You've been charging your phone completely wrong - here's how to do it right

I do a number of things before I go to bed – I clean my teeth, I get a glass of water, I plug my phone in to charge overnight and I shake some holy water in each corner of my room to protect me from the night screamers. Simple, everyday stuff.

But it turns out I am doing one of those things wrong – I should not be plugging my phone in overnight. I am damaging the battery by doing this, and making it worse over time (yeah, even worse than it already is, I know).

This is all according to battery company Cadex, which has some good advice for looking after your precious, cute, fluffy battery. It says:

“Li-ion (lithium-ion) does not need to be fully charged as is the case with lead acid, nor is it desirable to do so. 

“In fact, it is better not to fully charge because a high voltage stresses the battery.”

Basically, once your phone reaches capacity, it starts to administer “trickle charges” to the battery, to stop it from getting too – as Lil Jon would put it – low. This puts a lot of unnecessary stress on the battery, so Cadex says you want to be unplugging that beast as soon as you hit the limit (which is obviously extremely easy to do while you are asleep).

The preferable alternative is: charge it intermittently throughout the day. Annoying, but it looks after your battery, and makes it go further in the long run.

Other tips include:

• Using a wall charger instead of just plugging it into your laptop or your hamster’s running wheel
• Sticking the phone on airplane mode – it’ll charge up in double quick time, but you won’t be able to call Babestation while it fills up
• Try to use it as little as possible, as this will obviously slow down the charging process. Difficult for you, a social media savvy high value influencer, I know.

Of course, all these things require effort, aka The Human Battery, so you can join me in just sticking it on overnight like a normal, shit-battery-having person. Also, if you’ve got a plug in, it stops the night screamers coming out of the sockets at midnight. Extra tip.

(Image: iStock)