Smartphone users often need to do a lot of things to ensure that their device lasts as long as possible, and that includes keeping up good charging habits.
Charging an iPhone or an Android might seem like a simple, straightforward process, but there are actually good and bad ways to go about doing it. With some more harmful charging habits, it might seem like something that’s not going to hurt your phone that drastically at first, but over time, it can wreck your battery. Read more about one charging habit tech experts say is quietly damaging your battery gradually below.
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The One Charging Habit That's Quietly Damaging Your Smartphone Battery
When picturing your bedtime routine, consider what you do with your phone, especially if you have to be up in the morning. Do you leave it in your bed? Or do you plug it in and leave it on a bedside table or other surface, so that it's charged in the morning?
Many smartphone users do the latter, ending most nights with their iPhone or Android plugged into its charger. It's an extremely common charging habit, as most users would agree they'd like to wake up to a fully-charged device. However, if you're getting at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night, that's a long time to keep a smartphone plugged in, especially since at some point before you wake up, it'll hit 100% battery.
"[Smartphone] batteries are highly sensitive to things like heat, which charging does (fractionally) as a side effect of charging," explains tech pro Aimee Simpson. "With that in mind, the first mistake people make is that they leave a phone charging past 100%. All of that extra time is additional minutes that the battery is slowly being heated. While it'll never overheat (typically), this means you're constantly degrading your battery."
Tech expert Steven Athwal also suggests avoiding leaving your phone plugged in overnight and keeping it in your bed or a hot space, as the extra heat can really do your device in.
"While charging your phone overnight is not necessarily bad for it, the heat involved in charging your phone will do damage over time," he notes. "If you charge your phone and put it under your pillow, in a thick case, or in a warm room, you are causing your device's battery to sit at high temperatures for long periods of time with high voltage applied to it."
