Your charging habits may be killing your phone battery

We all do it: Use our smartphones all day long until the battery gets down to about 10 or 20 percent charged and then plug our phones in for the night, so we can face the new day with a fully charged battery. Then the cycle starts all over again.

Well, according to battery company Cadex, we’re all doing it wrong. The company recently launched a Battery University site designed to teach consumers how to charge their phones properly. As it turns out, charging your phone overnight really wears the battery out in the long term.

Why? Well, typically, when we charge our batteries at night, they become fully charged and yet electricity keeps pumping into them. That’s like forcing someone to eat more food when they’re already full. Over time, that would make anyone sick and it’s certainly not good for your phone battery.

Instead, Cadex suggests charging your phone battery throughout the day to help it maintain a good charge, but without running the battery ragged. If that doesn’t quite work with your schedule then try plugging your phone in about an hour or so before you go to bed, let the phone battery fully charge, and then leave it unplugged for the night. Unless there’s something seriously wrong with your phone, it should still be fully charged when you wake up in the morning.