How to Check iPhone Battery Capacity in 3 Easy Steps

Apple recently acknowledged that it is slowing older iPhones to prevent them from unexpectedly shutting down. If you’re curious to find out if your older iPhone is affected and needs to be replaced, then there are a few ways to find out.

The easiest method to check your iPhone’s battery capacity is using third-party apps available in the App Store. I was surprised to find out that Apple allows third-party developers to access diagnostic information about the battery. According to Apple, there are various factors that can affect the performance and lifespan of your iPhone’s battery, including number of charge cycles, age of your battery, and exposure to extreme heat or cold.

Here are the three easy steps you need to follow to find out your iPhone’s battery capacity:

 1. 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.

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.

 2.Settings App:

Since iOS 10.2.1 or later, Apple has been issuing notices in the Settings > 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 to check if your iPhone battery needs to be replaced.

 3. Check Performance:

The other roundabout method is to find out if iOS has started slowing down your iPhone because your iPhone’s battery has degraded below 80% of its capacity. To find out, you can download the Geekbench app from the App Store (download link) to check your iPhone’s benchmark scores. you can check if the clock speed of your iPhone using Cpu DasherX (download link), a free app available in the App Store.

Here’s are the Geekbench scores of the affected iPhones when they are new:

iPhone models	Single-Core	Multi-Core
iPhone 6 Geekbench Scores	1625	2918
iPhone 6s Geekbench Scores	2510	4360
iPhone 7 Geekbench Scores	3462	5595
iPhone SE Geekbench Scores	2423	4162

If the Geekbench scores of your iPhone are significantly lower than the numbers mentioned above then it is probably due to the power management feature.

When Should You Replace iPhone Battery

According to Apple, you should consider replacing the battery only after the battery capacity is less than 80% of its original capacity. It also looks like the power management technique kicks in when battery capacity is degraded by 20%.

Hope this helped in finding you your iPhone’s battery capacity, and if you need to replace the battery. It would be great if you can share your iPhone’s battery health below, along with details like the iPhone model, age, and battery capacity.