Improve your smartphone's battery life

Lithium-Ion batteries are complicated. People are always complaining about battery life, and it appears that despite all the efforts tech companies put into their products, batteries are still a great problem. The issue with batteries is we don't pay attention to the numbers. If a company says a certain battery has 4,000 mAh, against the 3,000 mAh battery of the year before, we think it is an excellent improvement. But is amp-hours anything that matters? 

In the first place, we need to know how a Lithium-Ion battery works. Inside a Lithium-Ion battery is an electrolyte, which is an electrically conductive solution. When an electric potential is applied to it, electrons move from a positive terminal to a negative terminal, producing a current flow. In other words, when you connect your phone to a charger, it applies a voltage to the battery, which moves the electrons inside of the electrolyte, charging the battery. 

This invisible process is what keeps your phone alive, but it's not perfect. The electrolyte inside the battery decays with time. The more you use your phone, the more charging-discharging occurs, the more deterioration the battery undergoes. This process is closely linked to battery cycles. A battery cycle refers to how many times the battery can undergo a complete charging-discharging cycle before failing. A battery cycle is an important number you should pay attention to when you buy a new phone.

Therefore, you can improve battery life if you don't charge it and discharge it completely. See it like this: when your phone is 100% charged, most electrons are crowded in the anode pole, putting the battery into great stress (the same when discharging, but in the cathode pole). That's why keeping your battery charge within 20% and 80% can prolong battery life. 

Even though modern phones and laptops are designed with protection circuits for the batteries, they can't reduce battery stress completely. That's why it is not a good idea to keep your phone charging all night long. It might not damage your battery instantly, but in the long term, it can be harmful. 

In addition to this, Lithium-Ion batteries have a self-discharge rate of 1.5 to 2% per month. Regardless of how much you use your phone each month, the capacity of your battery to hold charge decreases by 1.5 to 2%. This deterioration could get worse if the battery is exposed to high temperatures. Thus, most Lithium-Ion batteries last two years on average. 

Lastly, never use a charger that is not designed for your phone. Most phone chargers deliver an output voltage of 5 volts, but these are designed to deliver certain current depending on the load of the battery. If the charger you are using is not intended for your battery, it could be delivering more or fewer amps than it should, which can decrease the capacity of the battery sooner. 

In conclusion, there's more behind a battery than just amp-hours. Take a closer look at battery cycle, battery charge percentage, approximate self-discharge rate, and the model of your charger.