How to charge a phone battery
properly: Battery care tips & tricks
How often should you charge a
phone's battery, and will charging it to 100 percent reduce its lifespan? We
round up the best battery care tips and tricks.
Batteries are one of tech’s most boring
subjects… until your phone, tablet or laptop dies.
While most of us live in fear of a
fading phone battery when we’re out and about, we don’t worry too much about
that battery’s eventual lifespan (probably between three and five years). But
there are ways to keep your battery in tip-top shape for a long and fruitful
life.
Batteries do not enjoy eternal
life. Most smartphone manufacturers say their devices rate their batteries at
300-500 cycles.
Apple claims that its laptop
batteries reach 80 percent of their original capacity after 1,000 charges.
After this point batteries aren’t
able to hold as much electricity and will power your device for increasingly
shorter periods of time. See: Best smartphones
So here’s some tips to extend your
battery’s lifespan, be that in an iPhone, Android phone, Windows phone, tablet,
or laptop.
The big questions about how to
re-charge a battery is whether you should let it run to zero before re-charging
to 100%. One reason why people are unsure is something they’ve heard of called
the battery “memory effect”.
What is battery memory effect?
Battery memory effect is about
batteries remembering remaining charge if you don’t let them go all the way to
zero too often. So a battery frequently charged from 20% to 80% might ‘forget’
about the 40% that’s left uncharged (0-20% and 80-100%).
Sounds crazy but that’s sort of
true - but only for older nickel-based (NiMH and NiCd) batteries, not the
lithium-ion batteries in your phone.
Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries
don’t suffer the memory effect so you almost need to do the opposite: charge
them often but not all the way throughout the day, and don’t let them drop to
zero.
Don’t charge your phone battery from zero to 100%
The rule with Li-ion batteries is
to keep them 50% or more most of the time. When it drops below 50% top it up a
little if you can. A little a few times a day seems to be the optimum to aim
for.
But don’t charge it all the way to
100%. It won’t be fatal to your battery if you do a full recharge - most of us
are forced to do this every now and again in emergencies. But constantly doing
a full recharge will shorten the battery’s lifespan.
So a good range to aim for when
charging a Li-ion battery is from about 40% to 80% in one go. Try not to let
the battery drop below 20%.
When should I do a full battery charge?
Experts recommend that you do a
full zero to 100% battery recharge (a "charge cycle") maybe once a
month only. This recalibrates the battery - a bit like restarting your
computer, or, for humans, going on holiday! The same goes for laptops, by the
way.
Should I charge my phone overnight?
Most modern smartphones are clever
enough to stop charging when full, so there isn't a great risk in leaving your
phone charging overnight. But some experts recommend you remove the phone from
a case if charging for a long time, as a case could lead to over heating -
which Lithium-ion batteries do not like (see below).
Should I use fast battery charging?
Many Android phones have a feature
that allows for fast charging, often referred to as Qualcomm Quick Charge or,
in Samsung's case, Adaptive Fast Charging.
These phones have special code
usually located in a chip known as the Power Management IC (PMIC) that
communicates with the charger you are using and requests that it send power at
a higher voltage.
The iPhone 6 doesn’t feature fast
charging, but its Qualcomm PMIC is smart enough to recognise when you use a
higher-amp charger (like the one you get with the iPad), and that’s a good
thing because fast charging will heat up that Li-ion battery and cause it
increased wear and tear.
For the same reason, you should
never leave your phone in a hot car, on the beach or next to the oven. A hot
battery will suffer long-term effects on its lifespan. And so will a super-cold
one, so don’t leave your device in the freezer or out in the snow.
If you can, switch off fast
charging on your Android phone.
Can I use any charger?
Where possible use the charger that
came with your phone, as it is sure to have the correct rating. Or make sure
that a third-party charger is approved by your phone's manufacturer. Cheap
alternatives from Amazon or eBay may harm your phone, and there have been
several reported cases of cheap chargers actually catching on fire.
Storing battery tips
Don’t leave a Li-ion battery li-ing
around too long at 0%. Try to leave it at around 40-50%.
These batteries drain at about 5-10%
a month when not in use. If you let the battery discharge completely and leave
it uncharged for a long period of time it may eventually become incapable of
holding a charge at all (that’s properly dead).
It’s unlikely you’ll leave your
smartphone lying in a drawer for very long, but some people do leave their
laptop, battery packs or spare batteries unused for long periods of time. So
try to keep them all at least half charged.
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