Six Questions About Your Phone's Battery Answered

Guidance to Phone’s Battery

One of the constant problem faced by smartphone users is the battery life and while the handsets tend to be quite faster and powerful, its batteries tend to last for a shorter time in a day due to heavy usage or even moderate use after a period of time. The lithium-ion battery seemed to be around for over two decades and has not changed since Sony began developing them in 1991. Inspite of great efforts invested in replacing them, these batteries seem to be with in use for several more years. The following guidance could be helpful regarding phone’s battery:

1. Do I need to charge the phone when I get it?

It is not necessary to charge on receiving the phone. Earlier battery types like nickel cadmium had memory effect which meant that the batteries could maintain some capacity depending on how they had been charged and discharged. This would mean that electronic products usually come with advice to charge them completely and keep them plugged in for hours prior to use. But in the case of modern lithium-ion batteries, several people tend to agree that there is no such effect and the batteries seem to be dependable. A smartphone is fine to run out of box without filling in, beforehand.

2. Does battery life get worse over a period of time?

The battery tends to weaken over time. Modern lithium-ion batteries have been designed to withstand a certain amount of cycles, a full drain of the battery and a cycle is equal to a battery fully draining though all this does not have to be from one charge. As per Apple, one could use 75% of the battery’s capacity one day and then recharge it fully overnight. If one uses 25% the next day, one would have discharged a total of 100% and the two days would add up to one charge cycle. The lifetime of batteries measure in cycles seems to vary between various devices, though naturally have between 300 and 500 full cycles prior to reaching 70% of their original capacity. That is equal to a couple of years of usage, but the graph shown from Battery University indicates that capacity tends to begin to drop down quickly.

3. Does leaving the smartphone charging damage the battery?

Generally it does not damage the battery. There have been recommendations that keeping the phone charged overnight or continuously could force the battery to weaken since it tends to receive more power than needed. New battery systems nevertheless knows to reduce this to a trickle and only tops up a battery with the power needed. The exclusion is in very hot situations since heat tends to cause lithium-ion batteries to deteriorate somewhat reducing its performance. Since charging a phone tends to heat up a bit, combining this with the hot temperature could cause the damage. You could keep the phone comparatively cool while charging by placing it out of the sun for instance.

4. Can the phone be charged often or should wait till the phone battery has gone well down before charging it?

New lithium-ion batteries tend to gain nothing by being powered down and long charging cycles tend to be worse than short ones. Incomplete discharges and charges seem to prolong battery life, 50% discharges tend to occur between 1,200 and 1,500 times prior to capacity drops of 70% of its original span when compared to 300 to 500 for 0-100% charges. This efficiently would mean running the phone down 50%, charging it up again and running it down to 50% again would be better than a complete discharge.

5. Does turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth improve the battery life? What about airplane mode?

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are not power hungry as they tend to be or as the phone’s cellular radio. Keeping them on would not possibly drain a vast amount of battery, though if one wants to completely maximise efficiency, it could help somewhat. Having the cellular radio look for signal in location where there is no signal, could be draining. You could activate airplane mode if the mobile signal is not needed. If you can connect to Wi-Fi go ahead – using 4G or 3G tends to drain the battery quicker than Wi-Fi.

6. How else can battery be saved?

Various things can be done to decrease how much power the phone could be utilising that will keep your battery lasting for a longer period of time and would deteriorate more slowly which include:

• Turning down the screen brightness 
• Disabling location as well as background app refresh for apps which do not tend to need it 
• Not closing the apps in multitasking – they are idle and opening them later on would tend to use up more battery 
• Disabling push notifications for email, Twitter and Facebook