Harmful Battery Habits: Temperature, Apps, Charging Errors

In part one of this two-part blog series, we went over some basics on phone use habits that may limit your battery life. There are several areas you might be able to adjust if you’re looking to limit the strain on your phone’s battery, including some that will have little to no impact on your use themes. At Bad Apple, we’re here to help with a variety of phone battery issues, including battery replacements and upgrades as part of our phone repair services, which cover both iPhones and other models. What are some of the other common phone use issues we tend to recommend against for our clients if they’re looking to maximize battery life? Here’s a primer.

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Temperature Concerns

While you may not have realized it, phone batteries are only meant to operate within a specific temperature range. This range is decently wide, but there are plenty of times where phones end up in conditions that are outside it – either well above it or well below it. Both of these can be issues that limit battery life. An overheating battery, which can be caused by everything from too heavy a strain on the phone to being left out in the hot sun for too long, will often be rendered inoperable; the same can happen to a battery that gets too cold, depending on how low the temperatures are. These are in addition to other phone operation issues that may take place in extreme temperatures, as well. The simplest solution here is to avoid these settings, at least when you have your phone on you.

Too Many Apps

Another cause of poor battery life in some phones is the presence of too many apps, especially those that aren’t regularly used. This is especially true if some of these apps are those that operate in the background and use high amounts of power – there are diagnostic programs within your phone that will show you how much data a given program uses, and you should check these. If possible, delete apps that you don’t use, especially those that take up lots of space or sometimes operate in the background.

Data over WiFi

We noted the data/WiFi dance above, and another quick word on it here: If you’re in any situation where you trust the WiFi connection that’s available to your phone, you should have it connected. WiFi is much less straining to your phone’s battery than finding and maintaining a data connection, which should only lean on if you’re out and don’t have a legitimate WiFi connection. The only exception here is if you don’t trust a public WiFi network in a given place, in which case you can stick with data usage.

Full Charge Past 100%/Letting it Die

Finally, there’s a big myth out there about letting the phone die completely, then fully charging it from here even past 100% – folks believe this will improve battery life. Simply put, neither of these are true at all. You should remove the phone’s charger as soon as it gets to 100%; you also should never let the phone get all the way to zero, as this actually weakens the battery over time. Rather, we recommend plugging yours in for charging when it reaches about 40% battery life.

For more on common habits you should eliminate if you want to maximize phone battery life, or to learn about any of our phone repair, smart watch repair or other device repair services, speak to the staff at FixITMobile | Bad Apple today.