How To Protect Your iPhone Battery Health For Long Term Storage

If you use an iPhone, it comes with several simple settings that can make your battery last longer for everyday use. However, if you have an extra iPhone or are upgrading to a new model and want to keep your old phone in good shape, what can you do to preserve its battery health? Fortunately, Apple has clear recommendations to protect your iPhone's battery life if it's going into storage.

The company recommends that rather than fully charging your iPhone, which might be your first instinct, or discharging it to zero, charge it to around 50% before storing it. There are good reasons for doing this. Apple says if your iPhone remains in a completely charged state for a significant duration, it'll impact the phone's battery health, and it may lose some capacity. This is what you're trying to avoid. Similarly, a completely discharged iPhone risks falling in a deep discharge state, which can cause it to stop charging at all, resulting in your iPhone battery needing to be replaced.

Besides the 50% battery level, Apple says it's important to power down your iPhone. Otherwise, it'll keep using the battery, resulting in a complete discharge. Essentially, charge your iPhone to half, then shut it down. As environmental conditions impact any lithium-ion battery, it's also important that you store your iPhone in a cool, moisture-free location. According to Apple, the ambient temperature should be less than 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Another important step in protecting your stored iPhone's battery health is to charge it back up to 50% every six months of storage if it's going to remain out of use for long. Although a switched-off iPhone barely consumes any power apart from keeping a microscopic internal circuit active to detect the power button input, maintain the correct date and time, and keep the phone ready for boot-up, lithium-ion batteries lose a tiny amount of power because of self-discharge. 

This self-discharge is a result of the internal chemical reaction and results in a power loss of around a couple of percentage points per month. That's why it's important to check your stored iPhone every six months and top up the battery level to 50%. This will help you ensure there is very limited impact on your iPhone's battery health.