Apple released the first iOS 16.1 beta to developers on Wednesday, and it lets iPhone users with an iPhone 13 or 12 Mini, an iPhone 11, or iPhone XR turn on the new battery percentage indicator added in iOS 16, according to MacRumors.
Before iOS 16, iPhones with notches couldn’t see their battery percentage in the status bar, but Apple added the feature for some notched phones with its latest major software update. Many of us here at The Verge aren’t a fan of the new design; the indicator puts a number inside a battery icon, which is a smart way to save some space, but there’s no other visual indicator of how full that battery is. That means, for example, that if your battery is at 33 percent, the battery icon will still appear “full.” (Here’s one idea on how Apple could improve the new design.)
Even if the feature doesn’t look great, it’s still a handy option to have, and it was disappointing that Apple didn’t make it available on the iPhone 13 Mini, 12 Mini, 11, or XS with iOS 16’s launch. But given that it’s now usable by those devices in the iOS 16.1 beta, hopefully it will be available more widely as part of iOS 16.1’s public release, which should be sometime soon.
I probably won’t turn the indicator on myself on my iPhone 12 Mini — I usually keep battery percentages off because I find I check them constantly. But if Apple fixes up the indicator’s design, maybe I’ll give it a shot.
