They used to warn against recharging batteries before they were mostly discharged. They build a memory or something.
What’s the rule on phones? Wait or is it OK to charge early? Like 75% for example?
We’ve only had a million threads on this topic.
Just charge it whenever you want to. The integrated charge controller handles all the details.
This article talks about modern batteries and exercising them. Doesn’t say much about when to recharge them and waiting till empty.
That article talks about Nickle-Cadmium batteries, and to some degree, NiMH. Modern cell phone batteries on Li-Ion, and don’t have the memory problem. That article is not relevant to current cell phones.
No, the article talks about old battery technologies (NiCd and Ni-MH). Modern phones have lithium ion batteries, and sophisticated battery management circuits that won’t let you over-charge or over-discharge the battery even if you try.
Modern phones use lithium ion batteries which don’t have the memory problem (that was mostly old Nickel-Cadmium batteries).
Lithium ion batteries are lightweight and have a high energy density for their size, which makes them great for laptops and cell phones. Unfortunately, the longevity of lithium ion batteries sucks. They start dying from the moment they are made, and there’s not much that you can do about it.
The big killer of lithium ion batteries is heat. This is more of an issue for laptops than cell phones, but it is much better to keep the phone on your desk than it is to keep it in your pocket.
As for charging, lithium ion batteries tend to last slightly longer if you don’t keep them fully charged. Mostly though, it doesn’t matter much how you treat them. They are going to die young no matter what you do. In a laptop you’ll often get about 3 years out of them due to the heat inside a typical laptop. In phones they tend to last a bit longer, but don’t expect to get more than about 5 years out of them.
Just wanted to double check. These smart phones go down so quick after watching a few YouTube vids or web surfing. I’ll start charging it more frequently instead of waiting till it’s nearly dead
I’ve noticed these smart phones get warm. Mine is too big to fit in any pocket. But letting it cool on the desk is a good tip for people that do carry it in a pocket.
I recently came across this fascinating answer from StackExchange concerning how critically important these charge controllers are:
Much better? :dubious: I mean sure, ~90-ish is warmer than 70, but does keeping a phone in my pocket (instead of my desk) really make a noticeable difference in battery durability?
Probably somewhere around a 10 percent difference in the total lifespan of the battery.
The heat is from the backlight. Turn-off the back light before you put it in your pocket and you should be fine.
Sometimes you can have an app running in the background that is using up a lot of system resources, and therefore power. So every so often shut down all the apps on your phone. Also sometimes helpful is shutting off wifi. My last phone used to suck down power when wifi was enabled. But my new phone doesn’t have that problem.
I checked MikeS’s link, and it was indeed fascinating. I gather rapid discharge can create problems not just when the discharge is occurring, but more particularly when the recharge afterwards occurs.
Is that the problem with hoverboards and their risk of explosion (prompting the odd celebrity meltdown)? I imagine that mass-movers like hoverboards are rapid dischargers.
That article was updated on 3/10/11. In a field that evolves nearly everyday, it’s not really accurate to say a 5+ year old article is about modern technology. As others mentioned, phones use li-ion batteries now, which your article doesn’t even mention.
Not really.
Most of the heat is from the processor / radio ICs.
Don’t drain a modern phone to empty and then leave it uncharged for a long period of time.
A “long period of time” is something like a year though, so you don’t need to be paranoid about it and most people don’t need to concern themselves at all about it.
If you’re using a device that can alternately run either off the battery or run off of AC power (like a laptop) then the less you use the battery the longer it will last.
Draining and recharging a battery repeatedly will wear it out. It’s not a matter of frequency but total charge. In other words if you drain a battery halfway before recharging it back to full, then do the same thing again, that’s the same as draining it fully once and fully recharging it.