How long should you charge your phone to keep it from dying?

Is there a fate worse than a dead phone and no charger? Probably, but with no phone to google it, who cares? Your phone is running on a lithium ion battery. They’re light and long lasting, but also start to degrade the minute they’re made. Don’t despair - we’ve got some tricks to preserve your life. Your battery life, that is.

Heat speeds up the drainage of your battery in the short term and long term - so slow things down by keeping your phone out of the sun, out of hot cars, and out of your pockets. Even 95 degrees is too hot.

A “charge cycle” happens every time you let your battery go from 100% to zero. Your phone has about 500, total. You can stretch the life by charging a little at a time, keeping it between 40 and 80 percent.

If that sounds less than convenient, then at the very least, don’t let your phone get down to zero. It’s more taxing on the battery to start from nothing. Same thing if you have to turn it off for a while. A battery with no charge is unstable, so they have a failsafe that will kill the battery before it actually explodes. Which is our worst nightmare - a dead phone not even a charger can save.