Prolonging the life of your iPhone battery is a way to save money and keep your phone in good working condition until you’re ready to upgrade to a new device.
All it really takes to make this a reality is good charging habits and avoiding a few common mistakes and even settings that aren’t doing you any favors when it comes to your battery power. These five iPhone charging mistakes can ruin your battery health – read more about them below.
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1. Keeping Background App Refresh Enabled
This isn’t a specific charging tip, but rather a warning: as convenient as Background App Refresh is, it is a battery hog that takes up resources on your phone. Disabling this setting is helpful to keep your battery from dying sooner, which means fewer charging sessions and less of a risk of overcharging your device.
2. Not Enabling Optimized Battery Charging
Before you charge your phone again, enable Optimized Battery Charging so that your device automatically reduces the amount of time it spends fully charging, which prevents your battery from depleting as quickly.
With this feature set to on, your iPhone will delay charging past 80 percent most of the time. Go to Settings > Battery > Battery Health & Charging > toggle on Optimized Battery Charging.
3. Using Cheap Chargers
Cheap chargers that aren’t certified by Apple can provide the wrong charging speed for your device. If the speed is too fast, for example, this can tax your battery, cause your device to heat up, and create conditions that can lead to battery degradation over time.
4. Overcharging Your Phone
There’s no need to overcharge your phone. If it’s already at 95 percent and you continue charging it for hours, it can deplete the power. One way to keep this from happening is by enabling Optimized Battery Charging.
5. Charging In Warm Environments
If you're someone who leaves your phone to charge under a window, on your car dashboard, outside in the sunlight, or under a warm blanket or pillow, you might be doing more damage to your device's battery than you may think. As it turns out, heat is one of the main enemies of an iPhone's battery.
"When a phone charges, it generates heat," explains tech expert Steven Athwal. "These warm, cozy environments create a heat pocket for the phone, essentially trapping the heat so it can't dissipate. If the heat is trapped, the phone's temperature will rise, and the battery will become stressed. Overheating the phone accelerates wear, meaning a quicker degradation of the battery. Also, avoid thick, non-airflow cases, as they are another common culprit of this."
