You should always let your iphone battery reach zero before you charge it up, charging
your iphone overnight is bad for it, and you should always charge on Airplane mode.
Be honest, how many of those claims have you heard and better still, how many have you
believed?
Well, not surprising, there are a lot of claims out there regarding the charging of iPhone
batteries, but how many of them are true?
That’s what I’m going to try and find out in this video, I’m going to look at
10 common claims regarding the charging of iPhone batteries, and find out whether they’re
true or false.
Stick with me to the end of the video, I reckon there’s going to be at least one myth in
here, that you can officially stop worrying about.
OK, let’s get into it.
Charging your phone overnight isn’t good for it; This is a bit of a classic really
isn’t it, I think we’ve all heard this at one point or another, this idea that we
should only ever be charging our phone when we’re able to keep an eye on it, and remove
it from charge the second that it’s full, for fear of it somehow overloading.
Quite simply, any quality, modern device like a smartphone or a tablet or a laptop or a
smartwatch, is not going to overcharge, even if you leave it on the charger overnight.
Your iPhone has the smarts to know when your battery is full, and it will essentially stop
charging at that point, and if the battery depletes sufficiently enough while the phone
is still on the charger, it will then charge again to top it up.
In fact, if you’ve recently picked up your phone in the middle of the night whilst it’s
charging, you might notice that it now uses optimised charging.
This is where the phone will immediately begin charging once you plug it in, but if it knows
that you’ve got it plugged in overnight, and if the phone knows that your routine is
usually to sleep until, say, 7am, the phone will only charge to around 80% initially,
and then finish off charging much closer to your waking up time.
This not only means that your phone is full and ready to go in the morning, it means that
rather than blasting the battery with a full, high-speed charge very quickly, it can charge
it much more gradually, which is better for the battery’s overall health.
If you want to see whether you’ve got this feature enabled, head to your Settings, then
Battery Health, and ensure that Optimised Battery Charging is enabled.
Notice here that you can also see the current maximum capacity, or chemical health of your
battery.
You shouldn’t charge your phone under your pillow; This is true, but not necessarily
for the reason you might expect.
Let’s put concerns about your phone with all it’s radio activity being that close
to your head overnight to one side for a moment, the process of recharging a phone battery
generates heat.
Not enough heat to set fire to your bedding, if that’s happening, you’ve got a faulty
phone or battery, but heat nevertheless.
Heat is the number one enemy of modern lithium ion batteries, and can cause severe, permanent
damage to it.
This is the main reason why you should never leave your iPhone sitting out in the hot sun,
and why your iPhone will warn you if it begins to reach a dangerous temperature level, and
whilst it might not reach those same temperatures when charging under your pillow, prolonged
exposure to that kind of temperature is really not good for the battery at all, and is a
guaranteed way to reduce it’s lifespan.
To be fair, extreme heat isn’t good for any part of your phone, so leaving your phone
out in the sun is just something you should avoid at all costs.
If you’re charging your phone overnight, do so in a place where it’s got plenty of
room for airflow, sitting it on your bedside table or a charging pad should be more than
sufficient, and don’t cover it with anything, if the screen lighting up is an issue for
you, either change the phone settings to have it not disturb you, or just sit it with the
screen facing down rather than up.
The cable you’re using doesn’t matter; This isn’t true.
Technically, any cable with the right connector can charge your phone, but just because something
can do something, doesn’t mean that it should.
You wouldn’t apply the same logic to brake pads for your car or windows for your house,
there are certain products where you really need them to be up to a certain standard,
even if it means paying a little bit more.
This doesn’t mean that you have to buy official Apple cables by the way, Apple do charge a
premium, but you should also avoid the absolute bargain-basement cables, unless they’re
coming from a reputable manufacturer or retailer.
You need to know that the cable you’re using is MFi certified.
MFi stands for ‘made for iPhone’, and it’s an Apple licensing program that covers
all manner of iPhone peripherals.
An MFi certified product will be allowed to display the badge on their packaging, and
when it comes to a charging cable, it means that the cable can pass power to your phone
correctly, without risk of it overcharging.
MFi cables aren’t expensive in the grand scheme of things, so whilst it can be tempting
to go for the absolute cheapest cables that you can, I’d advise you not to.
You should fully discharge your battery each time before charging; The need for fully discharging
your battery is another popular battery myth, and simply isn’t the case these days, thanks
to the type of battery that phones use.
There are lots of different types of batteries out there.
Some nickel cadmium batteries for example should be nearly completely discharged before
charging them up again, while lead acid batteries should never be fully discharged.
Thankfully, lithium ion batteries, the type found in modern phones, are much more forgiving,
and built for the kind of charging and discharging patterns you’d expect from a regular consumer.
So long as you’re following the other battery advice, things like not allowing them to overheat,
using certified cables and chargers with them, you can charge your phone fully overnight
if you like, or you can plug in for 10 minutes for a quick top-up right before you go out,
or a combination of all of these things, it really doesn’t matter, the battery in your
phone has been built to work around you, and not the other way around.
You should charge using Airplane mode; This one isn’t true, but it’s also not false
as such.
The belief here is that charging on AirPlane mode will allow you to charge your phone much
faster than charging it in regular mode, and this is not entirely false.
Airplane mode essentially shuts down all of the wireless communication features of your
device, so no wifi, no cellular connection, and as your phone is typically constantly
looking to create and maintain wifi and cellular connections whilst it’s powered on, this
will reduce some of the power usage of the phone.
The charge coming into the phone isn’t any more powerful, it’s just that the incoming
power isn’t being offset by power usage as much.
But, if you really want to charge your phone up more quickly, say in an emergency, a much
more effective way to do this would be to power off your phone, and charge it with the
power off.
Because, even in Airplane mode, your phone is still using power, power for the screen,
power for any apps that might be running or apps you have running in the background.
An analogy would be filling a bucket of water, and the bucket has a number of holes.
If Airplane mode plugs one of those holes, the bucket will fill up faster, but if there
are still some other holes, you’re still going to lose water.
It’s only by plugging all the holes that you’ll be able to really take advantage
of all the water you’re pouring in, and that’s kind of the case with your phone
and charging it.
But even then, it’s generally considered that with a good, fast charger, unless you’re
power using your phone at the same time that you’re charging it, you should be able to
quickly charge your phone up without the need to put it into Airplane mode.
Keep in mind, Airplane mode basically renders the phone element of your phone useless, and
you have to question whether it’s worth it, just to slightly speed up your charging.
If it is, power the phone off, give it a rapid charge, then power it back on.
Batteries have a memory; This is kind of the same belief as the belief that batteries must
always be fully discharged, it just isn’t true with modern, lithium ion batteries.
Where some people get mistaken is mixing up battery memory with battery health.
You can find out your battery health by going into your iPhone settings, choosing Battery
and then Battery Health.
My iPhone 13 Pro, purchased about 7 months ago, still has 100% battery health, which
is excellent, but if I was leaving this out in the sun all day, perhaps using dodgy cables
with it, that figure could have dropped.
If this was, say, 80%, that just means that I’ve got 80% battery capacity to play with,
compared to the 100% that I had when it was new, so if a new battery would give me 10
hours of constant use, that figure purely for illustrative purposes, then I would expect
to get only 8 hours off of a full charge when I’ve got 80% capacity.
But this ageing process is, unfortunately, entirely normal.
You can see Apple allude to it here when they talk about your iPhone battery chemically
ageing.
Your battery has a limited number of charge cycles in it before it can’t charge anymore,
which is why if you have a particularly old iPhone, you’re going to notice that it’s
not lasting as long as it did when you first got it, no matter how careful you might have
been with regard to charging it.
When you reach this point, the best thing you can do is swap out your phone, and a brand
new phone will of course have a brand new battery, or if that’s not an option for
you, a battery swap would also be a good solution, and there are companies out there that can
help you with this.
You should use Low Power mode all the time; This is another myth that is more of an opinion
answer, than an absolutely factual answer, but I’m gonna call this one false, you don’t
need to use Low Power mode all the time.
Low Power mode is exactly what it sounds like, it will switch your phone into a mode where
it impacts a number of the power-hungry features of your phone.
According to Apple themselves, this includes 5G data, auto lock, display brightness, display
refresh rate, some visual effects, iCloud photo syncing, automatic downloads, email
fetch and background app refresh.
You might be perfectly fine with some of these being disabled, but many of these features
are what makes the iPhone experience so good, so it would be a shame to routinely switch
them all off.
I guess the comparison would be in buying a Porsche, but installing a limiter that stops
it from going over 20 miles per hour.
Low Power mode is designed to eek out the last bit of power that your phone has, which
is why Apple will suggest you switch it on once your phone reaches 20 or 10% of power,
it’s there to help keep your phone running for just that little bit longer, until you
can get it plugged in to charge.
Also, keep in mind that once you reach 80% of charge, low power mode will automatically
switch off, so you can see that from Apple’s perspective, this isn’t a feature that they
expect you to have on all the time.
You can save battery by closing apps; This is another myth, quite the opposite is generally
true.
The theory behind this is that phones that have apps running in the background are having
to dedicate battery to those apps, and so if you have 10 or 20 apps running in the background,
that’s 10 or 20 lots of power from your battery that’s being dedicated to running
apps that you’re not actively using, so closing them down would save you some battery
life.
The reality is that your iPhone is built for multi tasking, and in general it’s very
good at putting those background apps into a low power, near idle state.
Essentially, those apps aren’t running in the same way that the app that you’re currently
using on your phone is, but when you swipe on your phone to move from an active app to
a background app, your phone has that background app in a state that makes it very easy for
it to spring to life.
For you, the user, the experience feels like all of the apps are constantly running, so
the fact they aren’t is irrelevant to you.
This is actually one of those myths where the opposite is true, opening up apps is the
thing that requires the most power usage, and so constantly closing your apps down and
then opening them up again can use MORE of your battery life, not less.
Think of it like an oven or a kettle.
In general, it takes more electricity to heat your oven up, or boil a kettle of water, than
it does to simply maintain a high temperature.
A professional kitchen will heat up their oven and then hold them at that temperature
for the duration of their shift, because it doesn’t make energy efficient sense to keep
powering something on, waiting for it to heat up, powering it off and repeating the process.
So yes, use your apps as you wish, your phone’s in-built multi tasking smarts has got you
covered.
You can force quit an app if something goes wrong with it, but other than that, you’re
good.
You shouldn’t use your phone while it’s charging; This is kind of a myth.
The truth element of this comes from the fact that, when your phone is charging, especially
if it’s fast charging, that fast charge is putting some stress on the phone and the
battery.
If you use your phone while it’s plugged in, most phones will automatically default
to a low-power charge mode, to allow the phone to continue drawing the power that it needs,
to do what you want it to do whilst it’s charging.
You’re absolutely fine to use your phone while it’s charging, you’re not going
to be putting yourself at any risk, nor are you damaging your battery, the only real consequence
that you’re going to face is that your battery isn’t going to charge as quickly as it might
if you simply plug it in, leave it alone and allow it to fast charge.
But ultimately, you’re the consumer, it’s your phone and you should use it how you wish,
so I really wouldn’t worry too much about this.
Fast charging kills your battery; Again, another myth.
Fast charging has gone from being a kind of ‘oh by the way we have fast charging’
feature a few years ago, to a major, significant, almost deal-breaker feature of modern smartphones,
and for good reason.
The latest iPhones are essentially, insanely powerful computers that you carry around with
you in your pocket, and with each year, their capabilities become even more impressive.
Consumers would be more than happy with more powerful, longer lasting batteries, provided
that doesn’t equal a thicker phone, and whilst battery tech is improving all of the
time, an area that manufacturers have realised they can make improvements on and increase
consumer satisfaction is charge time.
If you can get to the point where a battery can be fully charged from 0% to 80% in only
10 minutes, battery capacity suddenly isn’t so much of an issue, you could power-use your
phone all day long, then plug in for a quick charge while you have a coffee.
Plus, the charge on your iPhone isn’t that fast, certainly not compared with what some
other phone manufacturers are doing right now.
The iPhone 13 Pro can charge at up to 27 watts with a compatible charger, and tests have
shown that a Pro Max phone can charge from empty to full in around 90 minutes at this
speed, which is quick, but when you consider that there are phones like the Vivo IQOO 7,
which features 120 watt charging and can go from empty to full in 18 minutes, you realise
that Apple are moving along carefully with this.
Apple sell millions of iPhones, and it really isn’t in their interest at all to sell phones
where the battery seriously degrades each time you fast charge it.
Part of the technology behind this is the same kind of technology that stops phones
from overcharging.
With fast charging, your phone will automatically receive a charge in different phases.
The first phase of the charge is the higher voltage phase, charging your battery to anywhere
from 50 to 80% capacity very quickly, which does generate some extra heat and puts some
stress on the battery.
But for the remaining part of the charge, your phone will switch to a slower, trickle
charge phase, massively reducing the stress on the battery for that part of the charge,
keeping the charge process both safe and healthy for your battery.
It’s why you’ll often see a notification informing you of exactly how long you’ve
got left in your current charge cycle, and what time the phone will be fully charged
by, your phone is smart enough to be able to calculate exactly how long the charge is
going to take.
So, fast charge away, and as and when Apple release even faster charging iPhones, you
can be pretty confident that they will have done their homework prior to launching the
phones.
So there you go, 10 claims about battery charging, with my thoughts on whether or not they’re
something you need to worry about.
I think the main takeaway throughout all of this is that, ultimately, you’re the consumer,
it’s YOUR phone, and you should use it how you like.
Phone manufacturers like Apple know this, and they build their devices around your usage
habits, they don’t expect you to significantly change what you do to work for them.
Use your phone how and when you want to use it, charge it how and when you want to charge
it, and trust that your phone is smart enough to be able to take care of itself.
What about you?
How often do you charge your phone?
Or are there any battery charging myths, or tips, that I’ve not included here?
Drop me a comment and let’s talk about it.
And as ever, if you found this video useful, do please consider leaving me a like, and
subscribing to my channel for more content like this in the future.
See you on the next video.