Tom’s Tuesday Tech Tip: Why Is My Battery So Low? I Charged It All Night!

I’m sure that every Certified Legal Nurse Consultant out there has put your smartphone on the charger overnight and by the time you’ve unplugged it and either walked all the way downstairs to your CLNC^® home office, or driven to meet an attorney-client, you’ve noticed a drop-off (sometimes quite sharp) in the power meter when you got there.

Could it be that you really used up that much power driving to work or is there something else to blame? Interestingly, it can be a combination of both. I’ve already given you some tips on how to extend your life, battery life that is. But let’s look at the charging aspect. Today’s smart devices like phones, computers and tablets all stop charging when they reach 100% charge. That’s to protect the battery and the device. Once that battery hits the 100% mark and it stops charging, it starts discharging – a little bit at a time and may not start charging again until it hits an undefined threshold or the next time it’s unplugged and plugged back in. So if you’ve left your phone on all night while charging it, it won’t be at 100% the next morning when you take it off the charger to use it.

In fact, charging it while it’s on isn’t really the best way to get a full or what’s called a saturation charge. According to Battery University, it’s better to power your portable device off when charging it. You can read the scholarly article here or you can just trust this Tech Tip. Since there’s no parasitic draw from all your apps, etc., the battery has a higher chance of having a higher charge when you go to use it. Conversely, Gizmodo doesn’t recommend charging your battery to 100% (What’s a CLNC consultant to do?) and tells us not to be afraid of topping it off when you can, constantly running it between 40%-80% for maximum life.

Who should we believe? Trust in your own experience – the longer you have your phone the more your battery life will degrade – so live with it. If you can, carry a spare battery. If you’re an iPhone user, keep a charger everywhere you go (car, bathroom and office) and like a beer – keep topping it off.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

P.S. Comment and share your tips for extending battery life in your devices.