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Comment by xp84 | Hacker News Reader

Can confirm that sticking an old iPhone, say, connected to power in your garage to serve as a kiosk device 24/7 will 100% result in the battery swelling up. I had it happen. Now, in my case it didn't cause any harm and I was even able to replace that 5S's battery. But tbh I would not trust an Apple device in a permanently-powered situation for this reason.

Especially since Apple, in their benevolence, software-restricts the technology of the "only charge to 80%" option to only their newest devices (14 series and up, only) so anything older than that will be torturing its battery if left on a charger long-term.

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A long time ago, I used to work at a place that decided to stick iPads onto meeting room doorways to display who had the room booked (because people are the worst). These'd last 7 or 8 months before the battery puffed up enough to be noticed, or in a few cases to crack the screens. I grabbed a few power point timer switches, and set them to only over up the charger for a hour a day. Never had another battery puffing failure - at last not in the next 2 or 3 years before I left. (As the iPads got old, charging for 1 hour per day wasn't always enough to keep them running 24x7, but I'd set them to start charging at 6am so worst case was someone needed to power up the iPad and start the room booking webapp on it in the morning. If a particular iPad got its battery into a state where that was happening regularly, we just adjusted the power point timer to charge twice a day, morning and evening.)

Apple itself supports using an old iPhone as a camera for Apple TV Facetime and karaoke use, so while this is a risk, it doesn't seem to be something the company is concerned about.

https://support.apple.com/guide/tv/use-your-iphone-or-ipad-a...

I'm sure whoever pitched this 'dedicated' feature in Cupertino had to make sure to state that customers would purchase a new iPhone for this role rather than... shudder reuse an old device. As we all know, Apple has a deep and abiding desire that the vast majority of used iPhones be shredded[1].

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/News/94386/the-truth-about-apples-fre...

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