The newly-announced iPhone 15 series has lots of goodies in it, as showcased by Apple at its Wonderlust event, where the company also launched Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2. But there is at least one new iPhone 15-exclusive feature that Apple didn’t talk about at the event: the ability to limit the maximum charging to a certain percentage.
According to code spotted by 9to5Mac in iOS 17 Release Candidate, released to Developers on September 12, Apple is working on putting a limit to the maximum charging for the iPhone 15 series. The idea is pretty simple. Once it’s turned on, your iPhone 15 will simply stop charging after the battery reaches the percentage you’ve set as the maximum, which will be lower than 100%.
If you leave your iPhone plugged in for longer than required, the battery can degrade much faster than it should. This is where the ability to limit the maximum charging to a certain percentage will come in handy. When enabled, it will eliminate the scenario where your iPhone 15 can fully charge no matter how many hours it’s plugged in. You can find the same capability in many Android phones, including the ones coming from Samsung and OnePlus.
However, Apple already offers what the company calls the “Optimised Battery Charging” feature to iPhones running iOS 13 or later. It delays the charging after the battery hits 80% instead of stopping it altogether. Both are meant to achieve one goal: to increase the lifespan of your iPhone battery.
Being able to limit to the maximum charging will be super helpful for those who have a habit of keeping their iPhone plugged into the charger the entire night and unplugging it after waking up in the morning. If you’re one of those people and are planning to upgrade to the iPhone 15, you can continue charging your phone overnight without worrying much about battery health when Apple introduces the feature in iOS 17, which is all set to be publicly available on September 18 this year. However, it’ll be interesting to see whether the Cupertino tech giant makes it available from day one of the iOS 17 release.