You're charging your phone all wrong: 6 common myths, debunked

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Not a week goes by that I'm not correcting someone who is still recycling some battery myth packaged as a "tip" from the nickel-cadmium era (also known as the 1990s).

These tips have been repeated and regurgitated so many times. A quick Google search (or an AI prompt) turns up plenty of articles that reassure readers that the tips are 100% grounded in present-day, lithium-ion era reality, when they most definitely are not.

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I've picked six charging habits that people ask about constantly, and checked manufacturer documentation. When the manufacturers offer vague answers, I've referred to peer-reviewed battery research to get a definitive answer.

So, let's lay some myths to rest, at least until the lithium-ion era gives way to whatever comes next.

If there's one thing that people seem to get super anxious about, it's the charge level of their smartphone's battery.

This situation is why manufacturers introduced charging mechanisms to halt charging once the battery got to 80%. Apple has Optimized Battery Charging, while Google has Limit to 80% on the Pixel.

Apple says that this feature "is designed to reduce the wear on your battery and improve its lifespan by reducing the time your iPhone spends fully charged." Google says it added this feature "to prioritize the long-term health of your battery."

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Samsung is even clearer , saying that "keeping your Samsung Galaxy charged to 100% may seem like the best way to maximize usage, but lithium-ion batteries naturally experience more stress when they remain at their highest charge level for extended periods."

Seriously, stop doing this. This myth is a holdover from the 1980s and 1990s when rechargeable batteries used nickel-based chemistries, such as nickel-cadmium ( NiCd ) and nickel-metal hydride ( NiMH ). These batteries did suffer from a voltage-depression effect due to partial cycling, commonly called " memory effect ." Lithium-ion, which is what's in every phone sold today, has never had that problem.

Google states it plainly: "You don't need to teach your phone how much capacity the battery has by going from full to zero charge or zero to full charge."