You are killling your phone Battery if you do these 3 things

Smart phones are becoming part of our every day life. Chances are, when you wake up in the morning, the first thing you grab is your smartphone. You are probably even reading this right now with your phone.

Smartphone makers like Infinix, Itel, Redmi, Tecno etc that have become popular in Nigeria and Africa at large, have increasingly made phones with bigger and better battery capacity. But even the best battery out there don’t last nearly as long as you will want them.

If you are a heavy to moderate smartphone user, you may find yourself charging your phone more than once in a single day. And even worst is that your phone seems to last less then when you first got them. But its not just the games, multitasking or surfing the net that is responsible for damaging your smartphone battery.

Is it possible that there might be some things you are unknowing doing that are responsible for damaging your phone battery? There is a lot more going on here than you might think. And that is exactly what we are going to talk about in this article.

1~ Charging Your Phone Overnight:

Often: after using your phone for playing games or scrolling through social media. You simply plug it in and to go bed. You then wake up the next morning with a fully charged battery. But have you ever thought of what happens during the time your phone hits that 100% mark while still plugged in? how does it happen that a battery doesn’t over charge itself, since a battery can only receive a limited amount of power.
There is actually a mechanism smartphone manufacturers uses to prevent your smartphone from over charging.

When your phone hits 100%, the voltage decreases and charging stops. This is why smartphone batteries don’t over charge.

But Because your phone keeps consuming battery while charging, the battery level will drop even when the screen is off. To make sure your phone is at 100%, your charger increases the voltage to charge your phone again. The current sent, will be equivalent to whatever your phone is losing. This process continue throughout the night, and this is the very reason charging your smart phone overnight is a bad idea.

As you may have noticed, your phone will heat up if it’s being used while charging. or whenever any kind of activity is running during charge. this also occurs when ever your phone tries to balance what’s going in and what your phone is losing when its at 100% during charge. This will stress your battery overtime and reduce the amount of battery juice it can store.

Now that you know what negative effect this can have on your battery, how do you protect them?

For starters, you should keep your phone in a cool area while charging. This doesn’t mean sticking it in the freezer, but avoid placing it in direct sunlight or in a heated place when charging. Also avoid charging your cell phone overnight as much as you can. Since your phone will probably get to 100% at some point and spend the entire time balancing what goes in, starting all the process that we just discussed above.

2~ Using third party “Fast Chargers”:

A few years ago, there was this charger with a blackberry logo that was very popular. It can charge your phone from 0% to 100% within an hour. And this was the very reason it was so popular.

I came to hear of it at “Garrison” (the Port Harcourt equivalent of Lagos “computer village”). I also got the charger, after using it for about 3 months. I noticed that my battery began to degrade. Sometimes it would dip from 60% to about 15% within seconds. And at other times it will jump from 10% to 40%. I also noticed that my battery couldn’t hold as much power as it once did.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Majority of smartphones this days come with fast charging compatibly. This is good because these are from the phones manufacturers and most have gone through various test.
While researching this topic, I noticed that with “original chargers” (those from the phones manufacturer) their is usually a communication and coordination between the phone and charger. With the help of the smartphone, the charger knows what to do at every stage during charge.

But this communication is lost with third party chargers. leaving your battery venerable to damage during charge.

The bottom-line is that you should avoid using third party chargers. Not just the charging brick, but the cord as well. Not all chargers are created equally. You should always stick to your manufacturers brand if you ever need to replace your charger.

3~ Running your battery down to 0% :

Most people will plug their phone to the socket when they get the 15% low battery warning. At other time, most of us are forced to push our battery pass this limit.

I have pushed my smartphone down to zero percent a number of times because I was playing an insanely interesting game or watching YouTube. But what I did not realize was that this was actually hurting my battery.

Whenever you drain your battery completely, the chances of ‘mechanical degradation’ on the cathode is increased. You also increase something called “depth of discharge”, which is the difference between the final battery percentage and the initial battery percentage. This will mean two things. First, Your battery wouldn’t be able to save as much battery power as it used to. Second, the battery discharge cycle becomes compromised. The discharge cycle is the number of times a battery accept a charge. A batteries discharge cycle is not infinite. And after a number of time, the battery will stop receiving charge.

When this happens, the battery wouldn’t be able to store as much energy as it once did. Because of this, the battery life is reduced.

To preserve your battery for as long as possible, always try to keep your battery between 15 – 80 percent during and after charge. I like to call this the ‘safe zone’ because it is the safest range for your battery. It is a kind of sweet spot for your battery. The 25 – 85% range will preserve your battery ‘depth of discharge’. At this range, battery health is maximize for a longer time.

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A Guest Post by Dennis Nwokah from ccnaija a blog devoted to tech tips and how tos.