Fact or Myth? Charging your iPhone all night can damage the battery
Mumbai: It’s a common opinion that charging an iPhone, or any smartphone for that matter, all night can lead to lasting damage to the battery. And most of us abide by it. Now is that a fact or myth? It’s a myth.
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Recently, Jesse Hollington, Senior Editor for iLounge.com, Author of iPod & iTunes Portable Genius, put a rest to the myth through his answer on Quora. To a user’s question ‘does charging my iPhone 6 overnight destroy my battery?’, Hollington replied, “Charging your iPhone overnight will not harm your battery in the slightest.”
He explained that “it is just not possible to overcharge an iPhone, or any other modern device electronic device, for that matter. Any device that uses a Lithium Ion or Lithium Polymer battery must incorporate a charging circuit that cuts off charging power when the battery reaches 100 per cent.”
It is also a common belief that one should let the battery drain entirely before putting it on charge, instead of charging it up from, says 90 per cent battery. Hollington, however, dismissed this notion too. In fact, he says that is a much more preferable way of charging.
He clarified that with the concept of limited ‘charge cycles’ that every lithium ion battery has. He wrote, in case of an iPhone, there are 500 charge cycles, and “every time you charge your iPhone up from 90 per cent, you're using one-tenth, or 10 per cent, of a complete charge cycle. This means you could charge your iPhone up from 90 –100 per cent, 5,000 times before you'd have to worry about running out of charge cycles. However, if you deliberately drain your battery to zero and then recharge it, instead of simply plugging it in when it needs to be charged, you're needlessly using up a complete charge cycle.”
Therefore, charge your iPhone whenever you see your battery draining and you have a chance, that way you are actually prolonging your smartphone’s battery life. Further, although there are other concerns like short circuits that must be kept in mind when charging smartphone over-night, but frying up your phone’s battery because of that should be the least of your concern.
