Is this really bad for my battery?

If you charge your smartphone overnight, you can damage the battery in the long term.

If you use your smartphone a lot, the 100 percent is often only enough until the evening. Bedtime is therefore an obvious time to charge the battery. But it doesn’t take the whole night to do this, so you often only remove the charging cable many hours after it has been fully charged – does that damage the battery?

Some background knowledge will help to answer this question: Lithium-ion batteries are installed in most modern smartphones. One characteristic of these batteries is that they lose capacity over time, and there is nothing we can do about it.

However, we do have some control over how quickly that happens. This is fundamentally dependent on two factors, more precisely the charge level and the temperature of the battery.

The smartphone regulates the temperature itself

Temperatures that are too hot or too cold can damage the lithium-ion battery over time. To a lesser extent, your smartphone regulates this itself when charging. Sensors are installed here that measure the temperature and, if necessary, throttle the power supply if the battery gets too hot.

However, since it is above all extreme temperatures that can lead to problems and probably nobody puts their smartphone on the heater or in the freezer, the temperature factor plays a rather subordinate role in battery care.

The battery level harms the longevity

It is potentially more damaging to a smartphone battery if the battery level is too high or too low for a long time. In both cases, there is a lot of voltage on the battery, causing the electrolytes to harden faster, resulting in less capacity.

The lithium-ion battery feels most comfortable when it is at 50 percent. However, keeping the battery there is completely unrealistic for practical use, which is why it is recommended to keep the battery between 20 and 80 percent. So you don’t get a completely full battery, but one that keeps its capacity high for longer.

A full battery damages the capacity in the long term. It’s best to keep it between 20 and 80 percent.

The problem with overnight loading: If you now charge the smartphone overnight, the battery will in many cases reach 100 percent quite quickly. However, since it is still plugged in, it will always be recharged as soon as it loses a little battery. This is counterproductive for the longevity of the battery.

The smartphone manufacturers also know this, which is why they have taken countermeasures in some cases. Apple, for example, calls this feature Optimized battery charge. The battery only charges up to 80 percent overnight. Just before you normally get up, the iPhone will be charged to 100 percent.

Apple wants to prevent the battery from being charged over 80 percent for an unnecessarily long time. Some Android phones use similar charging patterns. You can even set Samsung Galaxy smartphones to use no more than 85 percent of the total battery.

Replacing an overused battery is often not possible at the moment. But that should change soon if the EU has its way:

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New push

The end of built-in batteries in cell phones?

Reliable charger from Anker

So you can save your battery

With the protective mechanisms of the manufacturer, you can no longer do so much wrong when charging overnight. And even if you forget to use them, the battery only loses capacity a little faster instead of suffering greater damage directly.

You should definitely check your smartphone’s battery options to see if you have optimized charging or you can even limit the charge to 80 or 85 percent like Samsung.

It also makes sense to use a slow charger if you charge your phone overnight. If you sleep eight hours, the smartphone does not have to be connected to the 120-watt hyper charger, which charges the battery in under 20 minutes. Here it is sufficient if the battery is charged after seven hours, because it spends more time with less charge.

In the best case, however, you don’t charge the smartphone overnight, but during the day and unplug it again at around 80 percent, as far as your daily routine allows. But maybe you won’t have to worry about that anymore because of a new discovery:

Thanks to a sensational accidental discovery, rechargeable batteries could soon last many times longer

Do you charge your smartphone overnight or are you too worried about the long-term consequences? Do you have to charge your cell phone every day? Please let us know.