Your smartphone has less and less battery life. This is a sign that the battery is worn out. To maintain its performance and extend its lifespan, you should follow this very simple rule established by experts.
Your smartphone battery is fragile, and you must take care of it! You have surely encountered this: over the months, the autonomy of your device gradually declines, and its courageous autonomy from the beginning is no more than a distant memory. This is unfortunately normal: the lithium-ion batteries equipped with our smartphones wear out over time and with their use but also with their recharging. After a certain number of complete charge and discharge cycles, it will gradually lose its efficiency.
Phone charging: Follow the 80/20 rule
However, it is easy to delay this inevitable moment by applying some easy-to-implement tips. The first, in which the environmental transformation agency ADEME was particularly involved, is to apply the 80/20 rule, which simply consists of keeping the battery level between 20 and 80% of its capacity, no more and no less! In practice, you should not charge your smartphone up to 100%, and prevent the battery from discharging below 20%. This is for a simple reason: less than 20% and more than 80% of capacity, a higher voltage will be applied during charging, which will cause overheating and exhaust the battery more quickly.
In other words, charging your smartphone at night after a long day isn’t necessarily ideal. Because once your battery reaches 100%, your smartphone will continue to maintain high voltage until you unplug it. Another behavior to avoid: leaving your smartphone plugged in all day while using it. Ideally, it’s best to charge your smartphone frequently during the day, without having to fully charge it.
Activate your smartphone’s smart charging options
Smartphone manufacturers are well aware of this problem, but they offer solutions to make your life easier. Since iOS 13, Apple, for example, has introduced “optimized charging” on its iPhones. In practice, this technology stops charging beyond 80% at night, so your iPhone reaches 100% right before you wake up. With the new iPhone 15s, Apple now also lets you stop charging at 80%.
On the Android side, similar technologies exist. Google offers what it calls “adaptive charging” on the Pixels, which works similarly to Apple’s gadget. Samsung offers 85% charging blocking on some of these models. If you have a smartphone of another brand, feel free to look at the battery settings to activate a similar option, if necessary.
Other simple tips will also help you extend your battery life. Since high temperatures have a negative effect on batteries, avoid intense tasks, such as a 3D game for example, when your smartphone is plugged in, or unplug it when you notice a significant increase in temperature.
Another way to reduce your battery: simply consume less, in order to extend your autonomy every day! So, feel free to use Power Saving mode even if your phone is well charged, to reduce the screen brightness, or even switch to Airplane mode, which consumes much less power, when you don’t have the immediate connection needed for your cell phone. Your battery will thank you.
