The more charging mistakes you make, the more vulnerable your phone battery becomes to depletion. If you continue making the same mistakes, eventually you could see your phone’s performance negatively affected — your device could run slower or take longer to upload website pages or download files or apps.
The best thing you can do for your iPhone is to adopt good charging habits that prolong the life of your battery. This is easier to do than it may seem and really just involves avoiding some of the most common errors you’re probably making. Among them you’ll find these four charging mistakes that iPhone experts say you should avoid at all costs.
1. Charging to 100 Percent All of the Time
When you continually charge your phone to 100 percent, you can place stress on your battery and this can lead to chemical reactions inside the battery that contribute to degradation over time. Keeping your phone charged to 100 percent also adds unnecessary heat to your phone and this is also not great for your battery. It’s best to charge your phone between 20 and 80 percent and enable Optimized Battery Charging, a setting that learns your battery charging habits to keep it from charging quickly to 100 percent.
2. Letting Your Battery Drain to 0 Percent
Extremes are usually the biggest mistakes you can make with your phone battery — whether that means charging to 100 percent or letting your battery drain to 0 percent. When your phone repeatedly dips to 0 percent it causes your device to have to work harder to charge back up again. This places more stress on your battery than needed.
3. Using Cheap Chargers
Cheap chargers save you money now, but could cost you money in the long run. These chargers aren’t always delivering the exact charge that your phone’s model requires, and this can lead to it charging too fast (and adding stress to your battery) or not charging fast enough, which means you’ll keep your phone on its charger for longer, and this also isn’t great for your battery. You don’t have to buy Apple chargers, but it’s important to invest in chargers that are certified by Apple.
4. Using Your Phone While It’s Charging
This mistake is one so many of us are guilty of committing: it’s hard to keep your hands off your phone, so you may find yourself using it while it charges. Doing this once in a while won’t be an issue, but if it becomes a habit, it can take longer for your phone to charge and you can add heat to your battery that puts stress on it. If you find that you need your phone often throughout the day, try charging it in shorter bursts and keeping your hands off for a little while.
