I am always asked questions about smartphone batteries and also see some nonsense written about them , so lets look at some facts about smartphone battery life.
Should I charge my phone when I set it up ?
No modern smartphones with lithium-ion batteries are fine to run out of the box without “priming” them beforehand.
Also you don’t need to calibrate your smartphone by running the battery all the way down.
We have not done this since the days of nickel cadium batteries.
Does battery life decrease over time ?
Yes , lithium-ion batteries have a limited number of cycles over their life , a cycle is a full discharge , a full drain of the battery.
If you use 75% one day then charge the phone then 25% the next day , then recharge that will add up to one charge cycle.
Smartphone batteries will deliver between 300 and 500 cycles before the battery drops to 70% of its capacity.
If I keep charging my smartphone will it damage my smartphone ?
No , charging it more often with short charges to get it back to full charge will prolong battery life rather than letting it run all the way down.
Smartphones with modern battery systems, however, know to reduce this to a trickle, so it only tops up a battery with the power that the smartphone needs , so you can leave it charging overnight but make sure you use ” genuine” chargers and cables.
How can I extend the life of my smartphone battery?
- Turn down screen brightness
- Disable location and background app refresh for apps that don’t need it
- Stop closing your apps in multitasking – they are idle – not doing anything and opening them to close them down actually uses up more battery
- Disable push notifications for email, Twitter and Facebook
- In an area with no phone signal , turn on airplane mode as your phone will always be looking for a signal
Wireless Charging – are there any concerns
In a word – no
- A criticism of wireless charging is that when phones charge via a cable the battery gets a rest, but when they charge on a wireless charging pad it doesn’t. Therefore, the battery goes through its limited number of cycles faster with wireless charging and degrades faster.
- There is no evidence that wireless charging degrades your smartphone battery faster than wired charging.
- There is also a benefit. Wear and tear on the charging port is reduced, something that often leads to faults and requires repair.