So

my phone's battery has been going kinda screwy on me in various ways. I use it a LOT since I deliver pizza and use navigation and listen to audiobooks and text KB (with speech-to-text, of course) and am constantly plugging/unplugging it so that's not necessarily a huge surprise.
The wear and tear on both the charging cable and the phone's charging port has been making it more and more difficult to get it charging and keep it charging (especially with the extraordinarily bumpy roads here in town).

So today, I come home for the day at 60%. I've gotten into the habit of turning the brightness down all the way and setting things to low power mode when I'm not at work (and thusly barely using my phone). A few hours later I notice its down to about 56%
Now I could go out and get my car charger, which is a third-party USB charger. But I'm in my jammies and don't feel like it, so I ask KB to borrow her charger, an apple iphone charger, thinking that its in fair condition, at least better than my car charger, so charging should be more smooth.

I position it in such a way that it stays charging and leave it alone for about half an hour or so. Since the charging "position" is a little delicate, I try not to move the phone much, but I check the charge and it says 55%. That's... a little worrisome but I recall once my battery dropping a whole 2% after being plugged in before starting to go up again, so I don't worry much.

About an hour goes by and I check again
... 54%.

At this point I'm assuming my phone isn't -really- plugged in and charging, it just thinks it is. I've got the brightness minimized, low power mode on, as well as airplane mode. And I'm not using the phone so my battery consumption should be near-zero. I close all my apps and decide to check on it again in a few hours. So I curl up for a nap. About two hours ago, I wake up and decide to check my battery.

34%
...THIRTY FOUR PERCENT

In my half-asleep state, my brain remembers it as 37% and then I really panic when I unplug it and check five minutes later and think its dropped three percent in 5 minutes.

But I check it a few times and see it only drop another 1% after about 10 minutes, and then stay at 33% for about 20 more minutes. Okay, so its not dying so fast it cant charge fast enough to not still die. Then what the fuck is happening?

I start doing math. In about five hours, it dropped roughly 20%. That's four percent every hour. After unplugging it, the rate of losing charge went to maybe 1 percent per half hour, or 2 percent an hour. And honestly it probably wasn't even that much.

So the rate at which my phone was dying effectively DOUBLED while PLUGGED IN. I googled the question "is it possible for an iphone charger to drain the battery" and wouldn't you know it, the apple site just couldn't resolve the issue for someone having the exact same problem as me.


NOW things are starting to make sense. I throw on a shirt and hop outside to collect my car charger, get it charging and in FIVE MINUTES I'm back up to 40%

Now I'm over 80% and that's in what? Half an hour? So with an apple charger my phone's battery gets drained faster than if it was just sitting unplugged... With a third-party charger, it charges just fine...

So apparently apple is trying to scam me for one of their stupid new batteries. Great.