When to charge my phone?

• Darkboy132 wrote on 2015-01-06 05:02
  Should I charge it whenever possible up to 100% or when the battery is near dead? People are telling me to do the latter but I'm not so sure.
• Mentosftw wrote on 2015-01-06 05:11
  Typically the latter but real world situations disagree. Take it as you will.
• koreaboo wrote on 2015-01-06 16:02
  Buy a mobile battery charger and charge it depending what brand you bought. Nearly all service provider stores sell those.
  Just bring it everywhere you go with your phone's charger cable and plug it in the mobile charger like an adapter, and press the on button.
  
  Now you don't have to worry so much running out of battery on your phone with your mobile charger. And the best part is that the mobile charger is universal so even if you have a new phone, you can still use it outside.
• Compass wrote on 2015-01-06 16:44
  Gonna agree with koreaboo here.
  Something like this is what she's recommending and it's highly useful.
  
  If you have a decent phone from a reputable brand and you're one of those people who's worried about battery life the only real good advice is to turn off brightness, make sure internet related apps like facebook or skype aren't running in the backgrounds if any apps at all, turn of bluetooth ,etc.
  Batteries have come a long way, batteries these days won't go down to 50% efficiency unless you got some crappy phone.
• Osayidan wrote on 2015-01-07 02:58
  Unless you're using it nonstop you shouldn't need to charge it more than once a day, which can be when you go to bed.
  Also if you have pretty much any phone on the planet except iphones you can use any standard micro usb cable to charge it up so it's easy to do pretty much anywhere, it's nice when hardware vendors respect standards.
• Yoorah wrote on 2015-01-07 03:45
  I think the OP was asking about recharging behaviour as a way to reduce battery wear.
  
  Two main things affect the speed at which the battery wears out (decays): The amount of charge (closer to full = worse) and the temperature (more heat = worse).
  
  If you want to optimize battery wear, you want to charge the battery to no more than 90%. Well designed products, like some Sony Walkmans and Lenovo ThinkPads have settings which put a battery max charge limited for this reason. Also, you it's generally not recommended to discharge batteries to 0% and then back to full, as this continuous charging puts more stress on a battery than charging from say, 40% to 90%. (Possibly due to heat generated, I don't remember, to be honest.) The only exception to the last point is that you need to discharge the battery to 0 and then back to full around once a year (timing depends on the battery and whatnot) to re-calibrate the battery charge % sensor.
  
  Naturally, lithium ion batteries also have charge/dischage cycles to keep in mind. Better quality batteries have more cycles, but I think it's generally around 400. Discharging a battery to 0 and then charging it back to 100 will use up a cycle. Similarly, discharging a battery from 100 to 50 and then back to 100, twice, will also use up 1 cycle. After the battery hits 400 cycles or so, you can expect a significant drop in battery performance, maybe you'll have 60% of the original capacity. That said, your behaviour will not affect this point, so don't worry about it.
  
  In practice, you shouldn't bother to micromanage your battery usage on a phone. The battery on that thing will probably be great for at least 3 years. Once it starts getting crappy, you'll want a new phone, anyway (or you can get an external battery pack as others mentioned.)
• mesis wrote on 2015-01-07 17:30
  You should charge it when its near dead.
• Second wrote on 2015-01-07 21:04
  Charging near 0% is what people did with old type of batteries. Something about the batteries remembering something and then not charging to 100%.
  
  You should read the manual a bit. It should recommend something.
  I think mine says to try to recharge before it goes under 30%.
  
  Here's an article:
  http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/everyday-tech/lithium-ion-battery2.htm
  
  

  Lithium ion chemistry prefers partial discharge to deep discharge, so it's best to avoid taking the battery all the way down to zero. Since lithium-ion chemistry does not have a "memory", you do not harm the battery pack with a partial discharge. If the voltage of a lithium-ion cell drops below a certain level, it's ruined.
  
  Lithium-ion batteries age. They only last two to three years, even if they are sitting on a shelf unused. So do not "avoid using" the battery with the thought that the battery pack will last five years. It won't. Also, if you are buying a new battery pack, you want to make sure it really is new. If it has been sitting on a shelf in the store for a year, it won't last very long. Manufacturing dates are important.
  
  Avoid heat, which degrades the batteries.

  
  so basically what Yoorah said