How to Charge Your Cell Phone Battery the Right Way

A mobile phone could have all the essential features and it would be pointless without a long-lasting cell phone battery that allows access to them.

It’s easy to keep your smartphone charged in the short term. It’s just monitoring your phone’s battery and plugging it into the outlet when it gets low. But keeping your phone’s battery healthy in the long term is really a task. The lithium-ion batteries are in-built into all our modern gadgets and chemically designed to degrade with time. With time they hold less charge than earlier. It’s not possible to interfere with this process, but it’s possible to slow it down. 

Naturally, people are more concerned about the lifespan of cell phone battery. As mobile phone wireless charging technology evolved at an alarming pace in the last decade, leaving many of us behind in awareness. Such factors lead to misconceptions regarding the lifespan of a phone’s battery.

If you are looking to keep your phone’s battery as long as it can and take care of your phone. In this blog, we will examine all the facts and instructions you need.

How Does the Cell Phone Battery Store Its Charge?

Before jumping to the instructions, it’s better to understand the process and how it works.

Lithium-ion batteries’ discharge/charge cycles are chemical reactions set off by electricity. While charging, lithium-ion flows from the positive electrode to the negative electrode and vice-versa while using the mobile phone. 

The lithium-ion batteries have been around and used in every modern gadget. These batteries have evolved to be safer, smaller, and more durable. 

Modern batteries are much safer than their nickel predecessors, which easily get overheated, vary in shape over time, and were only required to charge when the battery was completely drained due to the “memory effect”.

Is it Bad to Run Your Battery Down to Zero Percentage or Charge up to 100 Percentage?

Continuously charging the phone at zero percentage is not a good option for the long-term health of the phone’s battery. Because each time we charge, it reduces the number of cycles on a Li-ion cell. The fewer the number of cycles left, the fewer the amount of charge it’s able to hold and shorten the life of the battery.

For optimum battery life, you should never charge below 20 percent and above 80 percent. It may seem quite fascinating when we read 100 percent of a phone’s battery or fully charged but in reality, it’s not ideal for the battery’s health. Li-ion batteries don’t prefer to cell phone charges fully, likewise to warm.

Optimized Charging Guide

The most recommended range to charge your lithium-ion battery is from 20 to 80 percent. It’s best not to let your phone’s battery drop below 20%. Try to avoid charging your phone from 0 to 100 percent, or a complete cycle, if needed, only once a month.

One more point that needs awareness is overheating, especially when the phone is kept in a phone case. The best practice is to avoid cases while charging for a longer time or overnight.

Besides, most smartphones are designed to protect the durability of their batteries with optimized charging features. This feature also does a few more things. It slows the charging process when connected to the power outlet and interferes with charging after reaching its full health, both ways are healthy for the battery. It also delays charging your phone past 80%. While AI predicts extended charging times (overnight). With all these ways, it stays in that “sweet spot” between 20 to 80 percent for a longer time.

On an iPhone (which must be running iOS 13 or later), turn on “optimized battery charging”  by going to Settings > Battery > Battery Health.

Is there Anything to Worry About the Phone’s Battery Health?

Despite the fact that lithium-ion batteries power a significant portion of our daily lives, the science of how they actually work is still developing.  And a lot of the new knowledge is based on experiments with enormous multi-cell vehicle batteries, which resemble but differ from the single-cell battery in your phone. Additionally, there are so many variables in your daily charging usage that is essentially difficult to know if you are doing it correctly.

Guidelines for Extending the Life of Your Phone’s Battery:

There are a few ways through which we can enhance battery health. Just keeping a few things mentioned below before charging might increase the durability of the battery.

Generally Avoid Extreme Temperatures, Especially When Charging

Extreme temperature simply means neither much heat nor freezer. In the summer, leaving a phone in the sun for an extended period of time—on a beach towel, on the dashboard of a car, or just about anywhere that is directly exposed to the blazing. This situation only worsens the battery’s life.

It’s a common misconception on the internet that storing your phone in the freezer can somehow increase battery life. In reality, repeatedly cell phone charges multiple times in freezing temperatures will permanently harm the battery.

Charging Between 20 to 80%  is the “sweet spot”

The ideal method for maintaining the health of a phone battery is to plug it in around 20% and charge it each way to 80–90%.  If you use fast charging, it produces more heat when charging from 0% to 80% then it becomes less efficient above 80%.

Before Storing, It is Better to Charge Halfway.

It’s preferable to charge for phone only halfway if you won’t be using it for a while. Apple advises charging your phone to 50% and turning it on once every six months to maintain the battery. In order to avoid damage, make sure you store your cell phone batteries in a dry environment.

After Charging Your Phone, Unplug it.

When you charge the phone overnight, the battery drains to 99% and then starts charging once more, called Trickle charging. This charging has the drawback of producing heat, and if the environment is warm or there are things on top of your phone, that heat might harm the battery.

While we won’t blame you for using the convenience of overnight charging, we do suggest taking your phone out of its cover and placing it somewhere where it can be exposed to air.

Conclusion

In this blog, we have covered the basics of phone charging from how they store power to the “sweet spot” range. Perhaps most important, however, is the fact that even with superhumanly excellent battery care, your phone won’t last indefinitely. All we can do is enhance the durability and health of the battery’s life.