Your smartphone is a minor miracle,
a pocket-sized computer that can fulfill almost every whim. But none of its superpowers
matter a bit if it runs out of juice. With removable batteries becoming more
and more rare, you've got to take good care of the one you got. Fortunately,
it's not to hard keep the lithium-ion powering your everything machine happy if
you follow a few simple rules.
Obviously, the first rule for
extending your battery life is not using up all your battery life playing candy
crush and walking around with Wi-Fi and GPS enabled when you're not using
either and really, really need your phone to last that extra
hour. But aside from that, there are some basic rules for care and charging,
and they're the simplest baseline for a healthy battery.
Top
it off
You may vaguely recall hearing
something about rechargeable batteries and the ""memory
effect."" You know, that if you don't ""teach""
your rechargeable batteries their full potential by taking them from totally
full to totally empty, they'll ""forget"" part of their
capacity. Well forget all that. Right now. It's wrong.
Battery memory is a real thing, but
it applies to nickel-based batteries; your trusty sidekick (literal Sidekick or
otherwise) doubtlessly has a lithium-ion battery, and it needs to be treated a
little differently. Specifically, it should be topped off whenever you get the
chance.
To get the most out of a lithium-ion
battery, you should try to keep it north of 50 percent as much as possible.
Going from all the way full to all the way empty won't help at all; in fact,
it'll do a little damage, and it's even worse if do a full drain on a regular
basis. It won't make your battery explode or anything, but it will shorten its
lifespan.
But! You don't want to have it
charging all the time either; lithium-ion batteries can get overheated. Luckily
for you, your charger is smart enough to help you with this, and will cut your
phone off for a spell once it's full. And to complicate matters a little
further your battery doesn't particularly like being all the
way full either. In fact, your battery will behave the best if you take it off
the charge before it hits 100 percent, and leaving it plugged when it's already
full is going to cause a little degradation.
So if you're really particular about
optimizing your battery's life, you should try to go from around 40 percent to
around 80 percent in one go, and then back down whenever possible. A bunch of
tiny charges isn't as bad as going from 100 down to zero all the time, but it's
not optimal either.
Keep
it cool
It's easy to worry about bad
charging habits thanks to the training we've had from old rechargeable
batteries, but lithium-ion batteries have a worse enemy: heat. Your
smartphone's battery will degrade much much faster when it’s hot, regardless of
whether it's being used or just sitting around doing nothing.
At an average temperature of 32
degrees fahrenheit, a lithium-ion battery will lose six percent of its maximum capacity
per year. At 77 degrees, that number jumps to 20 percent, and at 104 degrees
it's a whopping 35. Sure, it's not exactly practical (or sane) to keep your
phone in the fridge, but it's worth going out of your way to prevent long stays
in hot cars and the like.
Avoid
wireless charging
Wireless charging is can be
incredibly convenient if your phone can do it, but it's not without its
disadvantages. The inductive, wireless chargers out there today have this nasty
habit of generating a fair bit of waste heat. And while wasted energy is just a
bummer in general, that heat will also toast your battery in the process.
That's no bueno. It's a little less convenient, but standard plug-in charging
is going to keep your battery in better shape, especially if you're some place
warm to begin with.
Never
go to zero
Obviously, using your battery is
going to make it degrade. But it's going to slowly die even if you just leave
that iPad in the closet for a bit. There's a trick to minimizing that
inevitable aging though: leave it a little bit of juice.
If you're going to be shelving any
lithium-ion battery for a long time, try to leave it with at least 40 percent
battery power to tide it over. Lithium-ion batteries don't hemmorage power at
30 percent a month like nickel-metal-hydride batteries do; they'll lose maybe
five to ten percent of their charge each month.
And when lithium-ion batteries get
too low-like, literally zero percent-they get seriously unstable, and dangerous
to charge. To prevent explosion-type disasters if you do try to charge one,
lithium-ion batteries have built-in self-destruct circuits that will disable
(read: destroy) the battery for good, if it reaches rock bottom.
And sure, that'll save you from a face full of battery-acid, but it'll also
leave you short one battery.
Don't
sweat it too much
It's easy to get protective of your
battery, but it's also easy to get lazy. And that's fine, because as long as
you're not a complete idiot, you'll be OK. Typically, a lithium-ion battery
lasts for three to five years, and chances are you're going to want to swap out
your gadgets sometime in that window anyway. The slight damage of a technically
bad idea like leaving your phone plugged in all night every night, or using
wireless charging, might be worth the convenience.
Still, it's pretty easy to keep your
battery reasonably healthy just by avoiding particularly egregious torture like
letting your phone discharge from full to zero every single day, or leaving it
in a hot car all the time. And the next time you make it back home with power
to spare, you'll thank yourself for it.
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