Battery Frustrations?
Lithium Ion batteries are a source of major frustration for the average consumer. Remember when that laptop you had effectively became a desktop because as soon as you unplugged it the battery would die? Or that smartphone you hadn’t turned on for a year that just wouldn’t hold a charge anymore?
The thing is, while all of our smartphones and laptops utilize these batteries, they rarely come with explicit instructions on how to prolong the life of the battery itself. Here are a few tips to prolonging the life of your batteries.
The short answer for how to take care of your battery is to not keep it plugged in past 100%, don’t discharge it past 25%, and don’t store it in high temperatures.
How to take care of your laptop battery
Different types of batteries require different types of care. A Lead-acid battery, like the one in your vehicle, gets damaged if it is fully depleted, as the plates lose effectiveness as sulfur cakes the plates in a completely discharged battery of this type. Rechargeable consumer batteries have the best life when completely drained before being completely recharged (This is dubbed the memory effect). Your phone and laptop however, use Lithium Ion batteries, which don’t suffer from the memory effect.
For optimal longevity of your device, you would want to keep the battery from falling below 50% and stop charging it when it reaches 100%. For phones and other devices only intended to survive for a few years, discharging to 25% gives you more functionality than just 50%, and the difference in longevity is fairly small.
Don’t leave your device constantly plugged in
When Li batteries are left in a fully charged state, they stay in “high-voltage” which damages the battery. Leaving your device at 100% and plugged in will make your battery fail twice as fast as stopping your charge at 95%. If your charger malfunctions and overcharges your device, the damage is exponential. (Source: Chalmers University of Technology)
Don’t drain your device all the way
Draining Li batteries past 25% dramatically damages the lifetime of the battery. Your device is designed with the intent of recharging once it reaches this battery level, although many do not warn you until a lower threshold.
Store your battery between freezing and room temperature
Higher temperatures are bad for your battery. If you can use a traditional charger instead of a fast charger, your device won’t heat up as much during the charge, so if you just plug your phone in at night, that is the ideal for you. Laptops have chargers that are optimized for that battery, but if you are doing heavy work on your laptop it helps to have the device on a cooling pad or at least a hard surface. Having it on your lap hampers airflow which reduces both the life of your battery, and the life of your components.
For your phone, keeping it in your pocket is less than ideal. Aside from allowing debris to enter the charge port, it keeps the battery at a higher temperature than optimal. For many, this is worth it for the convenience – but your battery will decay about 5% faster.