Phone keeps dying? These mistakes are killing your battery

Phone dead again? It may be an unflattering testament to our age—but we remember when cell phones only needed to be charged once per week? When the first iPhone came out, we were amongst those who scoffed at the 24-hour battery life. Now, we’re lucky if we can get through an eight-hour day without our phone dying. And many of us ask, “Why is my phone battery dying so fast??”

Sure, it feels petty to complain about the short battery life of the technical marvel that is today’s smartphones—which are less phone and more pocket-sized computer—but it is frustrating to drop an easy $900-$1500 on a mobile phone that keeps you tethered to a wall.

As it turns out, despite our best efforts to keep our phones in permanent power-saving mode and never use flash photography, our abbreviated battery life may have less to do with how we are using our phones and more about how we are charging them.

Letting Your Battery Die
It was once good practice to let your battery fully die before charging it, but that was when our phone batteries were nickel-based. With today’s lithium-based batteries, experts suggest it is better to keep it charged than to do a ‘deep charge’ every once in a while.

Charging Your Battery to 100%
It may seem counter-intuitive, but keeping your phone constantly charged to 100% isn’t good for it either. Pushing your phone to extremes in either direction will cause wear and tear on the battery since it only has a finite number of charge cycles. A battery functions best when it’s kept between 40 and 80 percent.

Charging It Overnight
Which brings us to our next point: Don’t charge your phone overnight. It may seem convenient to plug in when it’s time for lights out, but over juicing your phone can kill the battery quicker. Like with everything else in life, moderation is key, so charge your phone in short bursts throughout the day to avoid this charging mistake.

Leaving The Phone Case On
A colourful phone case is a cute way to add a touch of colour to your outfit (we’ve recently just splurged on a Palm Angels phone case). However, keeping the case on while your phone is charging might actually be doing harm to your battery. Heat is bad for batteries, and by leaving your phone case on while it charges you are trapping the heat that is being generated. Take your phone case off when you plug it in to give your phone a little fresh air.

Using A Backup Battery Phone Case
Are charging phone cases bad for your phone? A phone case with a built-in backup battery may seem handy. But as we mentioned, heat is bad for a battery, and a phone case that doubles as a charger is both going to emit heat itself and cause your battery to warm up while charging. On top of that, as we just noted, the case will then trap the heat. If you need portable support, opt for one that attaches to your phone via a cable instead.