IOS 11.3 adds battery health setting

Apple just released iOS 11.3, and among other things, the updated includes a new tool to tell you whether or not your aging iPhone battery needs to be replaced.

This is Apple's response to their slowing the iPhone operation to save battery life.  Well, this new utility will examine the life expectancy of the battery and whether its time to get the battery replaced.

Install iOS 11.3 in Settings > General > Software Update on your iPhone. The battery life measurement will examine whether the battery performance is still at peak performance or throttled capacity due to age and reduced capacity. The user can temporarily turn off the performance management in favor of faster operation.

Apple is replacing all out-of-warranty batteries that have lost capacity (iPhone SE through iPhone X) until Dec. 31, 2018 for $29.

A Tale of Two iPhones

My client had dropped his iPhone 5s and proceeded to crack the touch screen. In fact, the screen looked like it was repeatedly hit with a hammer. The destruction resulted in a barely responsive screen. The client had critical information on the phone which was not backed up. So, begins the tale of the 2 IPhones, I was able to unlock the broken iPhone after much playing around with the touchscreen to apply the passcode.

Then I installed iTunes on the client’s computer and used that program to back up the data on the broken phone.  Luckily, the client had a spare, barely used iPhone 5s because these were the company issued phones. So, I swapped the sim cards between the two phones. Thus, the client’s phone number was transferred to a working phone.

Then I erased all the prior data on the replacement phone by resetting the phone back to the factory defaults. Then I had to upgrade the IOS (iPhone operating system) from IOS 8.4 to 11.2, so that the broken iPhone and the replacement phone are on the same version of IOS to enable the data transfer. Now for the last and critical step; I connected the new phone up to iTunes,  rubbed a rabbit’s foot and started the data restoration. The restoration worked and the client walked away with a near mint iPhone 5s with all of his data intact.