Boosting the Battery Lifespan of Your Mobile Device

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Smartphones and other mobile devices are so common these days that it’s hard to imagine life without one. That is until you find out that the battery in your device is dying. Like all rechargeable batteries, the one in your mobile device (a lithium-ion battery) has a limited number of charge-discharge cycles. When it gets to the end of its lifespan, the only thing you can do is to find a replacement. Fortunately, there are ways to extend the battery lifespan of your mobile device so that you can get the most out of it.

Why Do Batteries Die?

In theory, a lithium-ion battery should last forever, but real-world effects damage the battery and gradually cause it to lose its capacity. The main factors are temperature and cycling. High temperatures (above 30°C or 86°F) degrade the electrodes of the battery, and repeated charge-discharge cycles (especially fast charges and discharges) wear it out. Even with ideal conditions, the battery lifespan of a mobile device is only about 300-500 cycles. You might get it to last longer if you take care of it, but don’t expect it to last much more than 2-3 years of daily use.

Symptoms of a Dying Battery

Unless there is a defect, batteries wear out slowly and noticeably. Here are some signs that your battery might need to be replaced soon:

Your device runs out of power much faster than when it was new.
Your device won’t charge fully. The battery meter on your device doesn’t actually show the physical state of the battery. Instead, it’s based off of the voltage and is scaled so that 0-100% on the meter corresponds to the battery’s optimal operating range. When the meter just won’t go to 100%, it means that the battery isn’t producing enough voltage for the device to think it’s full.
As soon as you disconnect the device from the charger, the battery meter drops 10-20%.
The battery is bulging. If this happens to your battery, it’s not dying, it’s DEAD. It’s dangerous to keep using it! It means the internal safety components of the battery have been compromised (either because of age or a defect) . This is usually a symptom of overcharging, but since modern electronics prevent that from happening, it’s almost certainly a manufacturer defect if it happens soon after you got it.

How to Prolong Battery Lifespan

Here are some tips for making your device’s battery live longer:

Partial charges and discharges are better than full ones. Try not to use your device until it hits 0% because it wears out the battery. The advice to make sure the battery is empty before recharging is for nickel-cadmium (NiCd) and nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries. These batteries have a “memory” effect where they lose their max capacity if they’re recharged when they’re not empty. Lithium-ion batteries don’t have this memory effect, so it’s actually better to plug in your device often.
Don’t use ultra-fast chargers. These are the kind that claim to charge your battery in under an hour. If you’re not in a hurry, let the battery charge at its normal rate. Charging a battery faster than it’s designed for damages it and can, in some cases, cause a fire. The charge rate should be slower than the battery’s Ampere-hour (Ah) rating, also known as its capacity (often written as “C”). Ideally, you should charge it at 0.3C to 0.5C.
Don’t keep the battery at a very low charge for too long. If you do, not only will it stress the battery, it will trigger a protection circuit and put the battery to sleep. This helps prevent further damage to the battery, but if it happens, you’ll need special equipment to “reawaken” it.
Avoid high temperatures (above 30°C or 86°F) when using your device. If your device feels hot (from heavy use, like gaming), stop what you’re doing on it and let it cool down.

Tips for Saving Battery Power

So now that you know that batteries only have a limited number of charge-discharge cycles, the best thing to do to increase the battery lifespan of your mobile device would be to make each cycle last as long as possible. Using your device less is the obvious solution, but it’s not always feasible. Fortunately, there are many ways you can conserve your device’s battery power:

Turn on your device’s battery saver mode. On Apple devices, it’s called “Low Power Mode” in Settings -> Battery. On Android devices, it can be called a number of things (mine’s called “STAMINA mode”), but you’ll probably find it in Settings -> Battery.
Find out what your most power-hungry apps are and close them if you’re not using them. For both Android and Apple, you can find a breakdown of power usage in Settings -> Battery. Closing unused apps and features running in the background can help too.
Turn off unnecessary radios. These include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, and GPS. For instance, if you’re out walking you don’t want Wi-Fi on. If it’s on, it’s going to constantly try to look for and connect to all the random Wi-Fi networks you pass by (and probably fail). However, for Wi-Fi in particular, you want to connect to a network whenever you’re staying in range of one. It uses less battery power than a cellular connection and won’t use up your data plan. If you really want to conserve power, you can turn on Airplane Mode, which turns off ALL radio communications.
Disable location tracking for unnecessary apps. Some apps like Facebook use location tracking. You can save power by disabling it for apps that don’t really need it. Apple has this setting in Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services. Android has a similar setting in Settings -> Location (Android devices’ menus vary though).
Turn down your screen’s brightness. This can really save you power. On my smartphone, the screen was consistently one of the top power consumers. Turning off your smartphone or tablet’s automatic screen brightness adjuster can also help (manually set your screen’s brightness instead).
Shorten the idle time before your device goes to sleep and/or locks. As mentioned before, the screen uses a lot of power, so the less it’s on, the better. You could also lock your device manually the moment you stop using it.
Turn off email syncing and other similar services. Constantly checking for updates for email and social media drains power, so turn them off if you’re running low. If you really need to check for updates, use your device’s web browser instead.
Turn off your phone’s assistant if you’re not using it. Otherwise your device is always listening for “Hey, Siri” or “Ok, Google”.
Turn off automatic updates. If you’re low on power, turning this off will make sure your phone isn’t consuming power installing updates to random apps. But make sure you actually do update them when you can plug your device again since updates may help your apps run more efficiently and use less power.

What to Do When the Battery Does Die

So you tried everything to make your battery live longer, but now it’s finally reached the end. You could just buy a new mobile device (be sure to trade in or recycle the old one properly), but with smartphone and tablet prices getting near and even going over $1000, it can be a tough decision. Don’t worry! If you like your device, or you don’t have enough to buy a new one, there are some things you can do:

Check your warranty. This is absolutely the first thing you should do, and it’s the best option. If your device is still under warranty, file a warranty repair request with the company and send it in. Devices under warranty will typically be repaired, free of charge, and in the case that they can’t repair it, they’ll replace your device (also for free). Use it or lose it.
Find a electronics repair shop that can fix your device. There are plenty of these shops around if you look, though depending on the model of your device, the difficulty of finding one varies. Make sure you check the user reviews for the shop before giving it to them to replace the battery. Some mobile devices are very difficult to take apart, so you want to be sure that yours is in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing.
Try to replace the battery yourself. I personally don’t recommend this option unless you absolutely know what you’re doing and have the dexterity to pull it off. Many modern smartphones and tablets are not designed to be taken apart, much less have the battery replaced. You can find guides on how to replace the battery for specific models on iFixit.com (website here), but just remember that you need to put the device back together at the end, and that can be very tricky.
Use an external battery pack. This is kind of like putting your mobile device on life support, but it’s essentially the same thing as replacing the battery. If you don’t mind having a cord coming out of your pocket connected to your smartphone or tablet (a modern take on the pocket watch?), this option is way cheaper than taking it to a repair shop. Plus, if the external battery pack dies, you can easily swap it out for another one.

Yue’s Recommendation

When my Sony Xperia Z5 Compact’s battery started dying (curse you, Pokémon Go!), there weren’t any good small phone models to replace it with. The new ones were too expensive, and paying several hundred dollars for a new 3-year old smartphone model seemed kind of silly. The Xperia Z5 Compact is not a common model and is quite difficult to take apart, so most repair shops don’t know how to replace its battery. But the battery itself costs $20, and if you throw in the service costs, the whole repair was likely to be over $50. Plus, even if I did find someone who could fix it, there’s no guarantee that it would be in the same condition after the repair.

So that’s why I decided to get an external battery pack. I personally recommend the Anker PowerCore 10000. This battery pack is just a bit larger than a credit card and about as thick as your thumb. It’s also pretty light (it’s lighter than my wallet). But for its size, it can power my phone for a few days before I need to recharge it. It also has numerous safety features built into it, like surge protection and short circuit prevention. I’ve used it for about a year now, and it’s proven to be a very reliable way to keep my smartphone alive.