Apple will try to fix battery drain and reduced performance issues that have affected some iPhone 11 devices by recalibrating their batteries in an upcoming update (via MacRumors). According to an Apple support document, the process will happen when you update an iPhone 11, 11 Pro, or 11 Pro Max to the upcoming iOS 14.5.
As outlined in a support document, Apple says that the update will recalibrate the maximum battery capacity and peak performance capacity on the ?iPhone 11? models to address inaccurate estimates of battery health reporting that some users have encountered.
Symptoms of this bug include unexpected battery drain behavior or in some cases, reduced peak performance capability. Apple says that the inaccurate battery health reporting does not reflect an issue with actual battery health.
It might take a few weeks for the battery health system to figure out how much capacity your battery has left, and how much performance it can provide, according to the document. It doesn’t seem like users should notice too much of a difference during the process, though there will be a message in the battery health section of the settings menu explaining what’s going on.
The process is currently being tested in the latest release of the developer beta, but given that Apple has a support page already up for it, there’s a good chance it’ll make it into the final release. If the recalibration fails, for some reason, Apple says it or an authorized service provider will replace the battery for free. Hopefully, if you were experiencing battery issues with your iPhone 11, this process will help alleviate them when 14.5 is finally released.
It’s not unusual that Apple would release a document about a battery change before it starts happening. The company has been a lot more transparent when it makes changes to the iPhone’s power delivery system ever since it was caught throttling the performance of older iPhones to protect the battery.
