You know the situation: your phone is dead and you have no idea what time it is because you rely on your phone for it. A new feature coming to iPhone in this fall’s iOS 18 update means you can still catch that train (or at least know if it’s worth running for or not).
With iOS 18, you’ll also be able to tell when your battery is dead.
Updated on June 16 with details of another battery improvement coming to iOS 18 and further details on how it will work.
This is because even when the phone’s battery is depleted, the screen will show the time. Not only that, it also shows an empty battery icon, of course, and the words “iPhone is found” to indicate that Find My will still work. This part is not new and is what the screen will show you on many other iPhones now when the battery is too far to use the iPhone.
And that’s not the only battery upgrade coming, as iOS 18 has been revealed to bring new charging limit levels to the latest phones, the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. As reported by MacRumors, Apple is ready to improve the current charging limits that were introduced in the iPhone 15 series. Currently, a setting prevents the phone from charging beyond 80%.
But iOS 18 will offer more granular control. With new additional limits set at 85%, 90% and even 95% of full charge. As the report says, “With the new limit options, iOS 18 now takes a proactive approach to improving battery life by recommending a specific charge limit to users via a notification.”
Charging the smartphone required fully charging it and then, as the charge slowly decreased again, increasing it to 100%. That’s all very well, but it doesn’t help the health of the battery in the long run. It is better to leave it full for a shorter period.
This new feature may come to other iPhones with later versions of iOS 18, but in the initial developer beta, it’s limited to iPhone 15 models.
More details have now appeared on this feature as well. In a new report, Mashable explains that “Some common sense for battery health says that the sweet spot for battery health (at least for the types of batteries that go into an iPhone) is between 20 and 80 percent. But for some user, 80 percent may be too low, so the ability to set the limit to 85, 90, and 95 percent may be more useful in the long run.
But here is another detail that is important. After all, there are times when you really need your phone to be fully charged, like when you have a long day ahead of you and you know you’ll always be away from outlets. So can you recharge to 100%? Absolutely.
“In iOS 18, Apple will also allow you to turn the limit from a lower level to the maximum only once, after which the limit resets.” There’s another way that battery life can be improved with iOS 18. The new dark skin for iOS 18 can make all parts of the screen, including app icons, much darker, which on a screen OLED also promises some small power savings.
All of this can be confusing, in the way smartphones still can be, so pay attention to the settings you choose and make sure they’re exactly what you’re looking for, or else, as the report says, – “You could be left with wonder why your iPhone has less battery life than everyone else.”.
Back to the on-screen battery information: As pointed out by a user on Reddit and obtained by 9to5Mac, Apple is improving what you see on the screen when the battery is so low that the iPhone can’t turn on.
For some time now, Apple has had a very useful feature: Power Backup. This means that for a period after the iPhone’s battery is drained, it stores some battery backup so that the iPhone remains discoverable. It means that if you mark your iPhone as lost, it will be able to contact Find My. This function works for about five hours.
And during this time, the screen may show an empty battery icon and the words iPhone can be found.
With iOS 18, there is a small but very useful new addition: the upper left corner of the screen now shows the time. Wisely, Apple has added this information right where the time is shown when the iPhone is in regular use, so it’s the first place your eyes naturally look.
Some Android phones from Samsung, Google, or others may match the findable feature, but not the new watch add-on (yet).
If you’re a night owl, say, who regularly finds your battery dead and wants this new feature, don’t rush to upgrade just yet: there’s a sting in the tail as it’s not for everyone. iPhone, apparently.
According to MacRumors, it appears to be limited to iPhone 15 models, at least for now. Juli Clover tested it on an iPhone 15 Pro Max and it worked, but it didn’t have time to show up on an iPhone 14 Pro Max.
No word yet on whether it only works on the Pro models, but if I can find out more, I’ll update this post.
As always, there’s one caveat: the new software is only in developer beta right now, and only a few days old. So you shouldn’t update your primary iPhone, the one you use every day, to the iOS 18 developer beta because things won’t work, battery life can be poor, and it can be downright annoying. Next month is when we’re expecting the public beta.
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Image Source : www.forbes.com
