That’s not how the Optimized Battery feature works, according to the help text displayed right next to the feature in the Battery Health settings.
I question the whole premise of this article.
Author here, I think my Optimized Charging description is a fine description of how it works in practice. To borrow from another publication: "Optimized battery charging is a feature on iOS 13 or newer that limits overnight charging to protect your phone's battery in the long term." [0] With it, iOS learns your habits and will try to keep your phone charged under 80% until soon before it thinks you will take the phone off the charger, when it tops it off to 100%. "The algorithm aims to ensure that your iPhone is still fully charged when unplugged." [1] I have also used the feature personally since it came out, and this is how it works. What do you take issue with specifically?
[0] - https://www.pocket-lint.com/what-is-optimised-battery-chargi... [1] - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210512
What? You got tripped up on my wording, sorry. But the article's premise is valid, and it's not cool that the top comment on this submission for its first three hours on HN has totally lacked curiosity and come to a sensationalist conclusion. Do you have any actual problems with the article? Could you list them? (You responded to others but not my previous comment)
The claim from the article is that a fixed 'charge to 80% feature' is "likely possible on earlier models". I asked Apple to comment and am curious what they say. We do have evidence for the article's claim: iPhones dating back to at least the iPhone 8 support a feature that limits charging to 80% for multiple hours per day already. It just only occurs during hours Apple chooses via its learning algorithm. I never claim that the hardware is/is-not different; you simply have to look at what is already supported to understand what the devices are capable of.
Please say what the difference is, then?
So, again, what is the difference from what you quoted? Is it the implication that it might work at other times of day when the phone is "normally idle"? I don't even know if that implication is true or not, since it depends on exactly how the phone calculates your schedule. But if that's your complaint, it seems pretty small to me, not enough to throw the rest of the article into question.
Is there something else I'm missing?
I don't see the conflict.
Optimized charging is based on learning and thus unpredictable and hard to influence. It only works if you have rigid habits.
Like, if I say my car only starts when it has gas, I'm not promising it always starts as long as it has gas.
It's far from a comprehensive list of things that break the feature, but it gets the point across that the existing feature does a fraction of the job at best.
If your argument is that it "works" all the time even when it's not affecting charging, therefore the article is wrong, you are splitting hairs in the worst possible way. And if you're not arguing the article is wrong you might need to reread the comment thread.