4 Battery Related Myths That You Probably Believe Which Need To Die.

The most important thing in our smartphones is the battery. As without a battery, obviously the phone wouldn’t even turn ON and that’s why we are so worried about the battery life of our phones. Also, most of the negative feedbacks about phones are that the battery life is not up to the mark.And because of these negative feedbacks and too much worrying, we start believing in myths. So to clear it out, here is the article busting those myths.

Myth 1: Plugging in your phone overnight harms the battery.

Well, not entirely. To explain the myth properly, the term ‘overcharging’ is used here which basically means that even after your phone reaches 100%, the current keeps flowing into the phone which degrades the battery life and causes too much heat.

Let me clear it out. No this does not happen as modern smartphones manage power efficiently. Which means that once the charge reaches 100%, the current flowing into the battery reduces down and the phone enters ‘Trickle Charge’ mode which keeps the current flow as minimum as possible.

However, high charging voltage may cause the battery to age faster than normal. The optimal charge percentage between which you should keep your phone is 30 to 80%. As going to 100 every time will put more strain on the battery.

Myth 2: Killing apps running in the background save a lot of battery power.

No, this is not at all true. If we were in 2009, I would have put up links for apps which killed the background apps to save battery and memory. But we are in 2019, and the operating systems have got much smarter than they were in 2009. Android and iOS can handle background tasks very well now.

If you just killed the apps running in the background manually or with the help of some other app, you might have made things worse for your smartphone. Some apps just restart again as soon as you kill them as they are important for the proper functioning of your device. And you just wasted more power as the app came back to life again.

Also, the irony of this whole thing is that the app that is helping you save power is utilizing more power by killing the apps which would be saved if you hadn’t done it.

Myth 3: Using the charger of another brand or a charger that was not provided by the brand of your phone harms the battery.

Ehhh… NO! This myth basically involves marketing. You will often find in the manual of your phone where it’s written to always use the charger which is provided by the company. Obviously, the companies will mention this as they want to sell their accessories. But its not always important to use the brand’s charger as it might not be always available to you.

A charger of a known and reputed brand will work just fine. Modern batteries and smartphones have precautionary methods which help the phone to only allow the input they can handle efficiently. For example, if you are using a smartphone by Xiaomi which supports Qualcomm Fast Charging, instead of using the charger provided by Xiaomi, you can use the one by Qualcomm which will also give you same charging speed. But the chargers that are super cheap (Rs.150 - Rs.200), are the ones which might harm your phone. So look out for them.

Talking about charging speeds, this is the only thing which might differ with every charger. This happens because not all chargers support fast charging and every charger has a different output.

Myth 4: Completely discharge your phone before charging it again.

This one again is a popular one but not true. It is true in case of nickel-cadmium batteries as their life decreases if you charge them up very soon. But this is not the case with lithium-ion batteries. Yes, it is true that lithium-ion batteries lose some charge capacity with every charge, but this phenomenon is not very large and is not very noticeable.

As mentioned earlier, 30-80% is the best spot for your device. It is recommended to completely discharge your battery once or twice in 3 months for the software to re-calibrate it properly and give you better results.

Conclusion

These were the most popular myths that are still believed by many people and that is why I decided to kill them. Operating systems like Android and iOS have got so much smarter in the past years that you really don’t need to worry much about the battery life of your phone. It is still recommended to swap out the battery for a replacement after 3 years if you want to stretch things out. If you plan to buy a new phone every year or two, then there’s nothing to worry about.