iOS 16’s battery percentage icon will only show on these devices

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When iOS 16 was in the beta stages, Apple returned the battery percentage icon to the status bar. Now Apple has officially confirmed that the icon is staying in iOS 16, but some devices are left out.

The good news is that most iPhones can use the battery percentage icon in iOS 16. These include the iPhone 13 and other iPhones that have Face ID.

Those newer devices let you enable the battery percentage in the status bar. They also show the battery percentage in Control Center, accessed by swiping down from the top-right corner of your display.

READ MORE: iOS 16 is out now – here are some of our favorite new features

Some models have the battery percentage by default. Those include the iPhone SE (2nd and 3rd Generation), all iPads, and the iPhone 8 or earlier.

Apple does note that sometimes you might not see the feature, and for that, you must go into Settings > Battery to turn it on.

Oddly, four devices that have Face ID won’t be able to use the battery percentage icon in iOS 16. These are the iPhone XR, iPhone 11, iPhone 12 mini, and iPhone 13 mini.

Maybe the smaller screen sizes of the mini models made the numbers too small to read? We can only guess why Apple makes certain design decisions.

Twitter designers have been discussing the design of the battery icon. The weirdest thing to them is that it’s less usable than the blank icon, as there’s no visual indicator of battery levels until it drops to 20 percent.

Maybe Apple will redesign the battery indicator icon, in line with some of the suggestions on Twitter. Until then, we’re going back to the older icon, so we can see approximate battery levels at a glance.

Have any thoughts on this? Carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.