Is it bad to recharge a new phone's battery without battery being completely consumed?

Rakanoth

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Oct 6, 2017
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Years ago, I used to keep hearing this. I should recharge my brand new phone's battery only after the battery is 0% (completely consumed). Is this true? Maybe not true for today's smart phones. What do you recommend? Any research done on this? What are your experiences?
 
Actually, almost the opposite is true. The risks of a phone/battery coming back up "normal" after being fully discharged is a huge risk today.
 
cjcox got it, lithium hates being fully discharged. The phone will stop before the damage point (or should). I think it was nimh/nicad that liked to be fully drained before recharge. Same with cars ... there is more capacity there than is used, because they don't want to "fully" charge or discharge, for longevity.
 
And of course, it varies with age. So the risks get higher the older the battery. Updates to OS's might try to mitigate this by "guessing" about a potentially risky scenario (that is a large power drain, might cause a more premature auto-shutdown sequence,etc).
 
Don't believe so. I've always charged mine whenever I felt the need and have had great battery life throughout the life of the phone. Obviously after 2 years, not as good as the day I bought it.. but still holding a great charge.
 
One of the cool things that've happened in battery tech "recently" is the individual cell leveling. You may have one physical battery, but there's thousands of little cells inside the physical shell. There's also a simple little circuit that rotates which cell is being used next based on how many cycles said cells have gone through. On the Macbooks, you can see how many full battery cycles have been used through About This Mac - > System Report -> Battery (I think? It's been a while.) It results in batteries lasting a heck of a lot longer than they used to, without degraded performance. So, by fully discharging a battery, you're actually hurting the life of the battery, not helping.
 
I've owned several iphones in the past and have never discharged them fully before recharging them. I usually charged them whenever I needed to (mostly above 40%). The battery seems to hold the charge fine until it gets closer to the 2 year mark. This is when I would replace the battery or upgrade my phone.
 
Supposedly their is a 20%-80% rule.

Never let it go below 20% and never charge above 80%.

That is for lithium type batteries, cant remember if it was for lithium ion or Li-on or lithium Poly Li-Po.

Anway, its supposed to ensure battery longevity.

Personally, I just stick my shit on charge at any %, I charge it til its full and use it til about 20-30%, thats for iphone and ipad, my dac’s, expensive ones, they dont really have a percentage, they just show a red/yellow/green/blue light, red is the lowest, I just charge em til full also.

Batteries die, fact of life, so I would just charge and discharge anyway you like. Once dead if possible get a replacement, if its an ipad unlucky, as they have to be ripped apart and basically destroyed to get inside them.

I find that weird, they can open up iphones and put in replacment parts and screw it back together, but have to physically destroy an ipad to change batteries.

Weird huh.

Just to add, my iphone, is 2 years old and apple say my battery is 91% of out of 100% with regards to how much charge it can hold.

91% out of the original 100%, I think only losing 9% of charge capacity is good for something thats two years old and gets charged everyday.
 
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For Lithium Ion, I hear you should let them run dry every once in a while, but other than that you'll be fine plugging it in whenever you wish.
 
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