Stuck on 0% remaining and bootlooping every 3 minutes - iPhone XS

Hi Sammy,

I'm going to make an executive call here and say that it's as simple as you got a bad battery - or rather a battery with a bad BMS. I'd suggest you contact the sender and request a replacement. Otherwise just go ahead and buy another battery from a different seller and that should get you going.

Now if you wanted to know more about the boot loop you were running into, Alisha ( @flannelist ) has written our authoritative guide to Kernel Panics, which is the term for the process that reboots the operating system. It shows how to access the logs created when a panic happens and how to interpret them. You should be able to go in and find the latest one and use it to verify the battery being the cause.

iPhone Kernel Panics - iFixit

With regard to battery replacement on an iPhone XS, Apple has done us dirty starting with your phone. As of the XS, they have started pairing the battery to the logic board using a proprietary encryption algorithm so they are the only ones who can do that pairing. That means they've restricted the ability of everyone who isn't Apple to replace their battery. On my grandchildren's iPhone X's, I can just swap in a battery and I'm done. On yours, the process is a lot more complicated.

First of all, the consequences of changing the battery yourself. First, you will get an "Important Battery Message" pop-up warning when you restart your phone telling you that they couldn't verify that a genuine Apple battery is in use - whether it's a genuine Apple battery or not. Next, you'll have a permanent notification to that same effect on your Settings app as well. After that, you'll find that you can no longer view battery health information; that's comprised of the health percentage from 0 to 100% and the cycle count, or number of times it's had a charge-discharge cycle.

Other than that, the battery will work normally; it will charge and power the phone just as it always did, you just won't have the information that tells you when the battery is no longer working efficiently.

Now here's how the aftermarket industry has figured out a workaround for this problem. Since the BMS is now tied to the phone you have to keep it. So what they do is to sell a new battery cell without the BMS and you cut the BMS off your original battery and spot weld it onto the new cell. (Spot welding is by far preferable, but in a pinch careful soldering can be used.) This way you have all the advantages of a new battery without the drawbacks of losing the health information.

However, there is a gotcha. Since the BMS holds the health information, that means the old health information is going to be carried forward with your new battery. So if your old battery was at 74% capacity, that's what it's going to report for your new battery. Again, the market has a fix; there are device programmers for sale that are capable of reprogramming the health information. The two most popular are the JC V1SE and the QianLi iCopy. In both cases you plug the battery into the programmer that's connected to a computer and use the manufacturer's software to reset the health percentage back to 100 and the cycle count to zero.

Of course, these devices aren't free, so even though you can use them over and over you'd have to decide for yourself if it's worth it to buy one just for replacing a single battery. The iCopy I bought ran about $85 USD. As long as you don't mind opening the phone back up, you can always reprogram the battery at any time; maybe you find a friend who has a programmer or locate a repair shop who will clear the settings for a reasonable price later on.

I don't know if that's more than what you wanted to know, but that's my current state of information on battery replacement.

Good luck; let us know how it goes.