The Do's and Don't for Phone Charging
Ever had the feeling that your phone battery is draining faster and faster over time?
When you first bought a shiny new phone, the phone battery seem to last through without ever needing to plug into a powerbank or charger, but after a few months, we seem to hit that Red colour at the battery indicator faster and faster.
Tips: Airplane mode is an easy, one ‘Tap’ step, to shut most power consuming hardware from running.
You are not imagining things with your phone battery status though, battery cells do indeed wear overtime.
To explain this in a simple way, the chemical component of the battery gets weaker and weaker after every charge and discharge.
Using ‘Accubattery’ app,
which I use this app on my phone from Day 1,
It shows my battery capacity has fall to 82% of its original capacity.
Which means my 4000mah is acting like a 3285mah phone after 2 years of use.
Battery ‘Wear’ exists on every devices with a battery. Phone, Laptop, iPad, and even Electric Cars like Tesla. As long as you need to charge it, then it will wear as you go through its charge cycle.
If you are using an iPhone,
battery health monitoring
is already built into iOS.
So if conserving your phone battery health is important to you, the easiest way is to have a proper charging habit. So DONT do the following:
1. DISCHARGE TO 0%
Battery cycle
worst wear
is depleting to 0%
Some people still intentionally let their phone deplete their battery when buying a brand new phone.
Ever realize why new phone always have close to 50% battery when unboxed?
That's
because battery are best
preserved at half the capacity
The practice originates when old Nickel-based battery had a ‘battery memory effect’ which cause them to “remember” less battery than they actually had.
If you see the battery with Li-ion or Li-Po, it means it is a Lithium Based Battery
But current battery are mostly Lithium-based (because Lithium battery can have size, weight reduction and overall better technology) doesn’t have this kind of problems anymore.
Depleting a Battery to 0% instead only speeds up its battery wear and gives no benefits.
2. Overnight Charging (to 100%)
I know… telling you the only time you are not using your phone to not charge your phone is probably stressing you out.
I’m guilty of this too
Every night when we hit the bed, is probably where most of us do our daily phone charging. But the bad is not because you are charging your phone unattended. but because the phone will be at 100% at a prolonged time.
Basically if you sleep for 8hours and charge your phone, (I’m just using the standard recommended sleeping duration don’t judge me), your phone will probably be at 100% around the 2Hour Mark.
Which means it will be at 100% for 6Hours! I mean we cant even stay hungry for 6Hours! (Again don’t judge me)
If only we can charge top up our wallet like we charge our phone
who cares if my phone battery is bad till then I’ll just buy a new one
Well in simple terms, 100% is bad because the battery cells is at a very High & Active & Excited state. (Imagine if you are excited with caffeine in extended period of time.)
3. Super Quick Warp Wireless Charging (HEAT)
At the time of this writing, Year 2021, phone manufacturers are pushing a lot of High Wattage charging system, wireless charging, some even both.
“What do you mean that’s wireless charging! There’s a cable behind it!”
Okay we know its should be called Port-less charging but Marketing dictates wireless is more attractive
These charging system aren’t gimmicks, in fact they can be lifesavers for those of you who always forgot to charge your phone.
High wattage charger performs faster charging by feeding higher Voltage or higher Amps (sometimes both) into the battery.
The result is much more energy is fed into the battery in shorter duration to speed up the charging process.
Powerbanks can also have High Wattage charging so use at your discretion.
Phone manufacturer also design custom circuitry and battery specifications to accommodate the high voltage and current to avoid any unexpected fireworks.
Anyone remember a certain South Korea Product?
Which is why high wattage charger (Such as 65W) only works for the the same brand (sometimes only specific model)
But High Wattage = High Heat
Heat is bad for a lot of things in a close, compact system like a phone.
Multiple high heat components can be found in a smartphone. Processor, Display and battery emits heat and sometimes can cause a phone to be uncomfortably hot to the touch.
Heat can amplify the flaws in the chemical components of the battery and tons of articles can be found online citing about the effects of heat in each of the phone components.
Using a high wattage charger for those emergencies where you had to top up quickly before leaving a charger wont do much harm. But doing it too much would accumulate stress on the phone.
Occasional heat is fine, as phone are well design to dissipate the internal heat it produces passively
Therefore high wattage charging isn’t too bad, as long as you keep the phone cool.
TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read):
Keep your battery charge between 30% to 80%, in fact frequent charging to maintain in this range is the most beneficial.
If you have to do overnight charging, use a timer that stops the charging on your phone after reaching 100%.
Anything more than 10W charging is better for emergency top-up only.
Please don’t make the devices suffer high heat for too long.
A couple of practices that I use to make sure my phone stays happy.
Take a powerbank with you so you never fall into 0%.
Use a Timer socket for overnight charging, set it to only charge for 2hours or so it won’t stress your phone battery.
Use a super slow charger (5V 1A = 5W Charger), for those session which your phone doesn’t do much while idle but you don’t want to risk having a low battery when you need it.
Charger dock (even Wireless) that can be mounted at the AC Vent of the car, means everytime you hop into your car, you easily charge the phone, and the AC air behind it keeps the charger and the phone cooler than you.
