When you think about the routines of modern life there are many that most people fall into. Wake up, bathroom, shower, breakfast, brush teeth, commute, work, lunch, work, exercise, dinner, shower, Netflix, sleep, repeat!This is the routine for the majority of people today. Ah! I forgot to include one thing. The need to charge your phone at every available opportunity. We charge our phones at night, we charge our phones at work, if we ever go on a trip we likely have to charge our phones twice as much. Charging our phone has become such a part of most people’s daily routine that we no longer think of what a nuisance it actually is! If you are tired of living from one charge to the next then read on, we have some excellent tips to get the most out of your phone battery.
The 50% mark
Whenever you see your phone at 50% this is the time to start charging. Some of us are predisposed from old technology to think it is good to let a battery die completely before recharging but this is false. 50% is the sweet spot for two reasons.
The standard battery in a phone is made up of two components, graphite and lithium cobalt oxide. The battery gives your phone energy by moving ions from the graphite to the lithium oxide. Once you put it on charge it moves them back to the graphite. This means that if your phone is at 50% this whole process is a lot easier as your phone is in a better balance. If that doesn’t make sense don’t worry. The key point is that by keeping your phone between 20% and 80% means it will be able to get many more charges in its life. By going below 20% you are putting too much strain on your phone and it will start to lose the ability to charge your phone properly.
The 50% mark is also good because it will get you out of trouble. You never know when you will need to get an Uber, prove someone wrong with a google or stalk your ex on Instagram. Having at least 50% battery ensures you can do the things that need to be done.
Stop charging at night
While charging at night is convenient, it is not good for the battery. The reason is the same as above. After a couple of hours at night your phone reaches 100%, it stops charging, a couple of minutes later your phone is at 99%, it will continue charging. It will continue on this ‘trickle charge’ cycle the whole night and is just unnecessary effort for those lithium ions. Think of the lithium ions as someone bringing the shopping in from the car. Brining the whole shopping in at once is a bit unnecessary and you may pull a muscle but bringing in each item one by one is just a waste of energy.
Spend a little extra on your charger
I used to think my phone battery was in terrible shape, then I bought the same brand charger as my phone and amazingly it started to hold a lot more charge and charged much, much faster. Going cheap on the charger not only gives you a poor performance but it may damage your battery in the long run too.
Phone settings
This one is clearly important. So many people keep 15 tabs open all the time. Always clear your tabs to save battery. If going on a long trip keep your phone on battery saver mode.
There are certain items in your phone that are particularly draining on your battery. Bluetooth, Wi-fi, GPS are basically always working in the background trying to connect to a network and find available networks. Turn them off when you don’t need them.
Most modern phones have an adaptive brightness setting. It can be pretty fantastic when you are changing from daylight to dark rooms. Yet it really doesn’t add much value in the average day to day. It is a good idea to turn this off when you need a battery and just leave your brightness on low.
These are just a few tips to make your battery survive a lot longer. Of course, in time all batteries will fade, simply because manufacturers want us to buy a new phone. When that time comes there is little you can do but having a few tricks up your sleeve will help slow the decay.