Nothing lives perpetually — and that features your cellphone battery. Not solely is it dying small deaths on an nearly each day foundation, nevertheless it’s additionally dying an extended, slower demise that’ll finally render your cellphone unusable if it isn’t completely connected to an influence supply.

Except, in fact, you swap out your previous battery for a brand new one.

You will have a way that your battery is degrading over time, however not know at what level to exchange it. A brand new app from on-line group, advocacy group and components retailer iFixit is here to help. The app features a battery well being predictor that exhibits the place your battery is in its lifecycle and estimates when it is time to get away the toolkit and provides your machine a brand new lease on life.

Repairing our tech reasonably than merely changing it when it breaks can save us cash in the long term and scale back our contributions to the ever-increasing mountains of digital waste piling up around the globe. And because of work of the “proper to restore” motion, it is simpler than ever to pay money for the spare components and steering we have to repair our tech at dwelling. Nonetheless, it may be an intimidating prospect for anybody unfamiliar with the interior workings of their units.

“It is by no means been simpler to repair our personal stuff, however studying how is usually a bit bewildering,” says Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit. “We’ve so many various sort of devices in our lives now, how do you study to repair all of it?” The reply is the iFixit app, which comes with an AI helper “Fixbot” to stroll you thru any repairs you need to make, with entry to iFixit’s full catalog of restore guides.

This is not the primary time iFixit has had its personal app, however again in 2015, Apple stripped it from the App Retailer after iFixit carried out an unfavorable teardown of the Apple TV. Now it is again, and accessible on each the App Retailer and Google Play Retailer for iPhone and Android cellphone homeowners. I took it for a spin.

Predicting the demise of my iPhone

My present cellphone is an iPhone 15 Professional Max. I have been utilizing it for simply over a 12 months. In that point, I’ve undoubtedly seen it working out of juice extra usually, and I used to be eager to seek out out after I may want to exchange it.

The battery well being function within the iFixit app remains to be in beta, and the method for getting a studying is barely completely different relying in your cellphone producer. (Spoiler: None are fully easy.)

Apple would not at the moment enable entry to battery stats by way of any of its APIs (iFixit tells me the APIs are there, however Apple will not approve your app for those who use them), so as a substitute it’s important to guarantee you might have your cellphone analytics turned on after which import an analytics file into the app.

If that sounds sophisticated, be assured that it isn’t. Within the app is a information that tells you precisely what to do and I discovered it simple to observe. I turned my analytics on in Settings and allowed it to assemble information for at some point earlier than sharing the file with iFixit.

What I discovered stunned me. I think about myself an influence consumer (my display time is actually embarrassing), but within the 12 months or so I’ve had this iPhone, I’ve accomplished solely 266 full charging cycles. Consequently, iFixit rated my battery well being as “honest” and says it could actually now cost to simply 86% of its unique capability.

It did add: “Your capability is declining. Plan a alternative quickly to take care of efficiency.” It seems that “quickly” is a relative time period, although, because it advisable that alternative did not really must occur till February 2027.

I used to be pleasantly stunned by how a lot life this iPhone nonetheless has in it. It is totally potential I will change the battery earlier than then, just because I wish to get a full day of life out of 1 cost, and that is not taking place proper now. However after CNET editor-at-large Andrew Lanxon replaced his own iPhone battery last month, I really feel assured in my skill to undertake open-heart surgical procedure on my cellphone at dwelling. Plus, I all the time have iFixit’s Fixbot available to assist me out if I do get caught.