings and then scroll down until you see Battery.
You will now see a new menu option below Battery Percentage which is called Battery Health (Beta). Tap on this.
This is the battery health page which shows you two vital pieces of information. The first is Maximum Capacity, this is the amount of charge it can still hold relative to when it was first bought.
The second is Peak Performance Capability. Below this you should find a brief description of whether your phone is having to deliberately slow down its own performance or not.
If you have an iPhone that was bought fairly recently then it should look something like this:
If you have an iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus or iPhone X you’re unlikely to see anything other than the top screen for a considerable amount of time.
If however your iPhone is of an older model, depending on the age, you might see one of the two following screens.
The first shows that while the battery is relatively healthy, Apple’s performance management software has been activated in order to maintain its health. As you can see there’s a description that says as much and the option to press Disable at the end.
Note: Once you’ve turned it off you can’t turn it back on again until the iPhone experiences another unexpected shutdown, at which point it will be reactivated.
The second screen is a more extreme example which shows an iPhone that’s several years old or has a battery that’s losing an unusual amount of charge.
If that is the case you will see a message by Apple recommending that you have the battery replaced.
How much does it cost to replace an iPhone battery?
Apple has reduced the cost of its battery replacement service until the 31 December 2018 so if you have an older model that needs repairing you’ve got the entire year.
If you have a: iPhone SE, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone X then the cost is £0 within warranty/Apple Care + or £25 if it’s outside of warranty.
If you have any iPhone model that’s older than those listed the then it’s £0 within warranty/Apple Care + or £79 outside of warranty.