Poor battery life is a common complaint among smartphone owners. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an iPhone or Android user; if you use your phone a lot during the day, the battery will be lucky to make it to sundown.
However, did you know that something as simple as calibrating your iPhone battery can help? Let’s take a closer look at how to calibrate an iPhone battery and why calibration is important. Once you do this, your iPhone can last longer and be ready when you need it.
Why You Should Calibrate Your iPhone Battery
Calibrating your iPhone’s battery (also referred to as resetting an iPhone’s battery) is a surprisingly important part of iPhone maintenance. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize its benefits, and even fewer take the time to perform the necessary steps.
Without a correctly calibrated battery, you’re likely to experience inaccurate and erratic battery percentage readings, quicker battery drain, and a shorter total lifespan for your battery. If your iPhone shuts down unexpectedly when your battery life percentage hits single digits, poor calibration is almost certainly to blame.
Many factors can cause a battery to become incorrectly calibrated. Software updates, background app refresh, new features, and even plain old day-to-day use can all cause discrepancies. And even if you haven’t noticed an incorrect calibration, performing the steps below will ensure all the ions in the battery are flowing, thus improving the battery’s peak performance.
While you shouldn’t need to calibrate regularly, it’s worth a try if you’ve had battery issues that other steps didn’t resolve.
Preparing to Calibrate Your iPhone Battery
Before starting the calibration process, you should take a few steps in preparation. They all revolve around disabling features and services, so as few tasks as possible draw power.
This will help lead to an accurate reading later in the process. After you’ve reset the battery, you can re-enable all of these options. It’s also worth ensuring you haven’t accidentally enabled Low Power Mode by going to Settings > Battery.
Disable Location Services
To disable location services on your iPhone, follow these steps:
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Scroll down and tap on Privacy & Security.
- Tap Location Services at the top.
- Now, toggle off Location Services.
Remember, you can use Location Services to track a lost iPhone, so make sure you don’t forget to re-enable this after you’re done calibrating.
Disable Background Refresh
Follow the instructions below to turn off the background app refresh feature on your iPhone:
- Open the Settings app and tap General.
- Tap Background App Refresh.
- Tap on Background App Refresh a second time.
- Choose the Off option.
Lower Your Screen Brightness
Here’s how to lower the screen brightness on an iPhone:
- Open the Settings app.
- Scroll down and select Display & Brightness.
- Drag the Brightness slider all the way to the left.
Turn Off Automatic App Updates
Finally, to turn off automatic updates, follow these steps:
- Open the Settings app.
- Scroll down and tap on Apps.
- Tap on App Store.
- Under Automatic Downloads, toggle off App Updates.
How to Calibrate Your iPhone Battery
Now, you’re ready to calibrate the battery on your iPhone. Be warned that it takes quite a bit of patience; you’ll need to wait around for a couple of complete charge and drain cycles to finish.
Luckily, you don’t need any third-party tools or apps. Anything you see in the App Store promising to reset your iPhone’s battery is, at best, unnecessary and, at worst, a scam. iPhone battery calibration is easy to perform without extra help.
Step 1: Drain Your iPhone’s Battery
The first step is to completely drain your iPhone battery. You can do so during normal usage. If you want to speed up the process, you can play a long video on YouTube with the volume turned up to the maximum level.
Step 2: Wait Three Hours
You may have noticed that your iPhone will automatically shut down even if the battery has a small percentage left. This process is by design; it gives the device a chance to save the current state of your apps so you don’t lose data.
It’s important to let the last embers of the battery life die away. The only way to do this is to wait. The longer you wait, the better, but you should wait at least three hours. If you have time, letting it sit overnight is preferable.
Step 3: Charge Your iPhone
Now, it’s time to refill the battery. To ensure optimal performance, make sure you follow these tips:
- Use a wall socket rather than a computer to charge.
- Ideally, use an official Apple charger. At the very least, make sure you use a high-quality USB-C cable and not a cheap knockoff.
- Continue to charge for a couple of hours even after your phone shows the battery as 100 percent full. You need to ensure you squeeze in every drop of power to ensure the calibration works correctly.
Step 4: Drain Your iPhone
Now, you need to repeat the whole process a second time. It’s the same drill as before: completely drain the power out of your device. Either use it as you normally would or play videos on loop to move it along faster.
Step 5: Wait Another Three Hours
It’s getting repetitive by now but stick with it. Once again, you need to ensure you drain that last bit of battery power from your iPhone. Like before, the longer you can leave it, the better.
Step 6: Charge Your iPhone Again
To finish the process, you need to recharge your device. Follow the same guidelines as earlier, ensuring you let your phone continue charging for a couple of hours even after it’s full.
Finally, you need to re-enable the services and functions you disabled earlier. Turn Location Services, Background Refresh, and Automatic Updates back on and turn the screen brightness back up.
And that’s it. Now, your iPhone battery has been recalibrated.
Other Battery-Saving iPhone Tips
If recalibration hasn’t fixed your iPhone battery problems, it might be time to spend some money on a new battery. You can change the battery yourself if you’re feeling confident, but doing so will void your iPhone’s warranty.
Therefore, it’s always better to make an Apple Store appointment at a Genius Bar and get it replaced with professional help. A new battery and the required labor aren’t as expensive as you might think.
