Battery: should you leave your smartphone charging all night?

Battery: should you leave your smartphone charging all night?

We often hear that leaving your smartphone plugged in, when it reaches 100% load, damages the battery. What is it really ?

Most of us charge his smartphone at night. While a full charge requires a few hours at most, the phone is often connected for eight hours or more! However, smartphones are equipped with a lithium-ion battery, which has the advantage of recharging quickly, but is damaged when it is too high voltage. In addition, an overload can heat the battery and in some cases cause its ignition, as we saw with the Galaxy Note 7 which caught fire.

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To avoid this phenomenon, most manufacturers have equipped the phones with systems that automatically turn off the power when the load is full. The problem is that even when not in use, the phone is weakly discharged. As soon as the battery falls below a certain level, it will reset the charge again until it reaches 100%, and so on several times in the night. So many "mini charges" that use the battery prematurely and overheat the phone.

The charger alone also consumes electricity

In addition, the phone is not the only one to consume energy. When the battery is 100% charged and the charger remains plugged in, the charger continues to absorb electricity. According to the Berkeley Lab, a charger represents an average power of 3.68 watts when charging and 2.24 watts when it remains connected to the mains while the battery is full. A useless waste of energy.

To increase the life of the battery, it is recommended to always keep a charge between 30% and 80%, that is to say not to wait until it falls completely flat or to load it to the maximum.