Does your iPhone battery need replacing? Find out before Apple hikes prices

You can live with a cracked screen or a scratched camera, but once you start getting battery problems, yours are iPhone may be in trouble. It’s a common problem as all batteries degrade over time, but is it a problem enough to make you immediately consider replacing your battery?

If you have an iPhone that is slow to charge, has trouble maintaining a charge level throughout the day, or shuts down unexpectedly, you should seriously consider replacing your iPhone’s battery.

And you might want to do it sooner rather than later. Apple recently announced that as of January 1 You’ll have to pay $20 more to swap out your battery through Apple’s existing services (with the exception of iPhone 14 modelswhere the price stays the same).

In this story, we will show you how you can easily check if you need to replace your iPhone battery now and what you can do to prolong the health of your battery.

Continue reading: I replaced my iPhone’s battery myself and you can too

How to check the health of your iPhone battery

Your iPhone battery will become less effective over time, but you could also have a dead battery on a brand new iPhone. To quickly check if there is an issue with your battery health, go to settings > battery > Battery status and charging. If you’re running something on iOS 16.1, the latter shows up as fair battery condition.

Above is your battery’s maximum capacity, which should be at or near 100% if you have a relatively new iPhone.

However, what you do want to watch is peak efficiency and the sentence below. when you see Your battery is currently supporting normal peak levels powerYou have no identified battery problems and you should not need a replacement.

Need to replace your iPhone battery?

If you see any of the following messages, You may need to replace your batteryor at least make an appointment with Apple or an authorized service provider to have your battery checked:

• This iPhone shut down unexpectedly because the battery couldn’t provide the peak performance it needed. Performance management has been applied to prevent this from happening again, or You have manually disabled performance management protection.
• This iPhone cannot determine the battery health. An Apple Authorized Service Provider can service the battery. More about the service options.
• The condition of your battery is significantly reduced. An Apple Authorized Service Provider can replace the battery to restore full performance and capacity. More about the service options.

Depending on whether you have insurance (third-party or AppleCare Plus) or not, you might not need to spend any money at all to replace your iPhone’s battery. If your iPhone is new, you have at least one year warranty to replace a defective battery. If you don’t have insurance, Apple will charge an estimated $49 to $99 to replace your battery. You can also check the Apple Service Programs page to see if replacement or repair programs are available for your device.

Is there anything you can do to extend the life of your iPhone battery?

The faster you cycle through your daily battery life, the faster your overall battery life will degrade, so here are some tips Apple says you should follow:

• Update to the latest available software.
• Adjust the screen brightness as needed (manually or automatically).
• Use WiFi when available.
• Activate the energy saving mode as needed.
• Disable background app refresh (total or per app).
• Turn off location services (entirely or on a per-app basis).
• Turn off Allow notifications.
• If necessary, turn on Airplane mode.
• If you use your computer to charge your phone, make sure your computer is connected.

If you need more battery saving tips for your iPhone, read on Eight ways to improve iPhone battery life, two iOS 16 features to disable to save battery and What happens if you keep your iPhone on sleep mode all the time?.