Previously, the battery percentage was displayed to the left of the battery icon. However, Apple removed it starting with the iPhone X because there wasn’t enough room to squeeze it in thanks to the notch. To find out the battery percentage, you currently have to swipe down in the Control Center. In iOS 16, Apple “solved” this problem by showing the figure on the battery icon. (If you’ve updated to the latest beta and don’t see it, that’s because it’s not turned on by default. To turn it on, you need to go to the Battery menu in Settings and flip the Battery Percentage toggle. The option also appears to (not available on iPhone 11, iPhone 12 mini, and iPhone 13 mini. This may change with future beta releases, but it’s the holidays for now.) It looks like an eyesore — something you’d see on a phone circa 2011. From a distance, it looks like the number on a sports jersey, and not in a good way. However, I recognize that this is my personal aesthetic taste. My biggest issue is that this new battery percentage also has performance issues. Because the number is displayed on the battery icon, it should always be displayed fully charged for readability. So even if you have a paltry 10 percent battery left on your phone, the icon itself still looks full. In the few hours I’ve had this feature on, it’s admittedly short-circuited my brain. A full battery icon that says 55? This just dulls the visual cues we’re all used to. The whole purpose of the battery icon is to quickly understand at a glance how much juice you have left. Unfortunately, the “full” battery plus the tiny numbers are not easy on the eyes. This is especially true if you already have poor vision. It doesn’t help that the status bar was always hard to read if you happened to be using a light background. Of course, not everyone will have this issue. If you have 20/20 vision, it probably won’t bother you too much. I happen to have severe astigmatism and nearsightedness, and some Focus Mode lock screens with light backgrounds. I can’t tell you how many times I misread 50 percent battery as 5G. This is not good. I can’t read it at all. Screenshot: Victoria Song / The Verge Compare all of this with the low battery icon. Even though the unmetered icon doesn’t tell you exactly how much battery you have left, it’s so easy to figure out a rough parking spot. It’s an intuitive design that needs no explanation. It’s small consolation, but at least the battery icon still changes colors when you turn on low power mode or plug in your phone. The first turns the icon yellow, while the second turns it green with a lightning bolt symbol next to it. (Charging also happens to make the battery icon and numbers bigger, and therefore much easier to read! Why not do that for normal mode too?!) It almost seems like Apple put us through this on purpose. The company is known for scrutinizing product design — regardless of whether the changes it makes are what people want. (RIP headphone jack.) Apple decided with the iPhone X that we didn’t need a battery percentage in the status bar. He gave us what he felt was a satisfactory solution with the Control Center. But we all asked Apple to put the battery percentage back in the top right corner of our phones, and that’s what we got. I’ll probably go back to turning battery percentage off. The low battery icon, after all, works in the vast majority of cases. And the next time my battery gets dangerously close to zero, I’ll heave a heavy sigh as I swipe down to Control Center, mourning what could have been.
