Myth Debunked: Why Charging Your iPhone Overnight Doesn’t Destroy The Battery

For years so-called tech experts have claimed that keeping your phone charging overnight and juicing up your device when it’s still got plenty of battery left could be really bad for it. But charging your iPhone overnight isn’t going to destroy the battery or cause any other damage to your handset, according to editor and tech author Jesse Hollington.

In a great Quora post all about the ins and outs of battery charging, Jesse Hollington debunks the rumours:

“You simply can’t overcharge an iPhone, or any other modern electronic device, for that matter.

“In other words, when your iPhone is plugged in and reaches 100%, it switches to external power and simply runs from that.”

He also explains why it’s not an issue to charge up a phone that’s not completely out of juice too:

“Charging your battery before it’s fully depleted will also not harm your battery at all, and is actually the preferable way of charging your battery. While Lithium Ion batteries are rated for a limited number of “charge cycles’ (about 500 in the case of the iPhone), the term “charge cycle” refers to complete recharges, and partial recharges simply use up partial charge cycles.

“In other words, every time you charge your iPhone up from 90%, you’re using 1/10th, or 10%, of a complete charge cycle. This means you could charge your iPhone up from 90%-100% 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.”

It’s all down to the fact that Apple uses much smarter batteries than earlier phone companies did. And it’s not just an iPhone thing either, Hollington answered the original question about iPhones, but says most modern devices with a Lithium Ion or Lithium Polymer battery will work in exactly the same way.

This article originally appeared on Lifehacker UK


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