At what percentage should i charge my iPhone? Everyone uses their iPhone so often each day and it can be annoying when your phone is getting low on battery. Many people are confused about how batteries work in smartphones.
How often do you need to charge your iPhone to make it work as efficiently as possible? Is it best to keep topping your iPhone off to get it to 100% if you’re at home, or should you let it drain? Most people don’t know the answer to these questions and they want to figure it out.
Modern smartphones make use of lithium-ion batteries that have lifespans of approximately two or three years. After this time, the battery capacity will start to drop. It is said that the battery capacity of modern smartphones will degrade by 20% after the three-year mark. This is an unfortunate truth, but most people upgrade their smartphones every few years and that turns this into a non-issue.
At What Percentage Should I Charge My iPhone?
Knowing that modern smartphone batteries aren’t built to last decades shouldn’t come as a surprise. You still want to get the most out of your battery, though. How often should you charge your smartphone battery to make things work the best? Well, the truth is that the more often you charge the battery the better.
Charging your smartphone battery more often is going to reduce the amount of battery degradation that you have to deal with. You could substantially limit battery degradation if you top the battery off once it is drained by 10%, but this might not be practical for most people. Instead, you might want to consider letting your battery drain to around 50% capacity and then charge it to full. This is the best way to maximize the health of your smartphone battery.
Why is it better to charge your battery so often than it is to let it drain? To understand this, you need to know that these lithium-ion batteries work differently than the old nickel batteries. These batteries become stressed by the depth of discharge and by extreme battery levels. It means that draining your battery completely is actually not the best idea when you’re trying to prolong the life of your smartphone battery.
Old Battery Myths That Can Be Discarded
There are several old battery myths that can be discarded when talking about modern smartphones. It used to be said that fully discharging a battery was best for the health of the battery. That just isn’t the case with modern smartphone lithium-ion batteries. Batteries do not need to be drained completely and then recharged to full nor do they lose capacity when charged repeatedly after only using a bit of the battery.
Frequent charging was a problem that could degrade batteries when people were using the nickel batteries. Modern smartphones don’t use nickel batteries and these old ways of thinking don’t apply any longer. The old nickel batteries could basically forget capacity limits when they aren’t charged from 1% all the way up to 100%. You don’t need to worry about this any longer, which is nice.
Batteries Will Deteriorate No Matter What
It’s also important to understand that your battery is going to deteriorate no matter what type of recharging habits you have. Even if your battery was to just sit on the shelf, it would continue to degrade over time. When you cycle the battery this is going to cause internal changes to take place. The lithium count of your battery will start to drop and the overall battery capacity will get lower.
The rate of deterioration will increase if you maintain a low battery level consistently, have a high discharge rate, and go for deeper discharges. Older smartphones will have more problems with deterioration than newer ones, too. This means that having good battery charging habits as a phone gets older will be more useful. To put the least stress on your battery that you can, it’s a good idea to let it only drop to around 50% capacity.
Exceptions to Know About
Now that you know that regular charging is better than letting your battery drain to nothing, it’s going to be easier to keep an eye on things. However, there are some exceptions that you need to consider. Sometimes smartphone batteries will have issues that will cause the batteries to rapidly drain. If you notice your battery going from half power all the way down to 30% fast, then something is amiss.
In this circumstance, it can actually be helpful to let the battery drain to zero and then recharge it to capacity. This will calibrate your phone’s battery so that it will work properly again. Battery readings can be thrown off sometimes due to inconsistencies between the digital battery and the electrochemical battery. If your phone ever shows signs of giving you inaccurate battery readings, then it’s good to calibrate it.
The Best Battery Charging Habits
The best battery charging habits can make a difference when it comes to prolonging your battery life. As mentioned earlier, it’s better to charge more often than it is to let the battery drain completely. If you want to get the most out of your phone’s battery, then you could try to charge it after it drains by 10%. If you’re working from home and it’s convenient to do this, then it can help to maintain the battery.
However, most will note how impractical that is and most people aren’t going to want to charge a phone that still has such a high charge. Instead, you should endeavor to let your phone fall to the middle range before charging it each time. Try to stick to letting your phone go down to around 50% charge before you put it on the charger. If you do this, then you should be able to prolong the battery life a bit.
If you aren’t able to do this every single time, then you shouldn’t really worry about it because it isn’t going to be a huge deal. You aren’t going to be able to keep the battery from degrading somewhat over time even if you have superb battery charging habits. The best thing to do is really just to charge your smartphone when it is convenient for you to do so. You don’t necessarily have to go out of your way to recharge your phone if it’s going to feel impractical to do so.
It’s also going to be good to try to avoid overcharging your battery since that can be harmful. There are charging cables out there that will make your life easier. Some cables will automatically shut off the charge when they detect that your phone is at full charge. This avoids overcharging the phone and it makes it easier to keep things working properly.
Now that you know everything that there is to know about charging your iPhone, it’s going to be easier to approach things. It isn’t something that you should stress about and most people aren’t going to have an easy time charging their phones every single time it drops to 50% battery charge. Don’t let your need to charge the iPhone overshadow your enjoyment of your device. Just try to charge it when you can and realize that you’re likely going to upgrade to a new phone after three years are up anyway.
