Phone-charging mistakes...and how to avoid them

Is your phone’s battery life on the wane? Katie Rosseinsky speaks to tech experts for their tips on how to stay juiced

- Katie Rosseinsky

Charging your phone is a mundane fixture of modern life. Most of us probably plug in our devices just after we've brushed our teeth at night, filling them up to 100 per cent, readying them for another day of social-media scrolling and app-based procrastination. It’s part of our routine, something we don’t really think about – until it becomes a problem, that is.

There tends to come a point in your phone’s lifespan when it starts greedily eating up its charge with an insatiable appetite. Once you could get through the working day without dropping into the red zone, battery-wise, but now you’re constantly scoping out potential charging points so you can top up on the go.

As someone who has never been fussed about gadgets, I clung on to the last phone I owned for around four and a half years. By the end, I couldn’t leave the house without a chaotic array of power banks, wires and adaptors. The most frustrating part? Woeful battery life aside, this ancient artefact was actually functioning pretty well (although, I will admit, the photos it took were rudimentary at best).

I’d like to hold on to my current phone for as long as possible, and I’m guessing that, in a cost of living crisis, you might well do, too. So is there any way that we can stop this annoying process of decline from playing out again (or at least slow it down a bit)? In order to answer that, we need to look closer at our charging routine – and ask whether we might inadvertently be hastening the demise of our own devices.

First up, a quick science refresher. Your mobile phone uses a lithium-ion battery; so does your laptop, tablet and electric toothbrush. Swapped to a rechargeable vape recently? That will run off a lithium-ion battery too. Drive an electric vehicle? There’s a high chance your car uses the same technology. Are you, for some unfathomable reason, the proud owner of a hoverboard? You can probably guess by now exactly what powers your weird device.