I’ve recently bought a Nokia mobile phone.
It’s simple to charge it up (e.g. the phone displays a message when the battery is full), but within a week or so the phone doesn’t receive calls and appears to need recharging.
Is this a common problem?
Would leaving the phone on charge cause a problem?
Any help will be gratefully received. 
Do I understand you right that you complain about a mobile phone losing its charge in a week? In 2025? Most people with normal usage have to charge daily, at least every two days. And even if you do nothing within that week with your phone, it will draw enough juice on idle to need recharging.
Most modern phones have no problem being on a charger 24/7. They know how to manage the battery and charging. Some even allow you some control such as choosing a trickle charge or fast charge (trickle lets your battery last longer but takes longer to charge…vice versa with fast charging).
I’ll agree with @EinsteinsHund, expecting a phone to last a week on one charge is a tall order. Most modern phones need charging daily cuz their charge lasts about 24 hours (give or take depending on usage). Two days is pushing it. Maybe a flip phone could go five days if not used.
In short, plug it in and charge it more often. Usually this is done before you go to bed. Let it charge overnight while you sleep and you are good to go for the next day.
Wait… @glee, is this the first time you’ve had a cell phone ? 
I’m impressed (and a bit jealous)!
I hadn’t considered that possibility, and maybe my first response could sound a bit snarky, though that was not my intention. Apologies to @glee anyway.
Just a small addition: if you don’t charge it to 100% each time but only to 80% your battery will last longer.
I mean, I had the same thought as you. It’s a pretty unexpected question to be asking in 2025, except maybe 6 days ago…
I’m pretty curious what the OP did for the last couple decades (though they’re under no obligation to share, of course). It would actually be pretty scientifically exciting to find someone who hasn’t used a cell phone from 1999 (when glee joined the SDMB) till now 
I mean, how did they read the SDMB in bed?!
Don’t mind us, OP, we’re just poking fun. If this truly is your first cell phone (at least in a while), seriously, it’s really impressive and you should be proud that you’ve resisted all that marketing and waste.
Keep in mind that your phone has to be plugged into AC power AND on WiFi in order to do its nightly automatic backups. You can do a manual backup anytime you want by going through settings to do it. You might want to do one considering your shaky start with it.
Yes indeed - and I’ve never sent or received a text either. 
Thanks - I’ll do that.
Well there you go - I’m a scientific anomaly. 
Why would I want to read the SDMB in bed anyway? 
In case it helps, I’ve been retired for over 15 years and have 4 computers, plus a landline at home.
P.S. No apology necessary - I knew I was a little ‘behind the times’…
I charge my Motorola Edge every night. Usually by bedtime it’s down to 30%. My Motorola has a built-in process that keeps it from overcharging. Every cell phone I’ve ever owned, and that’s been about eight, I’ve always charged each of them overnight. I never heard of a phone holding a charge for a week.
Gosh, there are probably “user experience” researchers — or maybe archaeologists 
— who would love to line up to chat with you!
I wish I could’ve used you as a role model for my parents, who got a smartphone way too soon after retirement and now spend all their time looking at short videos of cats and fake news and fake cats… sigh.
Nightly charging is only necessary for smartphones, which typically don’t last more than a day on a charge. In your case, it’s fine to charge it every 2-3 nights instead if you prefer, but also fine to charge it every night if that’s easier to remember.
As @Whack-a-Mole said, modern phones should automatically take care of all that. Though, like @LouMa said, if you can limit charging to 80% (usually via a setting in the phone, not manually unplugging it), the battery will have a longer lifespan over the years. In your case, though, it won’t matter much… even a degraded battery will still last you much longer than most of our phones, new.
It’s best not to let the battery get below 20% if possible, so plug it in if it starts to get that low.
Either way, it’s no big deal. Just plug it in every few days or every night and you’ll be fine. Your phone might even have a user-replaceable battery, like the old cordless phones, and in that case it’ll matter even less… you can just get a new battery after a few years.
What do you mean? Fighting ignorance is a full-time job! You wouldn’t want to have ignorant dreams, would you?
I don’t think that nokia make smart phones. I only just stopped using my nokia
last week *, and that one’s battery lasted for at least a week if i didn’t
use if for calls/texts (which was all it could do).
*and only then because my service provider sent a text saying
they were going to switch off 3G so I’d need a new phone or sim card.
I didn’t even know that Nokia as a brand still existed, I (maybe wrongly) remember that they went bankrupt at least 15 years ago because they had missed to jump on the smart phone bandwagon.
I’m curious, @glee, what caused you to get a cel phone, now?
Not only can you buy a Nokia 3210, it plays Snake!
Return of the Nokia 3210: Y2K Nostalgia with Modern Upgrades
It looks like HMD has licenced the Nokia brand.
Nokia made a whole bunch of bad management decisions about 15 years ago. They ended up partnering with Microsoft, and eventually sold the mobile phone part of the company to Microsoft. But then Microsoft sold this to HMD Global a few years later. Nokia as a company still exists, but they don’t make Nokia brand phones. Those are now made by HMD Global.
After a partnership with Microsoft and Nokia’s subsequent market struggles,[13][14][15] in 2014, Microsoft bought Nokia’s mobile phone business,[16][17] incorporating it as Microsoft Mobile.[18]
The Nokia brand returned to the mobile and smartphone market in 2016 through a licensing arrangement with HMD.[24] Nokia continues to be a major patent licensor for most large mobile phone vendors.[25] As of 2018, Nokia is the world’s third-largest network equipment manufacturer.[26]
This.
My battery is a few years old and if I’m running apps I get maybe 6 hours with the screen turned down.
I thought that when it displayed 100% to me it really was only 80%
Oh my, I had that phone (like everybody else), and Snake drove me bonkers.
I have to charge my cheapo (non ‘smart’) phone every day.
It obviously has a small capacity battery.
On the other hand, it only takes a few minutes to recharge: what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts…
As others have said, I think that most modern phones have protection against overcharge problems… that was an issue solved quite some time ago…