The Best Way to Charge iPhones: Maximize Your Battery Life With These Tips

How you charge your device matters, whether you have an iPhone 16 Pro Max or you’re still rocking an iPhone 11. Charging your phone isn’t just about battery life - how you charge your iPhone battery can affect the device’s overall lifespan and performance capabilities. You might be surprised to hear that many people don’t charge their iPhones as they should, degrading their battery health and shortening the phone’s life cycle.

As it turns out, there is a difference between optimized battery charging and simply plugging it in. By digging into some expert tips and tricks, you can maximize your battery life and keep your iPhone running at peak performance for years to come.

How Do iPhone Batteries Work?

iPhones, like the vast majority of other modern consumer electronics, use lithium-ion battery cells. These batteries are so widely used because they’re highly efficient, they have a relatively compact size, and they can recharge battery capacity quite quickly. When the battery fully discharges and fully recharges, this is known as a “charge cycle.”

The more charge cycles you complete, the more your battery capacity starts decreasing. While Apple used to say its batteries were designed to retain 80% of their original capacity after 500 charge cycles, they’ve made big strides in this area recently. For the iPhone 15 and 16 Series, Apple says you can count on 80% capacity after 1,000 complete charge cycles.

Even still, you’re losing 20% of your total battery capacity just from normal use! And what if you have heavier than “normal use?” For people who play lots of games or use other apps that demand lots of processing power, your phone could degrade faster than this.

Apple’s iOS operating system has functions that automatically manage and optimize charging to an extent, but your own habits still contribute significantly to long-term battery health.

What’s the Difference Between Battery Health and Battery Life?

While these terms seem like they could be synonyms for each other, they actually have distinct meanings. Battery life measures how long your iPhone can operate on one single charge from 100% to 0%. So, your battery life fluctuates frequently from day to day, hour to hour.

Meanwhile, battery health is a holistic measurement of battery performance. A battery that still performs just like a brand-new one has perfect battery health, while one that struggles to hold a charge or requires frequent recharging will have poor battery health. Unlike battery life, this metric is more of a slow and steady decline than a rollercoaster that goes up and down every time you plug in your charger.

Even if your iPhone’s battery life lasts from sunrise to sunset now, subpar charging habits can degrade its battery health over time. And, when it does, that all-day usage you enjoy today will be a thing of the past. Thankfully, there are some concrete steps you can take to optimize both of these metrics.

Best Practices to Optimize Your iPhone’s Battery Life

When it comes to the long-term productivity of your iPhone battery, slow and steady wins the race. Optimizing your battery’s power potential involves the following approaches:

• Don’t charge your battery above 80%. Charging your phone all the way up puts stress on the battery and shortens its lifespan.
• Don’t let your battery drain below 20%. Similarly, letting your phone’s battery wear all the way down to 0% is a losing bet. To preserve battery life and battery health, keep your phone in the 20% to 80% range whenever possible.
• Avoid heat whenever possible. Nothing kills a battery faster than getting it too hot. Make sure not to leave your phone in a hot car, charge it under a blanket or pillow, or set your phone in direct sun. Find some shade - your battery will thank you!
• Turn on Apple’s “Optimized Battery Charging” feature (or “Optimised Battery Charging” for our friends across the pond). With this feature activated, iOS learns your daily routine and adapts its charging patterns to match it. For example, if you tend to go to sleep at 11 pm and wake up at 7 am, your iPhone will charge at normal speed up to 80%. At this point, it will “pause” charging and hold the phone at that 80% level until shortly before 7 am, when it starts charging again, reaching 100% by the time you wake up.
• Enable Low Power Mode when convenient. This can be especially impactful for older iPhones that struggle to maintain a charge. You can extend battery life by using Low Power Mode, as it conserves processing power and reduces the demand for energy from the battery. (Dimming the screen brightness helps with this, too.)

Finally, use a low-wattage charger. To be honest, if you do a Google search on this topic, you’ll get a bunch of different answers. We dug deep into the details, and here’s what we discovered.

Today’s iPhones are capable of charging very quickly, especially now that Apple has finally switched from the deceptively slow Lightning Cable to USB-C chargers. Several years ago, iPhone batteries were much more temperature-sensitive than they are now. While fast charging used to place a lot of strain on batteries due to overheating, modern iPhones have better ventilation and cooling features to mitigate this issue.

That said, it’s still a fact that fast charging generates more heat than slow charging. Even if your iPhone has battery management features that mitigate the effects of that heat, it’s still better to not generate that much heat in the first place. Furthermore, some of these advancements in battery cooling technology are pretty recent developments, and we don’t know exactly how much they’ll improve a phone’s battery life and health.

In short, while Apple officially says that fast charging won’t harm your iPhone, we’re not completely sold. Feel free to use a fast charger when you really need it, but it’s safer to use a low-wattage charger, especially in situations where your phone will be plugged in for a long time (such as when you’re asleep).

While we’re on the subject, we’ll also quickly mention that wireless charging has some of the same potential issues as fast charging when it comes to the heat generated by the charging process. Again, modern iPhones are built to withstand overcharging and excess heat, but it’s still probably better for overall battery health to not test the effectiveness of these features too harshly.

Tips and Tricks for Safe Battery Charging

While you don’t always need to spend the big bucks on Apple’s proprietary, first-party iPhone accessories, you should know that not all accessories are created equal - and this statement applies to chargers and cables, too. When you use cheap, low-quality accessories, your battery health and life can take a hit.

While Apple accessories can be costly, you can always count on their quality. If you don’t mind spending a few extra bucks, using genuine Apple chargers and cords can produce better results for phone charging. You can also rely on MFi-certified cables and chargers - MFi stands for “Made for iPhone,” and it’s more than just a catchy slogan. MFi-certified accessories are third-party products that are certified by Apple for use with iPhones, and it indicates that the manufacturers meet Apple’s own rigorous quality and safety standards.

For charging bricks, look for products with certification from Underwriters Laboratories (UL). UL-certified chargers meet the organization’s strict safety standards, and you can rest assured that they won’t overheat or, worse, electrocute you!

Another helpful tip is to follow a consistent charging pattern. After all, the Optimized Battery Charging feature is at its best when it has a consistent daily charging routine to follow. For example, you could plug in your phone during your morning coffee break every weekday and top it off again after lunch. Creating patterns for the Optimized Battery Charging feature to adhere to is a great way to get the most out of your battery.

Common Charging Mistakes to Avoid

First and foremost, don’t use cheap off-brand cables from mystery retailers. It can be incredibly tempting to look at listings for cables online and see some that only cost a couple of dollars, while others might cost 10 times as much.

What’s the difference? Why shouldn’t you use the cheapest cable available? The reason is that some of these cables simply don’t meet modern safety standards - and, even if they do, the manufacturers might not bother sufficiently testing them to make sure.

Another problem to avoid is that of wireless chargers. As we mentioned earlier, these are often harmless, especially if you use one of high quality. That said, cheap wireless chargers can generate a lot of heat, and that can cause problems for more than just your battery. Many different components of an iPhone are heat-sensitive, and exposing your phone to more heat than necessary just isn’t a great idea.

Finally, don’t leave your phone plugged in all the time. While it might seem like keeping your battery at 100% results in using fewer charge cycles, holding a battery at full charge for long periods of time can actually cause long-term damage. Modern iPhones have features to mitigate this issue, but this is another case of “it’s better to not create an issue that requires mitigation to begin with.”

How to Verify Your iPhone’s Battery Health

If you’re wondering just how well your iPhone battery is holding up to daily use, there’s an easy way to check. From the Settings app, tap “Battery,” and then select “Battery Health & Charging.” The Maximum Capacity number is your overall battery health - it measures how much of its original capacity still remains in the battery.

Apple uses 80% as a benchmark for this metric. If you stay above that mark, your battery usage isn’t causing any problems, and you’re still getting solid performance in day-to-day use. However, a score under 80% is cause for concern. In fact, if you have AppleCare+ and your battery health dips below 80%, you’re eligible for a free battery replacement.

Charge Smarter, Not Harder

Modern iPhone models are highly intelligent machines, and they have plenty of features that can mitigate the negative effects of suboptimal charging practices. That said, there’s still a lot you can do to contribute to your iPhone’s battery health instead of detracting from it.

It might be a little more convenient to charge your phone’s battery all the way from dead to full every day, but doing so will slowly chip away at your battery’s long-term lifespan. If you keep your phone in the sweet spot between 20% and 80% charged at all times, you could even add years to its peak performance capabilities.

This is especially true if you use Apple’s optimized charging features along with MFi-certified chargers and cables. Low-quality accessories cause problems that are more than mere nuisances - they can actually cause serious damage to your device.

Following the tips and tricks in this guide will help you get the most out of your iPhone’s battery lifespan. And, if something ever goes wrong with your phone, only take it to Apple Authorized Service Providers. These repair shops follow the same strict guidelines as Apple’s in-house pros, and you can trust their expertise.

What Should You Do at the End of Your iPhone’s Battery Lifespan?

You have a few options when your iPhone battery finally reaches the end of its rope. Maybe it charges too slowly, doesn’t hold a charge, or your iPhone doesn’t charge at all. One option is battery replacement. iPhone batteries aren’t too terribly expensive compared to the cost of a new phone - for the most part, they range from $69 to $99, depending on your phone’s model - and they’re free if you have AppleCare+ and your battery health is below 80%.

Another option is to upgrade to a new device. If your iPhone is an older model and it’s not worth much more than the cost of a battery replacement, it might be time to get a newer one. Plus, if your phone is more than a few years old, there’s a good chance it has other issues as well.

Sell It to ecoATM

If you do choose to get a new iPhone, make sure to sell your old one to ecoATM. When you sell your iPhone at an ecoATM kiosk, you contribute to the circular economy - a system with minimized waste and maximized resource efficiency.

When we find new owners for old phones, we keep these devices in use for longer, which decreases demand for brand-new phones. This cuts down on the environmental impact of mining new raw materials for new devices.

We always pay the best prices for devices in flawless condition, but we still often offer cash for phones with subpar batteries. To find out how much you can get, use the pricing tool on our website or visit one of the 6,000+ ecoATM kiosks across the U.S. Make sure to fully charge your iPhone before bringing it to the kiosk so we can properly evaluate its battery and make you a cash offer for your device.

While we reuse as many devices as we can, the fact of the matter is that every smartphone eventually gets past its useful lifespan. If a device is too old or beat up to resell, we’ll still accept it at any ecoATM kiosk and recycle it on your behalf for free.

This dedication to eco-conscious business practices is the driving force behind our recycling efforts - to date, we’ve recycled 50+ million smartphones and tablets. Find an ecoATM kiosk near you and sell us your old iPhone today!