Is It Safe to Leave My Smartphone on the Wireless Charger?
Welcome to another installment of Lifehacker’s tech advice column , brought to you by a ton of DayQuil – thanks to whoever gave me the horrible cold I’ve dealt with for the past week or so. Since I still feel like I can easily add eight more hours of sleep to my schedule, I’ll jump straight to this week’s question before I flop onto my keyboard.
Lifehacker reader Vignesh writes:
Hello Vinyesh! First, yes, I am still doing it. I post a new version of Tech 911 every Friday, except for the plague (or incredible vacation), and I encourage all readers to send me any technical issues you encounter . I’m always happy to help as much as I can, whether it’s help with troubleshooting, buying advice, or having a 6ft 5in shoulder that you will cry on after frying your gear.
When it comes to wireless charging, I confess that I’m not that good at understanding the intricacies of smartphone electronics. More importantly, there are many of the myths about how to charge your device in the most efficient, safest, and least battery-powered way. I don’t want to repeat unnecessary science, so I will try to provide as many sources as possible for my battery related claims.
Generally speaking, I would think that your device should have no problem turning the wireless charging pad on and off multiple times a day. While the technology differs from a wired charger – by using a coil to create an electromagnetic field that itself creates current in the receiver coil, the end result is the same as with your battery. If you’re not worried about connecting your phone multiple times a day via a wired cable, you probably don’t need to worry about how long it plays on the trampoline with your wireless charging pad.
However, this conversation is now taking us down the complicated path of smartphone power cycles that everyone seems to have different opinions about.
First, it is possible that placing your smartphone on the charging pad all day long can put more strain on the battery than letting it sit idle at a lower charge level. As Wired’s Matt Reynolds wrote last year:
“Charging your phone so it stays 100% overnight is not good news for a battery, but it’s not because you’re putting on more charge than it can handle. The trickle charging mechanism turns off the charger after the phone is fully charged and only charges the battery when it runs out of power a little.
The problem is that you keep the charge level at 100 percent, which, as we know from the previous myth, puts some stress on the battery. “
However, University of Cambridge researcher Kent Griffith notes in an article that your smartphone’s battery manufacturer has set limits so that your constant need to charge your phone doesn’t damage your battery. He says keeping your smartphone “charged” all the time is not “good”, but it shouldn’t damage your device. In other words, get hung up on charging your device at your own risk, but you are unlikely to sacrifice much.
As Lucas Mirian wrote in last year’s article for Computerworld , there is still a lot of controversy about how you should approach charging smartphones, especially wireless charging. One expert in his article states that you should keep your smartphone charged at about 45-55 percent in order to maximize battery life, which seems ridiculous to me since you are unlikely to be able to use your smartphone during a typical day.
Another technology journalist stated that wireless charging ruined his iPhone because he allegedly exhausted his charge cycles faster than if he had used a wired solution. But, according to Menno Treffers, chairman of the Wireless Power Consortium, “… by continually charging your phone battery throughout the day, as you would with wireless charging, and by keeping your phone battery from dropping below 50%, you really get longer life. the service of your battery. “
Clear? Don’t push it to the max, but don’t let it get too low either. Let’s continue. Here’s another article from Digital Trends’ Simon Hill published last year:
“Electrical energy is converted to chemical energy during charging, and the opposite happens during discharge,” Dr. Daniel Abraham, senior research scientist at Argonne Laboratory, told Digital Trends.
The battery manufacturer decides how much energy can be stored in the cell, and this determines how much energy you can use.
“The manufacturer defines upper and lower cut-off voltages that are fixed and the elements are cycled between the two voltage ranges,” explained Dr. Abraham. “As long as you select the correct voltage range, you can cycle the cell thousands of times.”
“It doesn’t matter if you have a wireless or wired charger.”
You cannot exceed these limits by leaving your phone on the wireless charging pad for too long or by leaving it plugged in overnight. You also cannot empty the cell beyond the manufacturer’s lower cut-off limit. These limits do not differentiate between power supplies.
“It doesn’t matter if you have a wireless or wired charger,” said Dr. Abraham. “You will not be able to recharge or discharge the battery.”
Hill also touched on the entire power cycling issue I mentioned earlier and pointed out that the best way to make sure you don’t use your device’s limited battery cycles unnecessarily is to take a close look at which apps are running in the background. on your device. This will likely have a bigger impact on overall battery life than using a wireless charger, more than you might think.
Also make sure your wireless charger is not in, say, in front of a window. Heat will affect the overall battery life of your smartphone. While it can get a little warm from wireless charging, it gets much worse if you let it charge and tan.
So where does this leave us? Here are the main takeaways from what I’ve understood:
- You will probably do your best for your smartphone’s battery if you leave it between 50 and 80 percent charged. You can leave it at a higher level, which can affect its lifespan. You can drain the battery below, but doing so will start using more battery cycles.
- Leaving your smartphone on the wireless charging stand will not damage the battery. This may somehow affect its lifespan, but there are other things that are much worse.
- Make sure you have a reliable charging pad and not some sketchy Amazon fake, as overheating (and overheating device) could potentially affect battery life … and no one knows what else.
- Do not let your smartphone charge in the sun, whether on a table, on a long car trip, etc.
- Get rid of unnecessary apps / don’t let apps run in the background for no reason.
If you don’t mind, I’ll share a personal anecdote, I used the wireless charger exclusively with my two latest iPhones. I had no problem keeping said smartphones on said chargers overnight while drinking sweet electric juice for six to eight hours a day. And my Pixel 3 XL sits on wireless charging most of the day; there are no catastrophic battery problems to report.
The second iPhone I bought, the iPhone X, was only charged through an outdated wire before I got my hands on it. Anyway, I notice that this battery is not as solid as the brand new model, but this is probably due to how much its previous owner used the smartphone. Since then, I have charged it wirelessly and have not noticed any significant decreases in battery life. The ones I’ve come across are gradual enough that I would again chalk them up to how often I use my smartphone, not how it is put to bed every night.