We all want our smartphones to be charged up so they don’t die at some inopportune moment, but that concern may be driving you to stress your phone’s battery out and shorten its life. We found a super-informative article on Tech Insider that explains why it’s a bad idea to keep your phone charged to 100% all the time:
Many of us have an ingrained notion that charging our smartphones in small bursts will cause long-term damage to their batteries, and that it’s better to charge them when they’re close to dead.
But we couldn’t be more wrong.
If fact, a site from battery company Cadex called Battery University details how the lithium-ion batteries in our smartphones are sensitive to their own versions of “stress.” And, like for humans, extended stress could be damaging your smartphone battery’s long-term lifespan.
If you want to keep your smartphone battery in top condition and go about your day without worrying about battery life, you need to change a few things.
To treat your phone’s battery right and give it a long life, the article makes these four recommendations:
- Unplug it when it’s fully charged: “…leaving your phone plugged in when it’s fully charged, like you might overnight, is bad for the battery in the long run. Once your smartphone has reached 100% charge, it gets “trickle charges” to keep it at 100% while plugged in. It keeps the battery in a high-stress, high-tension state, which wears down the chemistry within.”
- Try not to charge it to 100%: “According to Battery University, ‘Li-ion does not need to be fully charged, nor is it desirable to do so. In fact, it is better not to fully charge, because a high voltage stresses the battery’ and wears it away in the long run.” So give your battery a break and just plug it in when you can throughout the day.
- Plug it in whenever you can: “Charging your phone when it loses 10% of its charge would be the best-case scenario, according to Battery University. Obviously, that’s not practical for most people, so just plug in your smartphone whenever you can. It’s fine to plug and unplug it multiple times a day.”
- Keep your phone cool: If your phone gets hot when you charge it and you have a case on it, then you should remove the case when charging. If you’re out in the sun, keep your phone covered so it doesn’t get hot.
Follow those four basic recommendations and your battery should have a longer life which will keep it from getting to a point that it discharges too fast to even be useful. Check out the great article over on the Tech Insider website for additional details and tips.
Source: TechInsider.io – “You’ve been charging your smartphone wrong“
Feature Photo Credit: r. nial bradshaw/Flickr
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