Apple’s iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro now show a battery charge cycle count

The iPhone 15 and 15 Pro have several features that aren’t on past iPhones, and now we can add new battery information and control features to the list. As pointed out in this post by @Tech_Reve, a new section in the iOS 17 “About” screen shows how many charge cycles your battery has been through as well as its manufacturing date and when it was first used (via MacRumors).

Those on older phones still have third-party options like CoconutBattery for the Mac to get more information about the battery, but it would be nice to just, you know, have it already there. iOS Shortcuts are also an option for accessing this information, though Verge editor Dan Seifert says the one he’s been using for years no longer works after updating his phone to iOS 17.

The added battery details come in addition to a new option in the Battery Health & Charging menu that should stop the phone from ever charging beyond “about” 80 percent. So far, in The Verge’s testing, it doesn’t actually do that.

One reason for the changes could be to address complaints that the iPhone 14’s battery health was dropping off quickly. Some have reported battery health percentages as low as the upper 80s, which is… not what you’d expect after just a year, to say the least. (My two-year-old iPhone 13 Pro, which I’ve had since shortly after its release in 2021, is at 91 percent, for context.)

We’ve reached out to Apple for more information and will update this post if we find out anything.