14 DAY TRIAL // Battery life is one very hot topic within Apple right now, especially given the deliberate slowdown happening on some older iPhones.
And while newer devices aren’t yet included in this battery fiasco, it turns out battery wear level could become a problem on the iPhone X and iPhone 8 rather sooner than later.
Why? Because wireless charging appears to have a bigger impact on the battery than the standard cable recharging, as according to a report from ZDNet, this method reduces the recharge cycle counts at a much faster pace.
The cited source writes that an iPhone X lost 135 recharge cycles in less than six months due to wireless charging, and an estimate shows that the 500-cycle mark should be reached in approximately 20 months.
Apple says the battery was designed to have some 80 percent of the original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles, after which it’s considered to be degraded. If the existing performance throttling system remains active, it means an iPhone X could be slowed down in a little over one year and a half after its launch.
Samsung’s battery longevity
In other words, the iPhone X and the iPhone 8 battery could require servicing much faster than the usual if wireless charging is used.
The issue appears to reside in the way wireless charging works on the new iPhones, as despite recharging, the device is still running on battery power. This means charging cycles are being used even when charging, while when plugged in to a cable, the device runs exclusively on cable power.
For comparison, Samsung itself is also offering wireless charging on its flagship models, but the South Korean firm says at least 95% of battery capacity is guaranteed after two years, no matter the charging system that’s being used.
This means that batteries in a Samsung model have longer life than those on new-generation iPhones. And for what it’s worth, Samsung also said it won’t be throttling performance of its phones to deal with battery degradation.