Tech

I'm a phone expert and here's why you should never charge it overnight

I'm a phone expert and here's why you should never charge it overnight

There is nothing worse than buying a brand new smartphone and realizing that after a very short time, maybe 1 or 2 years, the battery will not last at all.

But how can you stop this from happening?

There are a lot of tips and tricks floating around, but one of them might be a little surprising – because it goes against what many of us do.

If you want to extend your battery life, you should never charge your phone at night. "Most new-generation smartphones take anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours to fully charge," said Ritesh Chugh, a professor.

"So charging your phone overnight is not only unnecessary, it also speeds up battery aging."

This is because the lithium-ion batteries that power modern smartphones chemically degrade as a result of charging pattern, temperature fluctuations and hours of use.

In the case of overnight charging, this means that your battery gets four times more power than it should because it is left plugged in for about six to eight hours. For starters, this isn't good from a safety standpoint, although the good news is that most devices automatically stop charging when their battery reaches 100 percent to prevent them from overheating.

The problem, however, is that because apps run in the background all night, the device inevitably keeps dropping to 99 percent. Whenever this happens, the phone starts growing its battery again in a way known as 'flow charging'. "Leakage charging can drain the battery over time," Chugh explained in an article on The Conversation.