How To Keep Your Phone Battery Good

Smartphone users — casual and enthusiasts alike — are forever searching for longer battery life. While fast charging keeps us topped upwardly every day, the absence of replaceable batteries means eventually, the lithium-ion cells enclosed in our phones are going to age and deteriorate, making it harder to maximize battery life.

If you've held onto a phone a couple of years, you've probably noticed the battery doesn't seem to terminal as long as information technology did when your handset was brand new. Iii years downward the line, many phones struggle to make it through the day on a single charge. Holding onto a phone even longer tin fifty-fifty spell trouble for system stability.

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Unfortunately, battery capacity inevitably declines with age. However, there are things yous can practice to prolong the life of your battery and smartphone. If you've ever wondered what the all-time way to accuse your battery is, here are some scientifically proven tips to maximize battery life.

Partial charging is a salubrious habit

Google Pixel Stand wireless charging Galaxy S21 Ultra

Robert Triggs / Android Authority

One peculiarly persistent bombardment myth is that you demand to occasionally fully discharge and recharge to erase "bombardment memory." This couldn't be more wrong for lithium-ion batteries. It's a leftover myth from lead-acrid cells, and it'south pretty undesirable to charge your mod smartphone in this mode.

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Partial charging is just fine for lithium-ion batteries and tin can have some positive benefits for jail cell longevity. To understand why it's important to capeesh how a battery charges. Li-ion batteries draw constant current and operate at a lower voltage when closer to empty. This voltage gradually increases as the cell charges up, leveling off at around a lxx% charge before the current begins to autumn until the chapters is full.

Partial charging is just fine for lithium-ion batteries and even has some positive benefits.

Notably, operating at a low voltage is good for a battery'southward lifespan, increasing the number of available charging cycles before you'll start to encounter a significant reduction in chapters. Roughly speaking, every 0.1V decrease in prison cell voltage doubles the cycle life, co-ordinate to Battery Academy. Therefore, charging up your phone in that thirty% to eighty% range keeps the voltage lower and might slightly prolong the bombardment's lifespan.

Lower battery voltages help prolong capacity over time. Light-green: lower voltage charging for outset ~65%. Xanthous: Start of constant voltage. Cerise: Long catamenia of high voltage charging for last 15%.

Smaller but regular top-ups are much better for Li-ion batteries than long total charge cycles.

Using up only 20% of your battery between charges isn't practical, but topping up when y'all've used about half volition see an improvement in your battery life over the long term. Specially if you avoid charging up to full each time too. The lesser line is that smaller, regular tiptop-ups are better for Li-ion batteries than long full charge cycles.

Avert idle charging

Yootech F500 Wireless Charger with iphone and accroutements

Eric Zeman / Android Authority

Charging overnight or in a cradle during the 24-hour interval is a very common habit, but it'southward not recommended for several reasons (the old "overcharging" myth isn't one of them). Start, continuous trickle charging of a full battery can cause plating of the metallic lithium, which reduces stability in the long term and can, in rare cases, lead to system-wide malfunctions and reboots. Secondly, as we just mentioned to a higher place, it leaves the battery at a higher stress voltage when at 100%. Third, and near important, it creates excess heat caused by wasted power dissipation.

Some phones disable or slow down charging when nearing full capacity. Use these options.

Ideally, a device should stop charging when it reaches 100% battery capacity, only turning the charging circuit back on to superlative up the battery now and again — or at the very least reducing the charging current to very pocket-sized amounts.

While some phones disable charging in one case full, many continue to pull up to half an amp and sometimes more from the wall outlet. Turning the smartphones off doesn't make a departure in many cases either. While this isn't a massive amount of power, information technology's going to stop your telephone from cooling down as quickly and will continue to wheel through a small role of the bombardment, resulting in a mini-cycle.

A final bespeak worth mentioning is parasitic load. This occurs when the bombardment is being tuckered significantly at the same fourth dimension equally existence charged, such equally watching a video or gaming while charging.

Parasitic loads are bad for batteries because they distort the charging bike and induce mini-cycles — where part of the battery continually cycles and deteriorates faster than the rest of the prison cell. Worse still, parasitic loads occurring when a device is fully charged too induce college voltage stress and heat on the battery.

Gaming or watching videos while charging is bad because it distort charging cycles.

The all-time mode to avoid parasitic loads is to turn your device off while charging. Just that's not really realistic. Instead, it's all-time to keep the workload light while the device is plugged in, leaving information technology idle most of the time. Browsing the web is probably fine. Too, think to unplug it once the battery is topped up enough.

Oestrus is the enemy of long battery life

Asus ROG Phone 5 product shot of the battery and charging logos up close

Ryan-Thomas Shaw / Android Authority

Forth with all of the above, temperature is an every bit key contributor to longevity and maximizing battery life. In fact, it'due south arguably the biggest killer of long-term battery health. Like high voltages, high temperatures stress the battery and get in lose capacity far more than speedily than when kept at lower temperatures.

A cell kept betwixt 25 – 40 degrees Celsius (77 – 86 degrees Fahrenheit) should retain around 85% to 96% of its capacity afterwards the first twelvemonth with sensible charging cycles. Raising the temperature regularly in a higher place forty°C (104°F) and charging to 100% sees this fall to just 65% chapters after the first year, and a lx°C (140°F) battery temperature will hitting this marking in every bit footling as iii months.

The ideal temperature to maximise bombardment bicycle life is below 40°C

A battery dwelling in a full state-of-charge exposed to a loftier temperature is the worst of all worlds and the number one matter to avoid when charging your phone. So no leaving your phone under your pillow to charge at night or plugged in on the dashboard of your automobile on a hot 24-hour interval.

Read more: Quick Charge 5 tested – Smarter charging for longer battery life

Fast charging technologies are a contentious upshot here, equally the higher current and voltages pb to a hotter device. With capabilities exceeding 60W and pushing to 100W even in smartphones, device longevity quickly becomes an issue. Fast charging is fine for a small acme-upwards, just numerous standards nosotros've tested regularly exceed forty°C when charging for more than a few minutes. Equally y'all can see in the graph below.

Leaving your phone to fast charge upwardly for 5 to 15 minutes won't pb to major overheating problems, only I certainly don't recommend using them for a full charge. Instead, y'all'd be improve off using a temperature-enlightened fast charging solution or switching to a slower charger, specially if yous plan to plug your phone in overnight.

How to maximize bombardment life long-term

Robert Triggs / Android Authority

Lithium-ion bombardment engineering science is well understood these days, and smartphones are built around our use cases, simply bad habits and myths still permeate the public consciousness. While most of these habits won't severely negatively impact your telephone's bombardment life in the medium term, the reject in removable telephone batteries ways we should have actress precautions to maximize battery life and thus our smartphone's longevity.

Broadly speaking, smaller regular charge cycles and keeping your phone cool are the key things to remember. Although I should indicate out that different phone batteries will ever historic period slightly differently depending on how we treat them.

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Hither's a TL;DR summary of the battery tips above:

What's the best way to charge your smartphone?

Avoid full bicycle (0-100%) and overnight charging. Instead, acme up your phone more regularly with partial charges.
Ending a charge at 80-xc% is better for the battery than topping up to completely full.
Use fast charging technologies sparingly and when your device is cool.
Heat is the battery killer. Don't encompass your phone when charging, and go along it out of hot places.
Don't play intensive games, stream videos, or run other intensive workloads while charging to avoid heat and mini-cycles.

FAQs

You can do a number of things to boost your battery life. Nosotros recommend dimming your screen, adjusting your timeout feature, limiting your push notifications, and using power-saver when y'all don't need your phone very oft.

Nosotros're in an age where smartphones last longer than ever. Well-nigh flagships offer impressive battery life, but the Galaxy S22 Ultra, Sony Xperia 1 III, and Asus ROG Phone 5 stand out from the crowd. Y'all can see more of our favorite battery phones here.

At that place is no definite time that a 10,000mAh battery will terminal. Phones with premium features similar 5G and a high refresh rate will burn through that much power quicker than a phone with a dimmer, weaker display. However, a 10,000mAh power banking company will probably provide enough accuse to keep your phone going for a few days without an outlet.

If you desire to check your remaining battery life, information technology'due south usually displayed in the peak corner of your telephone. However, if you want to bank check on the health of your battery, you can usually head to the Settings menu to detect your usage trends and the overall health of your prison cell.