How should you charge your cell phone to make the battery last longer?

2023-05-17 09:52:00, Tech CNA

How should you charge your cell phone to make the battery last longer?

Illustrative photo

Do you leave your cell phone charging all night? You never unplug it? Do you expect it to fully download or charge 100 percent? There is nothing worse than this. Studies have found that many people do not charge their cell phones properly.

And yet, it would be enough to read and follow the instructions that are given when you buy your new smartphone on how to preserve the battery capacity as long as possible. However, we do not consider them. Because we are usually used to charging the phone at night while we sleep, without removing it from the socket, and then disconnecting it in the morning, while the battery symbol shows "100%". This is a very wrong move.

1. Do not let it overheat

The first big mistake many of us make is not removing the protective case while charging. Out of laziness or ignorance, we tend to charge the mobile phone without taking it out. Because we reason: they always have a small hole at the height of the charging port, so why take advantage of this convenience?

In fact, especially during the hot summer season, or if the plug we use is placed near heat sources, it would be good to remove the smartphone from its protective case. The reason is very simple: to avoid overheating, the worst condition for any lithium-ion battery, which accelerates its degradation.

2. Don't charge it to 100 percent

Another bad habit is letting the mobile phone go to zero or vice versa charging it to 100 percent. Instead of these extremes, experts recommend that the battery should always be kept between 30-70 percent. That's because lithium-ion batteries work by constantly moving small mobile particles called "charge carriers" between the electrodes.

In this way, the component parts are put under pressure, and over time the efficiency inevitably declines. Charging the phone for a long time, or letting it go to zero, are two ways that put too much pressure on the electrodes and reduce the life of the battery.

3. Do not charge at night

And here we return to the most common mistake: charging devices at night. The problem is not that by doing this the maximum charge will be achieved, but that for hours and hours the charger will continue to supply the battery with useless energy, first of all overheating it, but also damaging its electrodes .

As Kevin Pardi explains in The New York Times: “It's very easy to fill a dry sponge with water. But trying to force a nearly saturated sponge to soak up the last drops of liquid requires more pressure, and leaves more liquid pooling on the surface. This accumulation in a battery is called SEI (Solid Electrolytic Interface) and reduces its overall capacity".

In short, if you want your cell phone battery to maintain optimal standards for as long as possible, don't let it fully discharge, take it out of the protective case when recharging it, and charge it maybe in the evening after dinner and unplug it before you go to sleep, or in the morning when you wake up. That way, no one will say thank you, except maybe your cell phone./ CNA.al