Battery life is one of the things that people look for when buying any device. After all, your phone goes everywhere you go and is expected to last you all day. For many people, the laptop is the same – just another device that is expected to last. However, over time, you may have focused on yourself the device’s battery drains faster and even die sooner because of you.
This is normal. Batteries deteriorate over time. But for some, replacing the battery can be a hassle, and buying a whole new phone is expensive. However, while battery wear is inevitable, there are many ways to extend the battery life of any device. In fact, just by changing one setting, your battery can last longer before needing to be replaced.
How do lithium-ion batteries work?
Understanding the science behind lithium-ion batteries can help you make better choices
Before we get into how to ensure the longevity of your device’s battery, it’s important to understand how most device batteries work. It is the most commonly used type of battery in electronics lithium-ion battery. These are rechargeable batteries that are great for powering electronics due to their high energy capacity. But like everything else, they deteriorate over time. Battery life is how long your internal pack is currently charged and how long the battery life is total payment can be stored inside the battery.
When looking at your system settings, you may have noticed that your device uses a metric called “battery capacity” to indicate battery health. The battery capacity is one estimate how much charge the battery can hold compared to when it was new. Your device’s battery capacity may be affected by your charging habits. During charging and discharging causing movement of ions (allows energy to be stored and released), various side effects such as side reactions, structural changes, risk of lithium plating, impedance increase, and electrode/electrolyte aging mean less energy is stored and then used by your device.
So charging to 100% and leaving your device as low as possible is not recommended and most people recommend charging to 80% and draining to 20%. Other things that cause degradation include high temperatures and rapid charging. Lithium-ion batteries will also degrade over time by default, so there’s no reason to speed up the process.
What you can do to prevent battery wear
I learned the hard way
A few years ago I bought a used iPhone. When I bought it, it had 79% battery capacity. Of course it’s not good, but I didn’t want to change my battery. After just two years, my battery was just over 60%. My battery only lasted a few hours at this point. Since I was thinking of buying a new phone anyway, I decided to ditch the iPhone and go with a phone with a bigger battery (the OnePlus 15 has a 7300 mAh battery and the iPhone 17 has a 3692 mAh battery). The OnePlus 15 also has a silicon-carbon battery, a different type of lithium-ion battery that can store more energy.
However, silicon-carbon batteries may actually hold more energy deteriorates and becomes more incapacitated faster than lithium-ion batteries. So I decided to do everything I could to prevent battery wear on my new phone and all my other lithium-ion powered devices. For this I decided to follow the 80-20 rule. That is, me charge my device to 80% and allow to drain to 20%. However, I recently started letting my device charge when it gets down to 40% or 50%. Both of these rules are effective in keeping your battery percentage as high as possible, and in fact all my devices using this rule have 100% capacity, although your mileage will vary.
On Windows laptops, the process is more complicated. For MacBooks, Chromebooks, and phones (works for both iPhone and Android), go to your device’s battery settings. Then find the setting that controls the maximum charge limit. Set this to 80% (which is usually the lowest most phones will let you). Of course, depending on your schedule, you may need more battery, so it depends on when you want to charge your device. There are also many devices adaptive charging, It adapts to your schedule and keeps your battery running all day while increasing its life.
You may want to avoid wireless charging
This can be efficient, but it can also damage your devices
You may be surprised to learn that wireless chargers get hotter than regular wired chargers. As previously mentioned, high temperatures can cause faster battery degradation. Wireless charging is convenient and generally safe, but because it’s less efficient and can generate more heat, wired charging is a better option if your priority is long-term battery health.
Charge like me and you’ll be fine
One of the easiest ways to protect your battery’s long-term health is to enable an 80% charge limit or adaptive charging, if your device supports such a feature. I’m not just talking from experience, but it’s scientifically proven (and recommended!) to extend the battery life of your devices. Keep in mind that this saves life, not the duration of each charge, because starting at 80% provides less usable charge than starting at 100%.
