The iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Pro went on sale on September 16, 2022. That means that the earliest most people could have bought one was less than 11 months ago. Yet a ton of people report that their batteries are already starting to show serious signs of degradation.
A number of people have been taking to social media in recent weeks to note how bad their batteries have gotten. Not in terms of how long they last, necessarily, but how bad their iPhones report their battery health to be. After less than 11 months some are finding figures below 90%.
Whatever's going on, it doesn't seem to be affecting everyone. My iPhone 14 Pro Max reports a battery health of 95%. But there have been plenty of people with much lower figures, and they'll only get worse.
Going down fast
People complaining on Twitter about Apple is nothing new of course. But sometimes their complaints have merit. Like the one from AppleTrack's Sam Kohl whose iPhone 14 Pro is fast on its way to needing a new battery. He wasn't alone, with people in the replies noting figures that were just as bad, too. Some were worse — one commenter shared a screenshot with the 87% figure.
Same pic.twitter.com/G950MMNOy2August 1, 2023
It isn't just on Twitter, either. I've seen people complain of similarly poor battery health on Mastodon as well. And again, these are iPhones that are less than 11 months old, surely they should be lasting longer than this?
As for why new iPhone battery health is proving so problematic, one guess points to the extremely hot summer in some parts of the world. Another option is that the batteries themselves just aren't up to the usual standard. Whatever the reason, there are going to be a lot of iPhones that need new batteries relatively soon.
Unless their owners upgrade to a new iPhone 15 or iPhone 15 Pro, that is.
