iPhone Battery Health by Model: What 100,000+ iPhones Show

Battery health numbers only make sense next to what's normal. Here's what normal looks like for an iPhone.

Your iPhone says its battery is at 86%. Is that good?

It depends on the model and how many charge cycles the battery has done. The same figure can be normal on one iPhone and low on another.

So we looked. At OzMobiles, our technicians check the battery on every iPhone that comes through our testing lab, and we pulled the results for more than 100,000 of them.

The short answer: with normal use, most iPhones take years to wear down to 80%. Heavy use gets them there much sooner.

Find your model below to see what's normal for yours, and what it means when you buy a refurbished iPhone.

How to check your iPhone's battery health

It takes a few taps. Open Settings, tap Battery, then tap Battery Health & Charging. On iPhone 15 and newer, it's just called Battery Health.

The percentage is how much charge your battery holds today compared with when it was new. At 90%, a full charge gives you roughly 90% of the screen time it gave on day one.

iPhone 15 and newer also show a cycle count. One cycle is a full battery's worth of use, so using half your battery today and half tomorrow adds up to one cycle.

What Apple's 80% means

Apple designs iPhone batteries to keep 80% of their charge after 500 cycles on iPhone 14 and earlier, or 1,000 cycles on iPhone 15 and newer, in ideal conditions. That's the floor. Most of the batteries we tested did better:

iPhone 15 and newer typically land right around 80% at their 1,000 cycles.

To see what's normal for your iPhone, find your model and cycle count in the chart below. Every figure in it comes from our own testing lab. If you'd like to learn more about our testing process, read our Phonecheck guide.

iPhone battery health by charge cycles, model by model

Find your model, then your cycle count. Where they meet is the typical battery health we measured for that model at that point. No cycle count on your iPhone? The comparison further down turns years of use into cycles for you.

80%100%Below 80%* Fewer than 30 phonesBlank: not enough data

Look at 1,000 cycles: on most models the readings drop sharply right there, and the battery health figure in Settings drops with them. The typical battery went from 84% just before 1,000 cycles to 80% just after, and there's no drop like it at 500, 1,500 or 2,000. We don't know yet whether that's real wear or a change in how the reading is worked out. Either way, if your iPhone lost a few points as it passed 1,000 cycles, that's normal.

How fast charge cycles add up

So how many cycles is a year? A typical iPhone in our lab had done about 230 by the end of its first year after release, and was still under 1,000 after five. That first year works out to about 60% of a full charge a day.

Your own count depends on how much battery you use:

• Use half a charge a day and you'll add about 180 cycles a year.
• Run it from full to flat every day and it's about 365 a year.
• Topping up doesn't add cycles on its own. Using 75% one day and 25% the next counts as one cycle, even if you charge overnight in between.
• Longer screen time and apps that use more power drain more each day, so the cycles add up faster.

The phone matters too. A cycle is a full battery's worth of use, so a phone that goes further on a charge gets through cycles more slowly. With the same normal use on 5G, we estimate an iPhone 17 Pro Max gets about 13 hours of screen time from a charge and an iPhone 12 mini about 6. So the 17 Pro Max gets through about half as many cycles.

Pick any two iPhones and how you use your phone. Light is about 2.5 hours a day of messaging and browsing, Normal is 4 hours of everyday use, and Heavy is 7 hours with games, the camera and maps, on 5G where the phone has it. The screen times are real-world estimates of how long the screen can be on before a full charge runs out, worked out from each model's battery capacity and the power it draws in lab tests by DXOMARK, Notebookcheck and Tom's Guide.

What 80% battery health means in hours

It varies by phone: 80% of a big battery can still be more than a smaller battery holds when it's new.

An iPhone 16 Pro Max at 80% still holds about 3,750 mAh. That's more than a brand-new iPhone 15 holds (capacities from regulatory filings).

In normal use on 5G, that comes out even. The 16 Pro Max at 80% gets about 7 hours 30 of screen time from a full charge, the same as a brand-new iPhone 15, because it also draws more power. With 4 hours of screen time a day, either one goes close to two days between charges.

Apple also notes that as battery health falls, a battery's ability to deliver peak performance can drop too. That's one more reason every phone we sell ships at 80% battery health or better.

How common are non-genuine batteries?

Not very. About 1 in 120 of the iPhones we tested had a battery the phone itself flagged as not genuine.

The older the phone, the more likely it is. About 1 in 45 iPhone 11 models had one, against fewer than 1 in 400 iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models.

On iPhone XS, XR and later, a battery the phone can't verify shows a message in Settings: "Unable to verify this iPhone has a genuine Apple battery." Apple notes that details from that battery, such as its health, may not be accurate. That's why the charts above leave these batteries out.

How we checked

Our technicians test the iPhones that come through our lab with Phonecheck diagnostics. Among its 80 checks, Phonecheck reads the battery's charge cycles and how much charge it holds against its original capacity. That's the same measure behind the battery health percentage in Settings.

The battery health figures in this article come from more than 100,000 iPhones tested between August 2023 and September 2026. Each phone counts once, at its first test, so every battery is measured as it arrived. Batteries flagged as not genuine are left out.

What this means when you buy a refurbished iPhone

Every phone ships at 80% health or better, and Exceptional starts at 90%. If it drops below 80% during your warranty period, we repair or replace it free.

A battery below 80% doesn't pass our testing. It gets a new battery, or the phone doesn't get sold.

Prefer a fresh start? Add "Install a New Battery" to your order and our technicians fit a new battery before your phone ships. It adds one business day to dispatch.

And as the cards above show, a bigger iPhone at 80% can still give as much screen time as a smaller one with a new battery. Compare our condition grades, or read our battery health guarantee.