Some older iPhones will still not be able to display battery percentages

If you are an iPhone user, you have probably grown familiar with the pain of always having to open the Control Center by swiping down on your iPhone to see how much battery you have left. This has been a notorious pet peeve ever since the iPhone X launched way back in November 2017.

At the time, the introduction of the notch apparently made it impossible for Apple to find a more optimal way of displaying battery percentages. Luckily, after 5 years, the Cupertino company has finally managed to find a way to address the concerns of iPhone users.

With iOS 16, users will once again be able to see their battery percentage at a simple glance. While the execution leaves much to be desired, it is a working solution nonetheless. To enable this groundbreaking feature, users will simply have to go to Settings > Battery and enable Battery Percentage. For a more detailed step-by-step guide you can check out this article.

That is, if you do not own a number of particular iPhone models. For some reason, the iPhone XR, the iPhone 11, the iPhone 12 mini and the iPhone 13 mini will not be receiving the Battery Percentage “feature”.

Apple has left a little asterisk on its official Battery Percentage support document in order to indicate this little caveat. The sneaky addition was first spotted by MacRumours in a dedicated article.

Apple has not given any explanation whatsoever as to why these particular models will not be able to benefit from the new feature. It is possible that size constraints might play a part, given that two of the listed models are iPhone minis.

With the notch on its way out, upcoming iPhones will probably have no issues displaying battery percentages. However, the fact that an iPhone launched as recently as 2021 cannot accomplish such a simple feat is, at the very least, comical.