Why is it that your phone'due south battery seems to go worse over time? At first it might take ability to spare as you lot snuggle into bed at the finish of the day, just as fourth dimension goes on you discover your bombardment is merely half-full by lunchtime.

Partly information technology's how you employ your phone - the apps y'all install, the junk you collect, the customisations you make, and the more and more notifications you receive - puts more than strain on the bombardment. (Read our tips on how to extend battery life.)

Until we have new-fangled technologies such as smart clothes that optimise wireless performance, we must learn how to charge a battery that keeps it salubrious for every bit long as possible.

Phone batteries, similar all batteries, do degrade over time, which means they are increasingly incapable of holding the same amount of ability. While they should have a lifespan of betwixt three and v years, or between 500 and 1,000 charging cycles, a three-year-quondam telephone bombardment is never going to keep going as long as a brand-new bombardment.

Three things wear out lithium-ion batteries: number of charging cycles, temperature, and age.

However, armed with our tips for best bombardment care practice, y'all tin can maintain your smartphone battery health much longer.

When should I accuse my telephone?

The golden rule is to keep your battery topped up somewhere between 30% and 90% about of the time. Height information technology upwards when information technology drops below 50%, but unplug it before it hits 100%. For this reason, you might desire to reconsider leaving it plugged in overnight.

Pushing in the concluding charge from eighty-100% causes a lithium-ion battery to age faster.

Possibly it's better to recharge in the forenoon instead, at the breakfast table or on your function desk. That way, it is easier to go on an centre on the battery percentage during charging.

iOS users can use the Shortcuts app to ready a notification when the battery level reaches a certain percentage. This is washed nether the tab "Automation" so "Battery Level".

Giving your phone a full recharge is non fatal for a telephone bombardment, and information technology seems almost counter-intuitive non to do so, but giving it a full recharge every time you charge it will shorten its lifespan.

Also, at the other terminate of the calibration, avert allowing your telephone battery to get beneath 20%.

Lithium-ion batteries don't feel good about going besides far below the 20% marker. Instead, see the extra xx% "at the lesser" as a buffer for enervating days, but on weekdays showtime charging when the warning for Low Battery level appears.

In short, lithium-ion batteries thrive best in the middle. Don't go a low battery percent, but also not too high.

Should I accuse my phone battery to 100%?

No, or at least not every time you lot accuse it. Some people recommend that you do a full cypher to 100% battery recharge (a "charge wheel") one time a month - as this re-calibrates the battery, which is a bit like restarting your computer.

Just others disregard this as a myth for current lithium-ion batteries in phones.

To go on your long-term battery life in practiced health, frequent, small charges are ameliorate than total recharging.

With iOS 13 and after, Optimised Battery Charging (Settings>Battery> Battery Health) is designed to reduce the wear on your bombardment and improve its lifespan past reducing the time your iPhone spends fully charged. When the feature is enabled, your iPhone should filibuster charging past eighty% in sure situations, depending on Location Services that tell the telephone when it is at home or work (when you are less likely to need a full charge) compared to when you are travelling.

The deeper you discharge a lithium battery, the more than stress is inflicted on the battery. So, topping upward oft extends battery life.

Also see: Best ability banks

Should I charge my telephone overnight?

As a rule, it'due south all-time to avoid, despite the convenience of waking up with a full battery in the morn. Each total charge counts every bit a 'bicycle', and your phone is only built to last for a set number.

If you lot charge overnight, you are guaranteed to miss when the phone exceeds the magic lxxx% mark that is best for extended long-term life.

While well-nigh modern smartphones have built-in sensors to shut off charging when they hit 100%, if yet turned on they will lose a small amount of bombardment while idle.

What you may get is a "trickle accuse" as the charger attempts to proceed the phone at 100% as your telephone naturally loses on its own accuse during the night. This means that your telephone is constantly billowy between a full charge and a little bit below that total accuse - 99% to 100% and back again during a longer-than-required accuse. It can likewise heat the phone up, which is also bad for the battery.

So, charging during the twenty-four hour period is better than charging overnight.

Your best policy is to have Do Not Disturb and Airplane Mode switched on. Better notwithstanding, you could completely switch off your telephone, just that may not be possible if you rely on it as an alarm or wish to be ready to accept calls at all hours.

Some devices are also set up to power up once the cable is connected past default. Even during waking hours, information technology'south best to catch your phone earlier information technology hits 100%, or at least not get out the charger supplying charge to an already full bombardment for too long.

If you are leaving it plugged in for a long period of time, removing the case tin prevent it over-heating.

Will fast-charging damage my phone?

The majority of modern smartphones support some form of fast-charging. Yet, this oftentimes requires you to buy an boosted accessory. The industry standard is Qualcomm's Quick Charge, which delivers 18W of power.

Nonetheless, many phone makers accept their own fast charge standard, many of which tin deliver fifty-fifty faster speeds by adjusting power management lawmaking to request a higher voltage charge is sent. Samsung is now fifty-fifty selling a 45W charger!

While fast-charging itself volition not harm your phone's bombardment, which is congenital to support it, the heat generated will potentially affect its lifespan. And then it's on you to balance the advantages of faster charging with the convenience of chop-chop topping upwardly your phone earlier you lot dash out the door.

In the same way that phone batteries don't like extreme heat, they as well don't like the cold. So it goes without saying that you should avert leaving your telephone in a hot car, on the embankment, side by side to the oven, out in the snow. Typically, batteries perform at their optimum somewhere between xx and xxx°C, but short periods outside of this should be fine.

Tin can I apply any telephone charger?

Where possible employ the charger that came with your telephone, every bit it is sure to have the correct rating. Or make sure that a third-party charger is approved past your phone's manufacturer. Cheap alternatives from Amazon or eBay may impairment your telephone, and there have been several reported cases of cheap chargers actually catching on burn down.

That said, your phone should draw only the power that it needs from a USB charger.

Also come across: Best USB Chargers for your telephone and Best Wireless Chargers.

Bombardment memory issue: Fact or fiction?

The battery retention effect concerns batteries that are regularly charged betwixt 20% and eighty% and suggests that the phone might somehow 'forget' that actress 40% you routinely ignore.

Lithium batteries, which are in the majority of modernistic smartphones, do not suffer the battery retentivity effect, though older nickel-based (NiMH and NiCd) batteries do.

Nickel-based forget their full capacity if they aren't discharged and charged from 0 to 100%. But, habitually cycling your lithium-ion battery from 0 to 100% volition adversely touch its battery life.

Avoid Parasite Loads

If you charge your phone while using information technology - for example, while watching a video - you can "confuse" the battery by creating mini-cycles, during which parts of the battery continually bicycle and deteriorate at a faster rate than the rest of the jail cell.

Ideally, yous should plow your device off while charging. But, more realistically, but leave it idle while charging.

Battery Settings iPhone

Battery protection settings by phone maker

OnePlus has a battery monitor called "Optimized Charging" from its OxygenOS 10.0. This is activated under "Settings / Battery". The smartphone then remembers what time you usually climb out of bed in the morning and only completes the critical concluding step of charging from 80 to 100% shortly earlier you get upwardly - that is, as late equally possible.

Google also offers integrated bombardment protection for its devices from Pixel four onwards. You will find the "Adaptive Charging" function under "Settings / Bombardment / Smart battery". If you use it to charge your device afterwards 9pm and at the same time set an alarm clock between 5am and 10am, yous will have a freshly charged smartphone in your manus when you get up, but the total charge is only completed soon before the alert clock rings.

Samsung has a battery charge function in selected tablets, such every bit the Galaxy Tab S6 or Galaxy Tab S7. "Protect Battery" tin can be institute under "Settings / Device maintenance / Battery". When the part is activated, the device simply defines the maximum capacity of the battery to 85%.

Apple tree's "Optimized Bombardment Charging" part is primarily intended to reduce the fourth dimension window in which the bombardment is heavily charged. Fully charging over fourscore percent is delayed or not even carried out in certain situations. Information technology as well depends on your own location, so energy gaps should be avoided when travelling or on vacation, for example.

Huawei's battery assistant is called "Smart Charge" and is available from EMUI 9.1 or Magic UI 2.1. The office can be switched on nether "Settings / Bombardment / Additional Settings", which means that charging of the device is stopped at 80% at night and but completed before you become up. Hither, as well, usage behaviour and, if necessary, an alarm clock setting is included in the planning.

Sony's "Battery Care" office is found in the Battery settings for many models. The device learns when and for how long users connect the charging cable and adjusts the cease of charging and then that it coincides with the disconnection of the power supply. Sony devices tin can likewise exist charged with a maximum charge of 80 or 90%.

Keep the phone battery absurd

As you lot might expect, heat is a battery's enemy. Don't permit it get too hot or too cold - especially when charging. If a phone gets too hot, you will be dissentious its bombardment, and so endeavor to keep it absurd where possible.

Charging the phone from a power bank on the beach in a deckchair is a worst-example scenario for battery health. Endeavour keeping your telephone in the shade if you need to charge on a hot summer day. Charging by a window can likewise pb to backlog rut. Read how to cool down a hot iPhone.

The cold is also not good for batteries either. If you come in from a long walk in the winter common cold, permit the telephone reach room temperature before you plug in the cable.

Heat and batteries do not belong together. Batteries are a fleck similar humans, at least in the narrow sense that they thrive best around 20-25 degrees.

Storing bombardment tips

Don't exit a lithium battery lying around as well long at 0% - if you're non using information technology for a while, get out information technology with around l% charge.

If yous are going to put the phone away for a long time, first charge it to somewhere between 40-80% and then turn off the phone.

You'll find the battery will drain between 5% and 10% each calendar month, and if you let it discharge completely information technology might go incapable of holding a charge at all. That's probably why an old phone's battery life is and then much worse after a few months in a drawer, fifty-fifty when it hasn't been used.

More tips for longer phone bombardment life

• Use the ability salvage mode more frequently. Information technology reduces power consumption and thus reduces the number of cycles.

• Try your screen's Night Style, as the phone turns off the pixels displaying blackness, This means you save battery life when the white panels go dark. Or but plow your phone'south brightness down!

• Turn off background updates for apps yous think don't need them - information technology also reduces power consumption.

• Plow off or put the phone in Plane Mode when y'all don't need information technology, such every bit overnight - preferably with a reasonable battery level left.

• Don't force quit the apps. Your phone's operating system is best at pausing the apps that aren't needed - it uses lower power consumption than a "cold starting time" for each app again and again.

• Avoid cheap chargers and cables. When buying charging cables and plugs, information technology'due south a false economic system to purchase inexpensive products. Hardware should have a accuse control rather than an inferior, cheap circuit - otherwise at that place is a take chances of overcharging. See all-time phone chargers, best charging cables for iPhone, best USB-C cables, and best MicroUSB charging cables.

Additional reporting past Samuel Nyberg and Steffen Zellfelder.