What Is Optimized Battery Charging on iPhone?

Wondering why your iPhone stops charging beyond 80% at night when it's plugged into a power outlet? Apple's Optimized Battery Charging is at work. Let's learn more about it and how it protects the iPhone's battery by learning more about your charging habits.

How Does Optimized Battery Charging Work on an iPhone?

The lithium-ion battery on our mobile devices is the critical failure point. They have a finite amount of life, and a rapidly depleting battery can significantly cause dissatisfaction on an expensive iPhone. Optimized Battery Charging is a default feature on all iPhones running iOS 13 and later. 

Optimized Battery Charging helps to improve battery health with these steps:

• The iPhone monitors your everyday phone usage and tracks when you connect it to a charger for an extended period. For instance, when you go to sleep at night.
• iPhone's Optimized Battery Charging charges the battery to 80% when it's plugged in and not used.
• It predicts when you will take it off the charger and delays charging to 100% until then.

Optimized Battery Charging stops the electrical current making the chemicals react inside the lithium-ion battery. Then, it uses an algorithm to estimate when to recharge the battery entirely to 100% when it needs to. Optimizing the chemical behavior of the battery helps to slow the natural aging of the battery.

To enable or disable Optimized Battery Charging, select Settings > Battery > Battery Health > Optimized Battery Charging.

Is Optimized Battery Charging Good?

Keeping the battery at 100% charge while plugged into a power outlet for a long time is an unnecessary strain on the battery. An Apple article about Lithium-ion batteries explains an Apple lithium-ion battery charges fast for convenience and slow for longevity.

The Optimized Battery Charging feature on iOS 13 improves how Apple batteries behave. It stops charging the phone beyond 80% even with trickle charge as it has learned you may not need a fully charged phone right now. Instead, the charge is activated just before you take it off the charger.

The feature works well overnight if you have regular sleeping habits. It will activate just before your usual wake-up time to give you a fully charged phone.

Does Optimized Battery Charging Charge Slower?

Optimized Battery Charging stops charging at 80%. It will only charge the remaining 20% at a predetermined time, depending on when you wake up. So, this method is much slower than fast charging, which can charge your phone in minutes but at the cost of long-term battery health. 

When you want to charge your phone to 100% immediately, disable Optimized Battery Charging from iPhone's Settings and let it finish charging. 

To make Optimized Battery Charging work, allow iOS to learn daily behavior and especially your sleeping habits over time. As this data is at the core of the technology, Optimized Battery Charging can fail if you have irregular sleeping hours. It also won't work if you don't keep it connected to a charger for an extended period when asleep. 

Apple also says optimized charging is triggered only in locations where you spend the most time, like your home and office. You must enable location services for optimized charging to work correctly.