Our First Look at iOS 11.3's Battery Health Features

Apple promised that we would get new battery health features in a near update. In iOS 11.3's latest beta, we see what this is. In the Battery settings, there is a new section for Battery Health. This will show the maximum capacity a battery is capable of holding. Third party apps could already show us this, but it's nice to see this officially from Apple. From here, you can disable the performance management option if your battery is degraded enough and suffers an unexpected shutdown. Once you disable it, you cannot re-enable it until your phone suffers another unexpected shutdown.

I should reiterate that this whole thing wasn't a big deal from the start. If you've read me for a while, you know I have quite a few gripes with Apple and their decisions, but I think the flack they've gotten from this is just ridiculous. Mostly because people kept acting like it was a conspiracy or something and that someone found this out from a datamine or something. No, Apple publicly disclosed this and the news spread faster than it could be told accurately. Also, the general public likely wasn't educated on how a lithium-ion battery chemically degrades, and I don't expect them to. We Americans also really love class-action lawsuits because "we didn't pay for this!" But in the end, I guess it all works out, because there's a neat new tool for battery health now and the general public can freak out over it. I'm fine with this, but I can see why Apple didn't want to make this available. Apple has always been about keeping the user from worrying about the technical aspects of a device, especially with iOS. Having a phone manage performance for you was part of that. The next thing you know, people will start filing class action lawsuits because their iPhone 3GS doesn't run 99% of apps in 2018 or because their phone didn't defy gravity and the screen cracked.

Degraded Battery Health

Normal Battery Health