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Actually, Charging Your Phone Overnight Is Totally Fine

Since the early days of the smartphone, there has been confusion over whether charging it while you sleep is a good or bad idea.

Common thinking was that you would over-charge your phone and damage its battery as a result.

But one tech expert has taken to Quora to finally set the record straight: it’s fine.

Jesse Hollington who is senior editor of an Apple-focused site and author of books on how to get the most out of your iPod and iTunes, answered the question ‘Does charging my iPhone 6 overnight destroy my battery?’

“You simply can’t overcharge an iPhone, or any other modern electronic device, for that matter. Any device that uses a Lithium Ion or Lithium Polymer battery must incorporate a charging circuit that cuts off charging power when the battery reaches 100%,” he wrote.

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

The legacy concerns come from the days of when phones had Nickel-Cadmium batteries that did have problems; but today’s Lithium Ion and Polymer batteries are far more advanced.

He also lays out the facts about whether you should run your phone battery all the way down before charging too: and the answer is no. Your phone’s battery only has a finite number of charges in it - so the more you charge it, the less time it will last.

Hollington explains, “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. Obviously if you’re using your iPhone until the battery goes dead, that’s fair, but there’s no need to deliberately drain it before recharging it, and you’ll actually shorten your battery life if you do so.”

So there you go: all your phone battery worries handily debunked in one foul swoop. Now, if only we could get them to last for longer than a day…

Image: Steve Meddle/REX Shutterstock