iPhone 14 owners unhappy as battery health capacity drops to 90% in less than a year

Some iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro users are facing a familiar issue, similar to the “batterygate” problem of the past. They’re noticing their phones’ battery performance deteriorating faster than expected, even though they’ve only had the phones for less than a year.

For instance, Sam Kohl from AppleTrack tweeted in July that his iPhone 14 Pro’s battery had already dropped to 90 per cent of its maximum capacity. This is much quicker than his previous iPhones. Many others are sharing similar experiences in the thread.

Kohl even made a video recently talking about this problem. He finds it hard to recommend the phone, especially because it costs $999.

According to Apple, iPhone batteries should still have around 80 per cent of their original capacity after 500 full charge cycles. There are rumours that the upcoming iPhone 15 series will have 10–18 per cent larger batteries compared to the current models.

According to The Verge, other people are also facing similar battery issues. Joanna Stern, a tech columnist, mentioned in a recent newsletter that her iPhone 14 Pro’s battery capacity dropped to 88 per cent. Reports from the Verge community show mixed results, with some iPhone 14 Pros at 93 per cent, 91 per cent, and 97 per cent capacity. In the past, most phones didn’t see this kind of drop until they were at least two years old.

On top of this, replacing the battery for an iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Pro after the one-year warranty is more expensive. It used to cost $69, but now it’s $99. However, if you’re up for it, you can try a DIY approach or find a third-party repair shop.

The battery health monitor for iPhones was added in the same update that allowed users to control performance throttling, which was a big part of the batterygate issue. Apple said this throttling was meant to protect the phones from ageing batteries, and it led to some legal actions.