Phone Battery Anxiety? Your Charging Habits Might Be Wrong!

Phone Battery Anxiety? Your Charging Habits Might Be Wrong!Many young people nowadays have obsessive-compulsive disorders, and keeping their phones fully charged is probably one of them. The full battery icon in the upper right corner of the screen is a reassurance for many people when they go out

Phone Battery Anxiety? Your Charging Habits Might Be Wrong!

Many young people nowadays have obsessive-compulsive disorders, and keeping their phones fully charged is probably one of them. The full battery icon in the upper right corner of the screen is a reassurance for many people when they go out. Even if the phone has a few dozen percent of battery left, some people will still plug in the charger at every opportunity. Before going to bed at night, many people are also accustomed to plugging in their phones, so that they can have a "fully charged" communication tool when they wake up. But is it really ok to charge all night? Will fast charging really damage the battery? Is it really harmful to the battery to use the phone while charging? For someone with phone battery anxiety, the answers to these questions are very important.

Your charging habits might be wrong.

When you get a new phone, have you ever wondered if you need to fully charge it before using it? Do you need to wait for the phone to run out of battery before charging it? These guidelines were correct when your parents used old-style phones, i.e., during the era of nickel-cadmium batteries, because nickel-cadmium batteries had a "memory effect." The so-called "memory effect" means that the battery will remember the final voltage of the previous use when charging. When charging and using it to its remembered voltage again, the battery's remaining usage time will decrease rapidly. Therefore, nickel-cadmium batteries were most sensitive to "shallow charging and discharging," and the termination voltage should be controlled to be relatively low.

However, the lithium batteries widely used nowadays are not so "picky." They do not have the "memory effect." Now that smartphones have entered the lithium battery era, the discussion of battery life focuses more on "cycles." Cycles, also known as charging cycles, do not mean one cycle is completed after plugging in a charger once. Instead, it refers to the complete charge and discharge process of the lithium battery. For example, if you have used 75% of your phone's battery and then charge it, the cycle is actually not yet complete. It is only considered a complete cycle when you fully charge the phone and then use another 25%.

Therefore, the "charge after use" strategy from the nickel-cadmium battery era is no longer necessary, and it is not only inapplicable, but it also becomes a wrong charging habit for lithium batteries. The battery research website BatteryUniversity conducted a study on the relationship between usage patterns and battery durability. The results showed that when the depth of discharge was 100%, i.e., charging after fully using the battery, the two lithium batteries could only experience 300 and 600 cycles before their capacity dropped to basically unusable 70%. However, if only 10% was used each time before charging, the number of cycles could be significantly increased to 6,000 and 15,000. To some extent, the more cycles the battery can experience, the longer the phone can "serve" you.

Based on the research results, it is clear that charging only when the battery is low or completely drained will actually shorten the battery life and make your battery less durable. Therefore, the correct charging habit is to "charge as you use," and there is no need to wait until the battery is empty and charge it at night. Now that fast charging has become a standard feature for many phones, if you don't have the urge to keep your phone fully charged all the time, there is no need to leave your phone plugged in for several hours while you sleep. Moreover, for those who are anxious about the battery level, it is best to remember to unplug your phone as soon as possible after charging to avoid overcharging and damaging the battery.

So, how powerful can fast charging really be?

We investigated the new models released in the past six months by major mainstream brands. 66W/67W charging power is relatively mainstream for official chargers of ordinary models. Under this condition, the phone can basically be fully charged in about 40 minutes. The Android camp generally has more powerful fast charging. The OnePlus Ace2 comes with a 100W charger, which can fully charge the phone in 25 minutes. The most powerful example is the Realme GTNeo5, equipped with a 240W charger, which claims to be able to fully charge the phone in 9.5 minutes. If you are buying a Pro model, this kind of ultra-high power charging configuration will be more common. Of course, Apple is still special. For the sake of "environmental protection," you may still be using your ancestral 5V1A charger. If you want to experience fast charging, you need to buy a fast charging adapter separately. The maximum charging power of the iPhone 14 is still only 20W, and this charging adapter is officially priced at "only" $149.

The Real Battery Killer Is This:

With fast charging technology, people have become more reckless with their phone usage, but many people are stabbed in the back by phone overheating issues during high-intensity usage. I need to put an ice pack on my phone just to watch a video, it's driving me crazy. Phone overheating is scary. It actually warped my phone case. What do I use as a hand warmer? My hot phone! Netizens' complaints about their "hot potatoes" have been circulating on various social media platforms for years. Now, when major manufacturers release new phones, they have to include "good heat dissipation" as a selling point. However, some heartbroken netizens believe that buying a cooling back clip is more reliable.

We crawled through netizens' complaint posts and found that these scenarios are most likely to ruin the user experience: When playing games, whether you are grabbing kills in the Canyon or interacting with Hilichurls in the Teyvat Continent, your phone becomes hot and causes lag or even crashes; When you are having a video call with your significant other, the phone gets so hot that you can't hold it after half an hour, and the heat rises faster than your feelings; System updates, watching long or short videos, and taking pictures can also cause the phone to overheat; Even more absurdly, some phones can get as hot as a radiator just from reading novels or listening to music. Needless to say, the most frequently mentioned scenario is that the phone gets so hot that you could fry an egg on it while charging.

So, will phone overheating damage the battery?

Especially in daily use, fast charging cannot be avoided. Will fast charging damage the phone faster? This concern is not unfounded. Charging itself is a confrontation between current and resistance. When current flows through various components inside the phone, heat generation cannot be avoided. As the current and voltage of fast charging are higher, more heat accumulates, and the temperature theoretically becomes higher. Temperature is undoubtedly harmful to the battery.

BatteryUniversity's tests show that a fully charged phone kept at 0C for a year only loses 6% of its capacity. However, if kept in a 60C environment, the battery capacity will only remain 60% after three months. Not only that, the damage caused by high temperature and prolonged full charge status to the battery is greater than normal cycle use.

However, manufacturers will naturally consider this issue. Therefore, today's smart phones are equipped with a power management chip to manage the charging process, and fast charging is not simply a full-blown high-current charging process. A long time ago, fast charging found a three-stage charging mode: pre-charging, then increasing the current for constant current fast charging, and finally reducing the current to constant voltage charging when the voltage reaches the target level. Currently, many phones use a fast-to-slow charging process. For example, iPhone's charging process is to "flood" the battery to 80% first, and then the remaining 20% is filled with a "trickle charge." With this approach, manufacturers can achieve "fast charging for convenience, slow charging for longevity."

As for charging all night, manufacturers also use similar strategies. They stop charging at around 80%, and the phone resumes trickle charging until you wake up. The iPhone's "Optimized Battery Charging" learns your daily habits and automatically stops charging at around 80% when the phone is plugged in for a long time to avoid the battery from being overcharged.

Therefore, in theory, manufacturers have already taken some optimization measures to address your concerns. If the phone doesn't overheat unexpectedly, then there is no need to worry too much about using fast charging. However, if the phone gets warm while charging, it is best to have it checked to see if there is any problem.

Replace the Phone or Replace the Battery

After studying all this battery knowledge, as a regular 5G surfer, I still have one question that I am most concerned about: I have tried my best to avoid the above-mentioned problems, but why does my phone battery still go kaput at some point? This issue is related to battery life. If you want an explanation that can be found in your phone, then it's battery capacity degradation.

The phone's battery life is not long, and it is often throttled. This may be because the battery capacity has been excessively depleted. If you are an Apple user, you should be familiar with the warning "Pay attention to whether the battery health is below 80% of the initial capacity." Many people encounter automatic restarts or rapid battery drain when

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