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Tonderai Rutsito : Technology

Previously, I wrote about the difference that a battery good battery makes to your smartphone no matter how good it is. When smartphones first entered our market their batteries didn’t last long mostly because people were eager to explore the various functions on their mobile phones. This necessitated constantly charging of the smartphones and in some cases this affected the battery chargers.A battery charger is very important because it can decide how long your battery lasts. It’s highly recommended that you take very good care or your original charger that came with your phone because it meets the manufacturer’s specification.

However, if you have to replace the original charger then I would recommend that you approach an authorised dealer because most of the cellphone chargers being sold on our streets are cheap knockoffs.

The best way to ensure your battery last longer is to use the correct charger. Even the best power packed smartphone battery on the market, the Gtel X3, will not take you through a full day if you abuse it or wrongly charge it.

One big mistake that we all make is to wait for our cellphone to hit the bottom zero till it switches off, then while at home, we leave it to re-charge overnight.

Until recently I recommended this as ideal until I learnt of a common technical problem called the “battery memory effect?”

What is the battery memory effect?

The memory effect suggested that if you always charge your smartphone from 20 percent to 80 percent your battery would then memorise that charge and literally forget that it should charge from 0-20 percent or 80 to 100 percent, hence you would lose a total of 40 percent charge. This is a fact especially for older nickel based batteries.

Remember the hey days of Nokia, when it was still the market leader, where we used to easily pull out an empty batteries of any smartphone and replaced it with another, on the go.

Well most of those batteries were the nickel-based (NiMH and NiCd) batteries which have now been phased out and replaced by lithium-ion batteries.

How to properly charge your smartphone.

Where possible, do not allow your new smartphone battery to go below 40 percent or a minimum of 20 percent and when you recharge do not aim for a full charge but at least 80 percent because a full charge or cycle every day reduces battery life.

Most smartphone manufacturers say their devices rate their batteries at 300-500 full charge cycles, Apple claims that its laptop batteries reach 80 percent of their original capacity after 1 000 charges.

By charging daily from 0-100 percent you waste your charge cycles you extend battery life as much as possible and your battery can last at least three to five years while its still operating optimally.

When should you charge to 100 percent?

Your battery is like your muscle, it’s very healthy to push your battery to the maximum once in a while so that it reaches its full potential, this is more like a moment of calibration where every cell gets fully charged.

You should only reach a full cycle once every month, remember a battery has full charge cycles limits.

Is charging overnight bad?

Yes and no. No if you correctly charge your phone. When charging your phone overnight make sure that the cellphone is not under your pillow or completely pressed by anything including those complete covers.

Charging overnight forces your smartphone to create heat and this heat kills your smartphone gradually.

Is fast charging technology good for my smartphone?

Many Android phones have a feature that allows for fast charging. Samsung even calls its technology “ultra-fast charging”.

Motorola boasts about its Droid Turbo that promises an 8 hour charge in just 15 minutes! HTC’s Rapid Charger 2,0 charges devices such as the One M8, One E8 and Desire Eye 40 percent faster.

These phones have special code usually located in a chip known as the Power Management IC (PMIC) that communicates with the charger you are using and requests that it send power at a higher voltage.

Apple’s iPhone 6 doesn’t feature fast charging but its Qualcomm PMIC is smart enough to recognise when you use a higher-amp charger (like the one you get with the iPad), and that’s a good thing because fast charging will heat up that Li-ion battery and cause it increased wear and tear.

Mind your smartphone temperature.

Half the time people play games till their small processor packs up creating heat, or leave their smartphones close to stoves, dashboards or windows in house creating heat around the smartphone which then slowly kills the capacity to store currents in your battery. Never leave it in a very cold place as well, the effect is the same.

How to store your battery.

Let’s say maybe you have that extra smartphone that you are not using, at the moment, how safe is the battery and how best should it be stored?

This reminds me of the incident that I had with last new car battery I bought a while ago. When I bought the battery the car I intended to use it on developed a mechanical fault and I decided not to have it fixed as I was using another car and about a year later the battery on my other car packed up and I decided to use the battery I had bought but when I installed it I was shocked to discover that it was also useless.

The battery died because I failed to keep it charged. Just like muscles need exercise batteries also need regular charging.

An average smartphone battery loses charge of about 5 percent-10 percent every month, if it was at 10 percent, after two months it can’t hold anything and this kills your battery, try and make sure that you leave a certain amount of charge over a longer time even 50 percent and charge up after a long time of no usage.

Once a battery is charged, it cannot act as a new one which can take years without charge, the process becomes manual and needs human monitoring.

The Writer is the editor of TechnoMag, Zimbabwe’s Premier Technology Magazine, more in depth on www.technomag.co.zw. Twitter @TechnoMagZw and Yout use TechnoMagZw Join our whatsapp group 263 774 061 300