You’re charging your phone wrong — 4 mistakes to correct for best battery life
Published Feb. 17, 2025, 1:43 p.m. ET
Charging your phone is a mundane part of life that people don’t usually think twice about — but some charging habits might be ruining your phone battery.
At some point, you might notice that the battery life on your phone isn’t as strong as it once used to be. For example, perhaps you used to be able to make it through the workday without needing to charge your phone, but now you’re charging it at least twice before you leave work.
Phones use a lithium-ion battery, which became integral to portable technology in the ’90s due to its high-energy density. These batteries pack a large amount of energy into a small space, charge quickly and last longer than other batteries — but that doesn’t mean it’s eternal.
Sandeep Unnikrishnan, chief technology officer at battery tech start-up Lionvolt, explained to The Independent that a phone’s battery life gets worse as the years go on “due to internal electrochemical wear and tear.”
Typically, they last about 500 charge cycles — between two to three years — before the battery capacity greatly diminishes.
But there are some things you can do to get the most out of your battery life for as long as possible.
The first thing is to stop obsessing overcharging your phone all the way to 100%. While it might seem like the best possible solution at the moment to keep the charge throughout the day, it ends up hurting the battery in the long run.
This is because “lithium-ion batteries experience increased stress when [they are] maintained at full charge for prolonged periods,” Unnikrishnan explained.
Keeping the phone at 100% battery will create unnecessary exertions that will speed up the demise.