How to Prolong your Phone’s Battery Life

With the upcoming release of Redact’s Android app, we want to give some helpful tips to maximize the health of your phone in other ways - not just the health of your social media presence. With this in mind, your device’s battery life is among the most important and relevant things to keep on top of.

Common Myths

Smartphones have been a critical part of modern life for over a decade now. In that time, many myths have proliferated about how to make sure your phone stays alive for as long as possible. Here are just some of the most egregious examples.

It’s good to let your battery die all the way!

This myth is completely untrue. Lithium Ion batteries have a hard time recovering from complete battery drains. Over time, doing this multiple times can shave significant amounts of total battery life.

While this habit does make some common sense, it’s ultimately misguided, and will do harm in the long run.

You need to force close your apps!

While some apps do take up a lot of battery life through background processes, the vast majority of apps do not. Additionally, all apps take more energy when they originally launch. This means that, if you constantly force quit apps and restart them when you want to use them, you drain more battery than if you had just left it on in the background.

Important Steps

While it’s good to dispel myths surrounding battery life, explicit advice about how to maximize it is also important. Here are some general principles to keep in mind.

Heat kills

Putting your battery under high temperatures is incredibly damaging to its battery life. It’s important to keep it as cool as possible, and to never charge it covered in cloth or in a hot car unless absolutely necessary.

Partial charge is good

Counterintuitively, keeping your phone between 20%-90% prolongs its life long term. The physics behind the lithium ion batteries is a topic best saved for a future article; however, it’s accepted among engineers to be true.

Quick charging hurts

Related to the two previous points, rapid charging can have damaging effects on your battery’s life long term. While it is incredibly convenient, it’s a tool that should be used sparingly if you want to keep your battery as healthy as possible for as long as possible.