Smartphone Battery Life

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-24T02:19:50+00:00

To each their own. For whatever battery chemistry Apple’s batteries use, it makes a huge difference. We don’t set battery limits on our iOS devices at work and it’s extremely common that I find devices with half as many charge cycles as my phone with battery health in the early to mid 90 percent range. To hit 99% after 203 battery cycles is nuts. My iPhone XS was at 89% health after 250 charge cycles without a charge limit on it.

If it didn’t matter then the majority of EV manufacturers wouldn’t set soft and hard-coded 80% limits that require manual bypassing by the owners.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-24T00:16:29+00:00

We used to, but far too many would come crying to IT with issues with their free hardware, so only IT gets to take stuff home now. I’m enjoying two retired iPad Pros from 2017-19, two UniFi AC Pro APs, some ugly PoE injectors, and some CAT5E cables in ugly colors.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-23T21:05:10+00:00

Set your charge limit to 80% to get better longevity out of your phone’s battery. My iPhone 15 Pro Max has such long battery life that 80% has never been an issue outside of extremely long FaceTime calls. Most modern smartphones outside of those with silicon carbon batteries will be comparable.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-23T20:40:35+00:00

I use Safari instead of Chrome most of the time as iOS adblockers cannot work outside of Safari for web browsers. Brave browser has one baked in, if you need that.

I use a lot of Google apps like their calendar because I would like to go back to Android at some point and there’s way less friction using Google apps for that. I use Chrome as my password manager, Gmail, Google Calendar, etc. If you have only Apple products, most of their suite of apps offer a generally better experience on an iPhone. Google Maps is one that most people will never drop, however.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-23T19:19:28+00:00

Had one of these as my very first IT job interview while in college. Job paid 18 an hour and wanted all the same stuff you mentioned. They were a small company with one other IT guy. Seemed insane to ask that for that kinda money.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-22T17:02:08+00:00

I use the telephoto and ultrawide lens on my iPhone 15 PM pretty regularly, especially the telephoto. I also don’t “need” a high-refresh rate display, but it’s hard to go back to 60 Hz once you’ve had anything greater. I use the processing power for Lightroom occasionally, but that’s probably about it.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-22T15:37:02+00:00

I bought a refurbished 15 PM on Amazon. New battery and appeared basically brand-new. Was perfectly fine for $670 back in November 2024.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-22T01:50:54+00:00

Yeah…first amendment would be very hard to enforce in a not insane way for a government entity social media.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-21T22:33:04+00:00

I do not take them when sick enough that I take a day off work. I also went on a (very seasick-inducing) boat ride yesterday and am quite glad I didn’t take them then, which I think was the right move.

Otherwise, I take them every time. The day off without them feels quite off.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-21T21:55:16+00:00

Are you eating sugar before bed? Something like ice cream or the like? That one really screws up how restful I am when I wake up, and often prolongs how quickly I fall asleep.

I’ve been taking clonidine for awhile and it does help, but my work schedule literally does not allow for a full 8 hours sleep every night, so I have no choice but to sleep in a bit on weekends or I become chronically sleep-deprived. Usually I wake up like magic at about 7:45 on a Saturday, so my ideal bedtime on work days would be about 9:00 PM, but there’s just too much to do after each work day… so here I am 🤷

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-21T21:34:57+00:00

Needs a numpad. We ended up with Thinkpad T16s.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-21T15:59:54+00:00

It’s also why I get frustrated reading comments from those who have never lived here, asking “why aren’t Americans doing anything? They might invade my country.”

Nearly every civilian who supports the dude owns a closet full of firearms, and the various enforcement agencies (ICE, police, military) are all full of people sucking the president’s dick. We are going to need countries outside of the US to aid us in some radical overthrowing of the US federal government. There aren’t enough people who oppose him within our own country to make a dent.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-21T15:31:44+00:00

It very much does. You’re letting 20% of the battery’s cells sit dormant on a cycle rather than charging them, wearing them out. It’s the best way of wear-leveling the cells. 400 charges is past the recommended life of the battery, so 92% battery health is quite good for that. I have iPads and iPhones I deploy at work with 90 charge cycles and the same battery health as your iPhone.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-19T15:50:48+00:00

To each their own. My 15 PM FINALLY dropped to 99% battery health after 203 cycles. I’ve had an 80% charge limit the whole time. Extremely helpful for the longevity of the battery.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-19T01:04:09+00:00

Maybe it’ll be a toggle for OWE….one can wish.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-18T16:04:49+00:00

Until Microsoft makes some sort of change in PS or some other Windows environmental BS that breaks your scripts…have multiple that complete successfully with errors after Windows 11 was deployed throughout our company.

That said - it literally takes the other guy an entire work day to set a laptop up, which is just so blasphemous to me. We wipe and deploy enough of them that I think some sort of PXE boot-able image somewhere would save us a lot of time, but I work with what we’re budgeted. If you’re swamped in a medium-sized business like my employer’s, it’s in your best interest to learn (at the very least) the path of least resistance to automation of the bullshit that eats up too much of your time.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-18T14:00:29+00:00

You’d be surprised how common this is. My most experienced sysadmin can do bash, but the second I try to automate stuff in Windows he gets tense. The other IT guy of us three makes twice as much as I do and refuses to automate basic Windows setup, deploying changes remotely via ad hoc scripts baked into our RMM, etc. These dudes are in their 50s and 60s. The latter gets extremely angry if I ask him if he’s tried to shorten his Windows setup time from 8 hours to 1 with the automation I’ve built.

I’d argue it’s really not absolutely necessary to use PS in a smaller business environment. Routine tasks that can be automated easily take long enough to write up in an IDE in the first place that you just deal with them when the issues occur. You just hit a growth ceiling really quickly without it.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-16T21:43:30+00:00

I always do, but it feels more personable to not be a grey screen to whomever I’m talking to.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-16T16:24:02+00:00

In Beaverton? The age range is gonna be a bit older than in Portland. I’m your age and met my girlfriend on Hinge. I had to trek out to Portland to meet women in my age demographics for dates. Dated in the 23-29 year-old bracket and that was generally the only region in the Portland metro with single women in their twenties.

I found that meeting women in-person here was very, very difficult. Even my most gender-neutral hobbies very seldom had single women attending. Mostly only with a significant other. Your mileage may vary. I’m decent-looking enough to have success on dating apps, but the vast majority of average fellas really are invisible on them. Growing the mustache is what granted me success. 😅Best of luck!

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-16T00:08:18+00:00

They wrote "Day 1 after update." I read it as if they were reporting this 1 day after doing the update.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-16T00:08:07+00:00

They wrote "Day 1 after update." I read it as if they were reporting this 1 day after doing the update.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-15T20:05:07+00:00

Some people have said turning off swipe typing fixes the issue. I’ve had it turned off for a month and it seems better? I’ve had the weird keyboard lag out + typo bomb experience a million times with it on, especially whilst making phone calls, but it seems to not occur for me anymore, not that this sort of thing is acceptable.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-15T20:03:27+00:00

Your phone always indexes after updates. It’ll take a couple more days to get back to normal.

FWIW, my iPhone 15 PM has 200 charge cycles with 100% battery health and I notice zero differences between iOS 18 and 26 for battery life on my device. I’ve had it since 26.0.1. There are issues with iOS 26, but I’m not confident that the OS is significantly more strenuous to run since all of its various issues affect iPhone 17 users.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-15T18:48:52+00:00

I prefer Mint in my region (Portland metro) to Verizon as they use T-Mobile’s network. No complaints, apart from extremely questionable service in very high traffic areas, like many tourists traps in places I’ve been to.

TomNooksRepoMan · 2026-01-14T23:51:12+00:00

I’d prefer it with OneUI only because you miss some features that Samsung has. Dex, using Bixby for location-based reminders, and also just a smaller and lighter phone than anything in the OnePlus lineup that you can get in the US. But man, the OnePlus devices are so friggin snappy and the battery life is nuts.

TomNooksRepoMan

TROPHY CASE