Wireless charging can adversely affect a smartphone’s battery life. Therefore, a smartphone user must consider various factors.
Lately, premium and upper mid-range smartphones are equipped with wireless charging features, allowing users to keep their battery charged throughout the day. However, although the feature is convenient, wireless charging can adversely affect your smartphone’s battery life.
Wireless charging is essentially not harmful to a smart device or its battery, but it generates more heat affecting a battery’s longevity. Therefore, chargers with built-in cooling fans help solve this issue.
Wireless Charging Good or Bad for Battery Health
Wireless chargers are worse than wired ones regarding a device’s battery life, as regular charging can wear out a battery, and external factors like heat can reduce its capacity in the long term.
Wireless charging efficiency ranges from 80% to 50% depending on the alignment of coils in the charger and smartphone, and the remaining energy gets converted into heat. On the contrary, a copper wire in wired charging conducts electricity efficiently without any physical gap. Wireless chargers with cooling fans help keep the heating of the devices under control. Lower power outputs like 5W chargers do produce almost no heat and thus prevent overheating of devices.
How to maintain long smartphone battery life?
Frequently top up your battery
Smartphone batteries perform best when you charge them between 20 to 80% and not up to 100% frequently. So, topping up your battery during the day is better than charging it overnight. Also, don’t leave a battery-powered device fully charged if you won’t use it for a few weeks.
Keep your device cool
Exposing a smartphone to extreme temperatures (hot and cold), like keeping it under a pillow while charging or exposing it to the sun, can degenerate its battery. Therefore, Apple recommends keeping its phones at not more than 95° F or 35° C and its ideal range is lower than 62° to 72° F or 16° to 22° C.
Minimize using super-fast charging
Super fast charging impacts battery health, as forcing more power increases heat output, depending on the device used. For example, you can use a 10W or 18W charger instead of a 65W or 150W charger to prevent overheating. This applies to both wired and wireless chargers.
If your device battery stops working, replacing it is cheaper than buying a brand new smartphone, and brands charge below $100, including taxes and labor for a battery replacement. To continue using your smartphone for more than five years, consider replacing its battery during its warranty period.
