It’s time to get our iPhone habits in order — and this means dropping those bad iPhone charging habits before they cause major stress to our batteries. It’s easy to make charging mistakes because we often assume that charging is as easy as breathing: plug your device into a charger and you’re finished. But we take charging for granted. Charging your phone the wrong way, which is to say continually making certain charging mistakes, can slowly degrade your battery until those habits can ultimately result in a dead battery.
You can take charge of your charging and alleviate costly battery mistakes by putting an end to these three charging habits that experts say are slowing killing your iPhone battery.
Low Power Mode should be able to bridge the gap between your current low battery power state and your next charging session. In the meantime, though, you’ll have to expect to make some trade-offs. This feature will affect the following on your device, limiting how these features can be used:
5G (except for video streaming) on iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 models
Auto-Lock (defaults to 30 seconds)
Display brightness
Display refresh rate (limited up to 60 Hz) on iPhone and iPad models with ProMotion display
Some visual effects
iCloud Photos (temporarily paused)
Automatic downloads
Email fetch
Background app refresh
If that’s okay with you, and you value an extension of battery life above all else, enable Low Power Mode by going to Settings > Battery > toggle on Low Power Mode.
2. Using Non-Apple Chargers
Third-party chargers that aren’t the best quality can overheat easily, causing your battery to degrade over time (generally speaking, heat is death to your phone’s battery). These chargers aren’t designed specifically for your phone model or its needs, which means they can charge your phone too slowly or too rapidly, and neither of these scenarios is ideal for your phone battery.
3. Charging in Extreme Temperatures
Sometimes the most convenient places for us to charge our phones aren’t the best places for their battery. If you’re routinely charging your phone in a hot car, steamy room, or freezing-cold environment, those extreme temperatures are taking their toll on your battery. The ideal charging temperature for an iPhone are between 32°F to 95°F (0°C to 35°C). Keep your phone from overheating and experiencing battery degradation by only charging your device within those temperature ranges.
