The iPhone 14 Pro, especially the iPhone 14 Pro Max, offers extraordinary battery life. Needless to say, that’s a feature many smartphone buyers prioritize when picking a new handset. And the iPhones already offer great battery charging speed, even if they can’t match what’s available on Android.
Unfortunately, managing battery life, safety, and battery health require a smart balancing act from phone makers. Battery technology is still one of the critical bottlenecks in sophisticated portable devices. We’d love multi-day battery life and faster charging speeds. But we make do with what companies like Apple are able to offer.
The iPhone user is also a key player in all of this. It’s up to us to manage battery life and help ensure that devices are safe to operate. Moreover, we play a prominent role in battery health degradation. And it turns out we might be charging the iPhone battery the wrong way, according to a viral TikTok clip.
According to this viral clip, we shouldn’t be charging our iPhones overnight even with Apple’s Optimized Battery Charging feature now available.
The viral TikTok video
TikTok user Shomes posted a clip that went viral on the social network a few days ago.
He explains that charging the iPhone overnight is a bad habit that will eventually lead to battery degradation. That is, the battery health level will start falling from 100% faster than it should.
As a reminder, Apple says the iPhone offers peak performance as long as battery health is above 80%.
Shomes says he owns an iPhone 12 Pro from 2020 and an iPhone 13 Pro Max he bought in September 2021. Both devices are at 100% battery health after two years and one year of use, respectively.
Comparatively, the iPhone 13 he got for his wife three months after launch is at 93%.
The difference between these devices is the charging habit. His wife charges the battery every night while he doesn’t.
Is it really true?
Unfortunately, this isn’t a perfect scientific comparison, and there are problems.
First of all, Shomes uses two phones. Therefore he’d split his screen time between them. As a result, he might have to recharge less frequently than most people.
Moreover, the iPhone 13 Pro Max is a device that doesn’t need daily charging. It offers fantastic battery life. Whereas a regular iPhone 13 might need to be charged more frequently.
There’s also another problem here that impacts this comparison.
No two smartphone users consume the same amount of energy during the day. Some may be comfortable not charging overnight, as they can do it in the morning or during the day.
Other people need to have the phone at 100% in the morning, as they don’t have the luxury of recharging during the day.
That’s not to say that Shomes is wrong. He managed to keep the iPhone 12 Pro at 100% after two years, and that’s impressive. The same goes for the one-year-old iPhone 13 Pro Max.
If you can afford the anxiety, you can try not recharging overnight. I have done it with the iPhone 14 Pro before seeing this viral TikTok, as I often have plenty of battery life left when I go to sleep. But, there were times when I put the phone on the charger overnight to make sure it was at 100% in the morning.
Whether or not you want to try the Shomes way, you should remember a few critical tips for charging the iPhone battery safely and preserving that battery’s health.
iPhone battery charging tips you should know
First, make sure you have Optimized Battery Charging enabled. This allows the phone to learn from your routines and prevents the battery from reaching a 100% charge early. The phone will ensure it hits 100% by the time you wake up.
Then again, Shomes’s wife’s iPhone had the feature turned on and battery health still degraded.
Secondly, you might want to deal with your battery anxiety. The phone doesn’t have to be at 100% all the time, and you don’t have to panic when it’s at 40% or 50%, either.
Letting the iPhone warn you that it has reached 20% or 10% is a good sign to start charging. However, not all iPhone users are comfortable with this approach.
Then, there’s fast battery charging support on iPhone. It supports 20W speeds officially. Unofficially, iPhone 13 and iPhone 14 can go over 25W with a suitable charger. Apple isn’t offering faster speeds to preserve battery health.
If you manage to follow Shomes’ TikTok advice, it’ll be a good idea to have 30W chargers on hand. That way, when the battery is below 20% or 10%, you can get a rapid top-up no matter where you are.
Finally, remember that you can go to an Apple store or authorized repair shop and ask for a battery replacement when battery health drops under 80%. Or you can do it yourself if you’re so inclined via Apple’s self-repair program.
The vial TikTok clip focuses on iPhones, but the same strategy can be applied to Android devices. The difference is that some Android phones offer incredible charging speeds. That’s good news and bad news, however. You can quickly recharge the handset during the day, but the faster speeds might ruin battery health.
More Apple coverage: For more Apple news, visit our iPhone 14 guide.
