Will A 100W Charger Destroy Your iPhone's Battery?

Let's cut straight to the chase – charging your iPhone with a 100W charger won't destroy its battery. However, it's important to use a certified accessory to ensure everything works appropriately. Besides that, using a 100W charger will not magically charge your iPhone at that power. Unlike some Chinese phones that have the fastest charging smartphone batteries of all time, the latest iPhone 17 Pro supports up to 40W of power, which means that the device will only use up to 40W to charge.

On several support pages, Apple says there's no issue in using a more powerful charger. As a matter of fact, as long as you're using a power adapter that complies with the USB-C standard and an equally good cable, like the one that comes with the iPhone, you're good to go. Since Apple provides a 140W power adapter with the 16-inch MacBook Pro, and the brand says the adapter can fast-charge an iPhone, it's safe to say that a 100W charger, even from a different brand, won't destroy the phone's battery.

Apple says that the iPhone's battery capacity degrades over time. New iPhones can last for up to 1,000 cycles before you might get a warning that the battery needs to be replaced. With today's batteries, one charge cycle is when you use the complete 100% of the battery capacity. So you can use 70% in one day, charge it to 100%, and only when you use 30% more will it count as one charge cycle. When you set the battery charging limit to 95%, 90%, or even 80%, it will take longer to complete a full charging cycle, which means you can extend your iPhone's battery life because you're not using its full potential all the time.

That said, tests conducted by MacRumors show that setting a limit to how much you can charge your iPhone doesn't have much impact on battery degradation after a few years. What matters the most is using certified accessories, whether from Apple or third-party makers. While theoretically, charging your iPhone with a slower charger could improve battery life in the long term, a test suggests that fast charging doesn't hurt your phone's battery life.