I have this niche need of being able to receive SMS messages from a foreign phone number. While I use my daily iPhone 13 for, well, everything else. I wanted to use this iPhone XR that I retired to relay the text messages to my main iPhone. Apple made this quite easy to achieve, all I had to do was to flip a switch and it just worked.
However, I was concerned about the battery health of this “relay iPhone”. Because I had a swollen battery on my iPhone 6 which eventually pushed the screen out of its metal case (which is how I noticed the swollen battery), I suspect it was because I had it plugged in all the time. So this time I wanted to find out a way to slowly cycle the battery so that the battery will have better longevity. Being stable and dependable is crucial.
To achieve this, I used a smart plug that connects to Wi-Fi and supports IFTTT integration. This allows me to trigger the “Start Charging” and “Stop Charging” actions. enabling me to send a simple GET request to control the smart plug. The final step involves using an iOS shortcut to toggle the smart plug as needed.
iOS Shortcuts automation.
The limitation of this project is it relies on services such as Wyze and IFTTT. In the case of any of them who decided to shut down the service, this project will no longer work.
An email from IFTTT.