11 Smartphone Charging Habits That Will Improve Battery Life

Want to keep your smartphone battery working for longer? These are the tips you need.

Leaving the house while your mobile phone battery is about to die is a nightmare. Users want smartphones with longer battery life and quick recharge times.

Many people use battery bank chargers for outdoor travel to maintain digital access provided by smartphones. That is why smartphone manufacturers try their best to address these issues by designing efficient phones with longer battery life and fast charging capability.

However, you can also improve your smartphone's battery life by sticking to the following charging habits.

Always use a charger recommended and provided by your smartphone manufacturer. This practice becomes even more important if your phone supports fast charging. Good quality original chargers ensure longer and better battery life. Moreover, as the smartphone device and charger are designed and tested together, they are most likely to function optimally.

Never use a third-party charger or cheap alternatives that are not recommended or compatible with the specifications of the original smartphone adapter.

Fast charging heats the battery more than a normal charger, which can affect battery lifespan as batteries often get corroded due to oxidation from heat. Unfortunately, it's a common issue for many batteries. Therefore, it is better to use the fast charger only if necessary and, most importantly, supported by your phone. Alternatively, you can speed up charging by switching on the Power Saving and Airplane mode and leaving the phone idle while it is charging.

Ensure your phone battery doesn't completely drain. Battery draining results in a chemical imbalance inside the battery, which is difficult to reverse. This imbalance reduces battery life, and you'll have to charge your phone frequently, often until the battery backup gets short enough to become useless.

Don't charge your smartphone overnight while sleeping. Excessive charging produces heat inside the battery that can cause a change in the composition of the electrolyte and, in some cases, causing outgassing and a swollen battery, which affects the battery life. The heat produced is not only bad for the battery but also bad for the neighboring electronics of your device.

You're likely to have several applications open, and every app gets its share of processing and memory usage. This creates a processing load on the phone to provide these services at the expense of the current drawn from the battery. So, it is better to close the apps while not in use.

Li-ion batteries used in smartphones provide optimum performance and can hold a charge at maximum capacity for an average of 400-500 charging /discharging cycles. Each charge/discharge cycle brings the charging wear to the battery. If you use a smartphone for more than a couple of years, you'll note the battery capacity reduces compared to when it was new.

So to maximize the battery life of the smartphone, avoid full charge/discharge cycles. Partial discharge is better for battery life. When it comes to charging, aiming for 80-85% battery life is recommended.

Avoid playing games and heavy (power-consuming) apps while your smartphone is charging. Games and apps require processing power, use battery life, and hence heat the phone. This heat adds more temperature to the already hot charging process that can damage the battery and smartphone electronics.

Don't let your phone heat up under sunlight, near a heater or oven, as it drains faster when it's hot. It affects the battery and electronics in the same way as overcharging or non-compatible fast charging does. Similarly, don't keep your phone under extreme cold for long, as it can cause the electrolyte to harden/freeze.

Your screen brightness setting can be a huge energy drain, depending on the brightness level. Set the brightness to the optimum level required to use smartphones. You can also use dark mode to reduce battery consumption.

While charging your smartphone, you might have observed that the phone battery rapidly charges from 20% to 50%, yet it takes comparatively much longer when charging from 70% to 100%. As a result, charging efficiency reduces, and battery wear gets high when the smartphone approaches "full battery." Therefore, charging your phone's battery up to 85% is recommended to reduce battery wear.

Samsung also introduced a "Protect Battery" feature in its smartphones, which limits the maximum charge for the battery to 85% to minimize battery wear. As most lithium-ion batteries' capacity to hold maximum charge gets reduced after 500 charging cycles, Protect Battery may decrease the aging process and increase the battery's operational life span.

Smartphone apps use the device location for their services. However, such apps and services may not be required the whole day, especially when you are sleeping. Similarly, wireless features like Wi-Fi, mobile data, and Bluetooth may not be required 24 hours a day. So, limiting these features or switching them off when not required can help to save battery.

To get a healthier and longer battery life for your smartphone:

Understandably, we cannot always stick to every battery optimization tip on this list. Sometimes, you need to put your smartphone on charge before bed, and are you really going to set an alarm to wake up in two hours to turn it off again? The key point is to try and stick to as many smartphone battery charging habits as possible. Doing so will give your smartphone battery the best chance of lasting for a long time.

Ummara is a staff writer at MUO whose work focuses primarily on Linux. She has a degree in Telecommunication Engineering and has been writing about Linux for about 3 years.