To note, that's a regional thing. It seems to stop at gen2 for Asian countries for ex.
> Budgeting $69-99 once every 3-4 years
iPhone batteries become subpar way faster than that, especially the older models who get more strained as they bear the heavier OS. Once every year and a half looks more realistic to me.
FWIW I got a launch iPhone X I gave to my dad with original battery now at 73% health, OLED screen burn in, and a broken charging port (wireless charging still works), and he’s still using it as a daily driver lol.
So while batteries certainly can go subpar faster, they can and do last much longer sometimes.
I also babied it and rarely charged above 80 or fell below 25, which may have played a part but who knows.
Most batteries are made in China (or even cheaper places) now, so they simply do not last. I have iPad 2s that still last for MONTHs without charging. Nowdays iPhone batteries start heavy degradation about 2 years in. That 20-25% loss means all day battery to needing to charge at least once before going to bed for many.
Source: I replace more batteries now than screens.
To go for the official rating, up to the iPhone 14 it was 80% of the original charge after 500 cycles [0] and got improved (1000 !) later.
500 cycles can be a lot if you mostly keep it as a standby device to stay reachable, but not that much if you actually use the phone everyday.
That's less than 2 years if you completely drain the phone at least once a day. Our kid easily goes through two full charges in a day, especially on weekends. It really depends on what you use your phone for.
Also I think some people live with a < 70% battery without really minding it much. That's IMO only viable if you don't have a winter, where the battery efficiency becomes so worse. That's the combination of weak battery + poor weather that triggered the phone shutdown for me when BatteryGate was the rage.
I use an iPhone SE2 that I got refurbished in the past 6 months by Apple. I couldn't replace just the battery, because the rear glass had a crack in it. This thing is a mess, refurbishing it feels like a waste of money. It runs out of battery almost daily, has terrible multi-second camera lag when I open the camera app from the lockscreen. Often the phone will just have like a quarter second of UI lag for no obvious reason. The experience is overall very slow and frustrating, an enormous degradation from when I got it as a gift 4 years ago (part of why I'm still using it).
It's a shame, because I like the phone a lot otherwise.
On the battery thing, that might depend how much games are run on it. We hand down devices, and replace the battery if its life is below the 70% mark so to somewhat refresh the device. The SE 2nd gen we handed down already had two battery replacements at this point and I'll probably ask for a third before it falls off the support list.
On third party repairs...it's sure getting better, hopefully in other regions as well.
To note, that's a regional thing. It seems to stop at gen2 for Asian countries for ex.
> Budgeting $69-99 once every 3-4 years
iPhone batteries become subpar way faster than that, especially the older models who get more strained as they bear the heavier OS. Once every year and a half looks more realistic to me.