How to Check iPhone Battery Health in 4 Easy Ways

BY Gautam Prabhu

Published 29 Dec 2017

How to check iPhone Battery Health

A few days back, we showed you how to check iPhone battery health after Apple admitted that it had introduced a power management feature in iOS, which slows some of the older iPhones down to prevent them from unexpectedly shutting down.

The power management feature was introduced in iOS 10.2.1 for iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, and iPhone SE, and in iOS 11.2 for iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

Apple explains that the power management feature works by looking at a combination of the device temperature, battery state of charge, and the battery’s impedance. So it is important to note here that iOS’ power management feature will only slow down your iPhone if these variables require it, it won’t slow it down because your iPhone’s battery health has degraded.

Here are the 4 easy ways to check iPhone battery health to find out if you need to replace the battery:

Method 1: Use coconutBattery app

Step 1: Connect your iPhone to your Mac

Connect your iPhone to your Mac with a Lightning cable.

Step 2: Download and Launch coconutBattery app

Download the coconutBattery app on your Mac (download link) and launch it. According to the website, they also have an iOS app but we couldn’t find it in the App Store.

Step 3: Check iPhone Battery Health

Click on the iOS device tab. You should now see interesting details about your iPhone such as full charge capacity (your iPhone’s current battery capacity), its design capacity, cycle count and more. The percentage below the Design Capacity gives you the health of your iPhone’s battery as we have highlighted in the screenshot below. It is a percentage of full charge capacity and design capacity.

iPhone Battery Health

Interestingly, according to some users, coconutBattery shows accurate information as long as you haven’t restored your device, as it seems like restoring the device resets the data. So if you’ve restore your iPhone then you may not get the accurate health of your iPhone’s battery.

Method 2: Use Third-party Apps

Step 1: Download Battery Life app from the App Store

There are several apps available in the App Store that provide information about iPhone’s battery health. In this article, I am using the popular Battery Life app which does the job.

Download the Battery Life app using this iTunes link, which is available for free. You can remove the ads via an in-app purchase.

Step 2: Launch the Battery Life app

When you launch the app it will give you show you the Battery Wear Level on the app’s Home screen itself.

In the case of my iPhone 7 Plus, which is just over a year old (note I stopped using it when I started using iPhone 8 Plus), it showed that it had already lost 10% of its battery capacity. In the case of my iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X, it showed that the battery health was perfect and that it hadn’t lost any capacity so far.

Step 3: Check Raw Data

Tap on the hamburger menu at the top, and then tap on Raw Data, to find out your iPhone’s latest battery capacity.

iPhone Battery Health - Navigation

As you can see in the screenshot below, my iPhone 7 Plus battery capacity is 2,600 mAh, which is slightly less than 90% of its original battery capacity of 2,900 mAh.

iPhone Battery Capacity

Some readers have however told us that it did not display the battery capacity accurately for them. If you’re not getting accurate data, then let me know in the comments if you have restored your iPhone, as it is possible that the same issue that I had mentioned earlier for coconutBattery is causing the issue for Battery Life app as well.

Method 3: Console app

Step 1: Connect your iPhone to your Mac

Connect your iPhone to your Mac using a Lightning cable.

Step 2: Launch Console app

Launch the Console app on your Mac.

Step 3: Search for Battery Health

Ensure that your iPhone is unlocked and the iPhone has been trusted by the computer.

Type batteryhealth in the search field of the Console app. Then click on your iPhone in the left-hand sidebar. As you can see, you can find out the current status of your iPhone battery health. In the case of my iPhone X, it says it is “Good”.

Check iPhone Battery Capacity - Console appI had mixed results with the Console app. While I was able to get the battery health for my iPhone X, I couldn’t get it for my iPhone 7 Plus.

Method 4: Settings App

Since iOS 10.2.1 or later, Apple has been issuing notices in the Battery section to inform users that their iPhone’s battery may need to be serviced using diagnostics in iOS.

So launch the Settings app, and navigate to Settings > Battery to check if your iPhone battery needs to be replaced.

iOS Battery Replacement Notice

 

Apple has also promised that it will be releasing a software update in early 2018, which will give more visibility into the health of the iPhone’s battery, so we can see if its condition is affecting performance. So we will update this post with the method as soon as Apple has released the software update.

If your iPhone’s battery health is below 80% then you may want to consider replacing the battery if your noticing performance problems. Apple has reduced the cost of the battery replacement service to just $29. As I mentioned earlier, iOS’ power management feature will only slow down your iPhone if variables such as device temperature, battery state of charge, and the battery’s impedance require it.

Let me know which method worked for you, and how is your iPhone’s battery health in the comments below.

Thanks Jeffrey for the tip about the coconutBattery and Console apps.