Apple's second Beta of iOS 11.3 introduces Battery Health Beta

Last night Apple released the second Beta of iOS 11.3 to developers. It's notable in that it lets us have a first look of Apple's proposed solution to how we can monitor our Battery Health and control what Apple is calling the 'Peak Performance Capability' of our iPhones.

Apple has been very verbose to label this 'Beta' within the release so expect things to change, but see what we have.

For iPhone 6 and later, iOS 11.3 adds new features to show battery health and a recommendation if a battery needs to be replaced. These can be found in Settings > Battery > Battery Health (Beta).

Battery Health option available within Settings > battery

Before we dig in, the battery health rules are these:

• Performance management is off by default resulting in your phone being prone to sudden shutdowns.
• Performance management is enabled automatically after an unexpected shutdown on a device with a diminished battery.
• If you turn off performance management you can’t turn it back on. It will be turned on again automatically if an unexpected shutdown occurs.

As we said previously, this is a Beta implementation and the above rules will probably be improved over the next few Beta releases as it doesn't seem quite right to us.

The Battery Health screen includes information on maximum battery capacity and peak performance capability. Maximum battery capacity measures the device battery capacity relative to when it was new. Batteries will start at 100% when first activated and will degrade as the battery chemically ages which may result in fewer hours of usage between charges.

maximum battery capacity • Performance is normal

If your iPhone suffers an unexpected shutdown, the performance management features will be applied, you'll see this message:

This iPhone has experienced an unexpected shutdown because the battery was unable to deliver the necessary peak power. Performance management has been applied to help prevent this from happening again. Disable…

Note that if you disable performance management, you can’t turn it back on. It will be turned on again automatically if an unexpected shutdown occurs. The option to disable will also be available.

Performance management applied • Battery health unknown

If you disable the applied performance management feature, you'll see this message:

This iPhone has experienced an unexpected shutdown because the battery was unable to deliver the necessary peak power. You have manually disabled performance management protections.

Performance management turned off • Battery health degraded