Hi, we’re IFLScience. You may remember us from such articles as Why You Shouldn’t Charge Your Phone Overnight, and Please Don’t Stick Frozen Potatoes Up Your Butt To Treat Medical Conditions. We’re back with another tip on avoiding getting caught up during the everyday and mundane to tell you why it’s a good idea to take your phone’s case off when it’s on charge.
The key reason why you ideally shouldn’t charge your phone with the case on is to do with heat. Why? Because phone batteries hate the heat.
Most smartphones are powered by lithium-ion batteries (if you’ve got a Garfield phone, it probably runs on something else) and these will always degrade over time no matter how you’re charging your phone. This is because they function by shifting charge carriers between electrodes, and doing this stresses the constituent parts damaging their efficiency over time.
Charging your phone for too long or letting it go to zero and charging from scratch are great ways to stress the electrodes and shorten the life of your smartphone’s battery. However, perhaps one of the most effective ways to kill a battery is by letting it overheat.
On the Apple support site they warn that “Using an iOS or iPadOS device in very hot conditions can permanently shorten battery life […] Don’t leave your device in your car because temperatures in parked cars can exceed this range.”
“Use iOS and iPadOS devices where the ambient temperature is between 0º and 35ºC (32º to 95ºF). Low- or high-temperature conditions may cause your device to change its behavior to regulate its temperature.”
Where this ties into phone cases is that certain styles of smartphone dress-up can cause them to get hotter while on charge. If you’re noticing that your phone feels significantly warmer after it’s been charging, this could be a sign that it’s getting too hot, damaging the battery capacity.
It’s an irritating fact of existing smartphone technologies that no matter how perfectly you charge your phone, the battery will inevitably lose some of its performance over time. However, there are steps you can take to give it a helping hand.
Taking off your phone’s case during charging is a good start, as is avoiding leaving it charging overnight, as this can also stress the battery’s electrodes. Huawei recommends aiming to keep your charge percentage between 30 and 70 percent for the best battery life, meanwhile Apple has a special tool in the settings that will stop your phone ever going over 80 percent for the same reason.
Your case may well be fresh to death, but why not give your phone a little breather by letting it charge au naturel.
[H/T: Toms Guide]
Source Link: Why You Shouldn't Charge Your Phone With Its Case On
