What Are Your Battery Charging Habits?

[Heat_Fan89]

I've read that batteries should NOT be charged to 100% if you want to maintain good battery health. According to several battery experts, batteries should be charged no more than 80% of capacity with a 1-2 per month 100%. Supposedly the heat generated by taking a battery to 100% stresses the battery and reduced its lifespan.

Does it matter to you?

Have you seen a battery tail off if you've owned your phone more than 2-3 years?

 

[satinsilverem2]

This question has been answered time and time again. Ive owned iPhones since the 5 and have had the same charging pattern for every one since then. I plug it in when its low and before I go to bed. My last iPhone X had over 1400 cycles on the original battery when I turned it in and it still had 93 percent health. My current iPhone 12 Pro is charged with a MagSafe charger at night and has a MagSafe Battery Pack on it several times a day 250 cycles and still 100 percent health. I wouldn't worry about the battery health too much plug it in when you feel the need to and dont worry about it. Apple has baked in charging intelligence for years into their mobile devices more recently the phone gets an idea of your charging habits and will hold the battery at 80 percent until I knows you will be disconnecting the charger. The only Apple products that I manually control charging on are my notebooks. Since I keep my MBP docked 95 percent of the time I have an app to keep the charge to around 70 percent and its helped a lot.

 

[ian87w]

I've read that batteries should NOT be charged to 100% if you want to maintain good battery health. According to several battery experts, batteries should be charged no more than 80% of capacity with a 1-2 per month 100%. Supposedly the heat generated by taking a battery to 100% stresses the battery and reduced its lifespan.

Does it matter to you?

Have you seen a battery tail off if you've owned your phone more than 2-3 years?

I wouldn't worry about it. Modern phones have smart enough circuitry inside that they won't be "overcharging." Plus, more recent phones have smart charging behavior in the OS so they only charge up to a certain point.

For me personally, due to fast charging, I basically just charge my phone whenever. Never a full charge since it would only be connected for a few minutes here and there. I mean most phones now can have decent amount of charge within 30 minutes of charging anyway, and modern phones are efficient enough to give decent battery life without having to be plugged in on a daily basis.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Truth is that a phone never really gets to '100%' charged nor does it go to 0% charged before shutting down. Lithium chemistry is dangerous at those extremes

Your Battery Gauge Is Lying To You: Everything You Need To Know About Bump Charging And Inconsistent Battery Drain

www.androidpolice.com

That said, I tend to charge within the 40% range, to where it shows 'fully charged' and unplug. With today's charging tech, that just means an hour or two.

 

[Vegastouch]

I've read that batteries should NOT be charged to 100% if you want to maintain good battery health. According to several battery experts, batteries should be charged no more than 80% of capacity with a 1-2 per month 100%. Supposedly the heat generated by taking a battery to 100% stresses the battery and reduced its lifespan.

Does it matter to you?

Have you seen a battery tail off if you've owned your phone more than 2-3 years?

Never heard that. I charge mine to 100% every night. When it gets in the 20's, I'll charge it to about 60 or so.
My phone (4a) charges fast so sometimes it gets to 80 before I unplug it but when it's bed time, it get a full 100% every night.

I'm not worried about it. I keep the phone anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 years and get a new one.

 

[ackmondual]

I've been striving for 50% since that's what I heard as ideal, with some deviation from that (say, 10% to 20% in either direction). However, if I'm going on travel, I will top it off at 100%

 

[MarkX]

Life is waaaaaay too short to be concerned with a few percent of battery life here or there.

I stick my phone on charge by the bed every night and it's at 100% when I get up in the morning. On heavy days I may need to give a quick 20 minute or so boost during the day to see me through.

Is that the best way to maximize longevity of my phone's battery? I don't really know, however, I have done that with all my phone's. My last 2 iPhones after a year of use prior upgrading both showed 100% battery health so it can't be that bad.

 

[tbayrgs]

Life is waaaaaay too short to be concerned with a few percent of battery life here or there.

I stick my phone on charge by the bed every night and it's at 100% when I get up in the morning. On heavy days I may need to give a quick 20 minute or so boost during the day to see me through.

Is that the best way to maximize longevity of my phone's battery? I don't really know, however, I have done that with all my phone's. My last 2 iPhones after a year of use prior upgrading both showed 100% battery health so it can't be that bad.

This^. To be frankly honest, I use all of my tech as I need to and charge it when I can. I chalk this up to the same category of behaviors as micro-managing my wifi, bluetooth, etc that I see many others do here—I can’t be bothered. It’s part of the reason I’m drawn to iPhones as my daily—I just use the phone as it best fits my needs and forgive the cliche, but it generally just works.

I don’t use a phone for more than a year before it gets handed down to someone in my family so I don’t generally see any significant performance differences during my ownership. And as my kids or wife will almost certainly break their phone at least once during their ownership, I have Applecare+ on all of my phones. Side benefit is that it extends the manufacturers warranty so if battery health drops below 80%, replacement is covered at no additional cost.

Same goes pretty much for all of my other devices. Apple appears to have pretty tight control on battery charging behavior—I use their ‘optimization’ so I believe part of that limits charging to 80% in many cases of long inactivity on a charger (noticed it on my new Macbook) and it also doesn’t charge up my phone until a couple hours before i take it off the charger. I‘ve also notice my Pixel 4XL has similar behavior on my Pixel Stand..keeps it around 80%.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Since I don't believe in endless consumerism I've learned to keep things a lot longer and I have a ton of stuff that's approaching a decade old and still holding a decent charge on the factory non-removable battery (such as my Note 10.1, Tab 2 10.1, and Tab 7.0, all from 2012, bought used, still getting days of standby or over 7-8 hours of video playback via YouTube or 3-4 hours mobile gaming.) I am either doing everything right or it's not as important to babysit battery charging? It's like closing apps. Just leave it alone, and enjoy, and let the OS do the babysitting.

 

[Abazigal]

I just throw everything on a charger before I go to sleep and let everything charge overnight.