Whatever time it spends unplugged, is time spent draining the battery. Down to 90% or down to 0%, it's just a difference of amount.
If you keep it plugged most of the time, and only drain it to, say, 90% (and this is an arbitrary number), you only used 10% of one cycle. If you let it unplugged until it's down to 0%, you use 100% of one cycle.
If every day you let it go down to 0% and then charge it back up, in 10 days you've used 10 cycles.
If every day it only loses 10% (total) and charge it back up, in 10 days, you've used 1 cycle.
I'm not saying "it's your fault" or that "you shouldn't do it", I'm talking about objective use of the battery.
Yeah, I know it's a mobile phone, so one of the reasons for buying that is to use while out and about.
But the point is that not everyone uses it that way, which can explain why some people see the battery health going down faster than others, on the same device.
And that's not Apple's fault. Sure, you could argue that the battery life is ridiculously short, that the battery's health shouldn't degrade as fast, and so on. And I'd agree with that. But still, it's a different issue.
I both agree and disagree with the first part of your comment, but you summarized my thoughts on your own with "it's a mobile phone, so one of the reasons for buying that is to use while out and about".
> not everyone uses it that way, which can explain why some people see the battery health going down faster than others
True, yes. However, and feel free to disagree, but from my experience the minority of people keep their phones plugged in as much as they can, at least in my social circle and work environment.
I knew that I would have to live with shorter battery life when buying a small phone with a small battery and I also know that batteries just loose health and that this is normal. The drop on my device just makes me think that maybe my device has some kind of issue, or received a battery which would be placed on the left side of a bell curve.
Wanted to check the exact stats - So, I bought it in the end of April 2021. That's 16 months ago. If a 14% loss of battery health during that time is normal, then maybe I had wrong expectations. It just seems excessive when comparing with other people/devices.
I understand your questioning, and I think it's fair to want to know that. But my whole point was that care should be taken when making comparisons, because the actual use of different people can have an effect on the metric of battery health.
I'd agree with your point that people keeping the phone plugged in all the time are a minority. But even so, I wonder if screen time is enough of a metric to gauge "similar use patterns".
For example, my phone absolutely drains the battery when using Google Maps, whereas browsing HN on a basic text-only app doesn't seem to make a dent.
Whatever time it spends unplugged, is time spent draining the battery. Down to 90% or down to 0%, it's just a difference of amount.
If you keep it plugged most of the time, and only drain it to, say, 90% (and this is an arbitrary number), you only used 10% of one cycle. If you let it unplugged until it's down to 0%, you use 100% of one cycle.
If every day you let it go down to 0% and then charge it back up, in 10 days you've used 10 cycles.
If every day it only loses 10% (total) and charge it back up, in 10 days, you've used 1 cycle.
I'm not saying "it's your fault" or that "you shouldn't do it", I'm talking about objective use of the battery.
Yeah, I know it's a mobile phone, so one of the reasons for buying that is to use while out and about.
But the point is that not everyone uses it that way, which can explain why some people see the battery health going down faster than others, on the same device.
And that's not Apple's fault. Sure, you could argue that the battery life is ridiculously short, that the battery's health shouldn't degrade as fast, and so on. And I'd agree with that. But still, it's a different issue.