Published on April 12th, 2013 | by Sachit Shivam

Excoriating some battery myths

People today take care of their phones religiously and sadly this entails some superstitions, if you will, that many believe in about how to treat their devices’ batteries.
Some of these myths are in fact harmful to the battery and its runtime.

Based on that, I decided to pen a small post clarifying certain things.

No, this is not one of those “keep WiFi switched off when not in use” kind of guides.

This applies only to Lithium based batteries.

I won’t actually be mentioning these myths, I’ll just be telling you what you can do to help increase your battery’s runtime.

So here we go:

You shouldn’t leave the phone on the charger till the battery charges completely. The phone’s battery heats up while it’s charging. Heat above a specific amount is ~~bad~~ terrible for batteries. You can charge the battery partially and then charge it again later, it doesn’t matter. Random and partial charges are better for the battery than one, long charge.
Related to the first point, you don’t need to wait for your battery to discharge “completely” before plugging it into your charger. Like I said before, go with partial, random charges.
Try and keep the battery cool. If you have to store a Lithium-ion battery, store it in a cool place. If possible, seal it in a plastic bag and pop it into the chiller tray in your refrigerator.
Lithium-ion batteries are ‘smart’ in the sense that they don’t overcharge. They have a built in cut-off mechanism in place to stop current flow once the battery reaches near 100% capacity. The charging resumes once the current capacity drops to around 3% below the maximum capacity.
If convenient/possible, keep your device off while it is charging.

Remember, a Lithium-ion battery’s maximum capacity decreases over time.
You can use these tips to prolong your battery life.

All information sourced from Battery University.

You can do through the website to learn loads of things about batteries, how they function and their history.

Links to articles that I used: here, here and here.