Charging iphone 5 battery

Horsehaulin · Oct 17, 2012

Roger that, but remember, they have to dumb it down for those that are not smart enough to understand.

raf66 · Oct 17, 2012

I have ABSOLUTELY no scientific or electrical knowledge to bring to bear to this conversation. Like others, what I DO have is anecdotal evidence. My battery for the first couple of weeks was phenomenal. I used the phone all day and then plugged it up at night to charge fully. Rinse and repeat. For the first two weeks or so, I'd plug the phone in at night and it would be at or around 60% after 12-14 hrs on standby and maybe a couple hrs of usage (calls, texts/emails, and internet surfing-I'm not a super huge cell phone user). On one particular day at about the two-week mark, my battery took a nose dive and, after using the phone as I normally would during the day, got to 5% or so that evening. I had never seen it get to even 40% of that mark. I went ahead and let it run to -0- and shut itself down. I then plugged it in and let it charge fully overnight. Since that time my battery has been back to normal (maybe even a hair better than normal).

There are a couple of possibilities: 1) the phone wasn't actually reading my remaining battery % correctly and therefore the phone had ALWAYS been down to the 5%-10% mark at night when I'd plug the phone in to charge even though it was erroneously showing 50%-60% remaining; or 2) the battery needed a complete charge/discharge cycle to reset the calibration. I'm opting for 2) and plan on doing a complete cycle once/month or so. Is this correct? I really don't know. However, sometime during the first two weeks of ownership my phone's battery (or the iOS battery monitor) got sideways and a complete battery discharge/charge cycle appears to have helped.

Skull One · Oct 17, 2012

From a chemical stand point, if you are short cycle charging IE only using 30% per day, then you only need to deep cycle charge it every 60 or so days. But if you are running it out below 25% on some days and only 75% others, then you need to do it every 30 days.

The reason a new phone goes "sideways" with the battery reading is because it is trying to develop a baseline without knowing the top and bottom of the charge levels. So once it it has enough data collected, it started showing you what it mathematically calculates as battery capacity. The second you deep cycled, the calibration was adjusted and you were now seeing the correct data.

Every new phone should have a full cycle deep discharge done in the first 48 hours. Otherwise the profile for the battery will be wrong until it is finally done.

scifan57 · Oct 17, 2012

Here is the Apple page on battery care for the iPhone.
http://www.apple.com/batteries/iphone.html

Skull One · Oct 17, 2012

I would LOVE to see Apple back up its statement

Turn off push mail: If you have a push mail account such as Yahoo! or Microsoft Exchange, turn off push when you don’t need it. Go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data and set Push to Off. Messages sent to your push email accounts will now be received on your phone based on the global Fetch setting rather than as they arrive.

with a full CPU and Data profiler that has been running for a few weeks.

Because I call bull on that statement since iMessage is their preferred way to do text messaging and that uses the SAME EXACT code base and open port. IE if you have iMessage on you aren't using any more battery by having Push on.

hookbill · Oct 17, 2012

I charge whenever I want. Sometimes I only partial charge. I charge regardless of how much battery is left every night. I've been doing this with 6 smart phones and 2 iPads. I've seen heavy battery drops. Usually that happens when I use the device a lot. I still don't change how I do things. And I don't intend to.

Calibration of a lithium battery is nothing more then Forum nonsense. I've seen it in Crackberry, Android, iPad, and now iPhone forums. And I am aware about Apple's recommendations. I just don't use them.

zphone · Oct 17, 2012

In general the once a month recommendation is far too often, more like once per six months will do for most people. Likely you use up your device battery in that time fully a couple of times and therefore most people don't have to pay attention to the recommendations at all if they use their devices regularly.

hookbill · Oct 17, 2012

zphone said:
In general the once a month recommendation is far too often, more like once per six months will do for most people. Likely you use up your device battery in that time fully a couple of times and therefore most people don't have to pay attention to the recommendations at all if they use their devices regularly.

I strongly agree. Once every 6 months is all you need.

danijoh69 · Oct 18, 2012

Skull One said:
I really think they need to stop watering down the truth for the masses.

Their recommendation is SPOT ON. You do need to do it. But it has NOTHING to do with electrons needing to be moved. It has to do with calibrating iOS to understand where the battery is electrically. Lets look at the the overall situation to understand the why.

Every single Lithium-Ion battery made has a limited lifetime of full cycle charges. When you start with a battery that is brand new, it will have 300 to 500 cycles renaming. But the full storage capacity and the actual power that is delivered to the device, from that battery, is NOT maintained over that lifetime. At the end of the batteries rated cycles it will only have 80% of its original potential. So we now know there is going to be a difference over time. For iOS to understand that difference in power level it must be taught what is a FULL charge and what is a DEPLETED charge. By doing that once a month iOS gets the data it needs to properly show what 100% to 0% is on your battery in your device.

But the second you put that in print on the Apple website, people will start screaming "WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY BATTERY WILL ONLY HAVE 80% after I charge it 500 times!". Then Apple will have to explain it is 500 full cycle charges. And then people will have to understand that if you only use the battery till it read 75% left, that means you can charge it 2000 times. Or if you only use it to 50%, you can charge it 1000 times and . IE most people don't think it thru and they see 500 and 80% without doing the full math or understanding the chemistry behind the scenes.

Great answer skull one! Thanks!

danijoh69 · Oct 18, 2012

I usually plug my iPhone 5 in when I go to bed when I want to charge it. Is it ok to leave it plugged in all nite?

Skull One · Oct 18, 2012

danijoh69 said:
I usually plug my iPhone 5 in when I go to bed when I want to charge it. Is it ok to leave it plugged in all nite?

Absolutely! The iPhone turns off the charge as soon as it reaches full charge. You can leave it on the charger for the next 10 years if you wanted.

solarlights · Oct 19, 2012

I charge my phone when the battery is dead.

cuskit · Oct 19, 2012

Do the car chargers normally charge more slowly than the AC chargers? I'm not sure - but it seems that I see much less progress on charge rate when in my truck than when I plug direct into an AC charger at home or office. Yet both units (AC & DC) both show 1 amp charging on the faceplates. Is it my imagination? From what I'm reading here I understand that the phone is "intelligent" and receives just what it needs regardless of amp output on the charger - does this include the rate at which it accepts a charge also?

Skull One · Oct 19, 2012

cuskit said:
Do the car chargers normally charge more slowly than the AC chargers? I'm not sure - but it seems that I see much less progress on charge rate when in my truck than when I plug direct into an AC charger at home or office. Yet both units (AC & DC) both show 1 amp charging on the faceplates. Is it my imagination? From what I'm reading here I understand that the phone is "intelligent" and receives just what it needs regardless of amp output on the charger - does this include the rate at which it accepts a charge also?

Car chargers have to deal with a few factors.

1) Is the socket rated to provide more than 1 Amp? Remember, the charger has to provide 1 Amp, so it needs at least 1.1 amps to overcome the circuity load.
2) Is the alternator able to keep up with the electrical needs of the entire vehicle? IE stereo systems and/or weak battery could be draining that available amperage.
3) Is the charger itself rated for 1 Amp?
4) Is there an inductive noise load on the power? That can disrupt the charging capabilities in some interesting ways. And no I can't explain them without writing a white paper on the subject matter first

and I just don't have the time for that.

So if all things are properly setup, then yes a car charger and a wall charger should behave exactly the same way. However just one, or more, of those four factor can cause an issue in the charging rate. But, and there is always a but, there is a much larger culprit that can usually comes into play and I will address that in bit after I answer your last question.

The phone has a dedicated chip for charging. It will pull exactly the amperage needed to charge. Remember the iPhone uses a varying amperage to charge the phone based on what level that battery is already at. So as long as that amperage is, if memory serves, above .25 amps the iPhone will draw between .25 and 1 amp to charge the battery.

Now here is the kicker and the "but" from earlier. While the phone is in use, it puts a load on the battery (I know. DUH right? but there is a point I promise

) and the load increases as you use different features. The screen tends to run brighter to compensate for the sun. Odds are you have Music and/or GPS running. You might be out in an area where the cellular signal is weak and you are trying to download data for the GPS or your streaming music. This all adds up. Guess what, the charger could be providing the full 1 amps and the phone is actually in the charging zone to draw 1 amp but because you are already drawing .75 amps due to Music, GPS and screen brightness you are only getting .25 amps of "charging potential". IE you are going to charge very slowly at best.

Hopefully that gives you insight to what is happening behind the scenes versus peoples perception based on their personal observations.