You're killing your phone battery

Credit: Café iOS

There are 3 basic chemistries in rechargeable batteries in widespread use today:

● lead-acid
● nickel
● lithium

Within each group, there are variations – nickel-metal-hydride & nickel-cadmium in the nickel group, for instance. Each chemistry has different requirements for its management. E.g. lead-acid gives the best service life if it is kept fully charged. By contrast, this is one of the better ways to destroy nickel or lithium based batteries.

Nickel based batteries require periodic discharge followed by a charge to full capacity to prevent “memory effect”. For nickel-cadmium, the usual recommendation is once a month. Three monthly intervals for nickel-metal-hydride.

Phone manufacturers recommend discharging your phone to below 20% once per month, followed by a charge to full capacity. Confusingly, this is unrelated to, “memory effect”. Lithium ion batteries do not have a, “memory effect”. Your phone (or laptop) needs to be cycled to recalibrate its battery management system.

Linked below is an article about taking care of an iPhone battery. It applies equally well to all lithium ion batteries in phones (& laptops):

https://www.thrillist.com/tech/nation/how-to-make-your-iphone-battery-last-longer-iphone-charging-tips

If you really want to know how to get the best out of any battery, regardless of chemistry, & are ready for a long read (think novel length), you can’t do better than this:

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