To charge or not to charge, that is the question.

Most of us are guilty of plugging the phone in before we go to bed, because there’s a certain safety net that comes with a fully charged phone when striding out the door.

Come at me, world, I got all the battery.

Except, as it turns out, we are all shooting ourselves in the foot with this technique. According to the New York Times, nogal:

The act of charging is itself bad for your phone’s battery…

Most phones make use of a technology that allows their batteries to accept more current faster. Hatem Zeine, the founder, chief scientist and chief technical officer of the wireless charging company Ossia, says the technology enables phones to adjust to the amount of charge that a charger is capable of supplying.

The technology allows power to pulse into the battery in specific modulations, increasing the speed at which the lithium ions in the battery travel from one side to the other and causing the battery to charge more quickly.

But this process also leads lithium-ion (and lithium-polymer) batteries to corrode faster than they otherwise would.

When you charge fast all the time, you limit the life span of the battery…

Shook.

The overnight charging routine is especially harmful if you’re in for the long haul, but nowadays some peeps are all about the upgrade:

…given the constant demand for new cellphones, charging overnight might not be a point of great concern for many people.

“All this actually doesn’t make a huge difference for consumers,” [Anker spokesman Edo] Campos said, citing a 2015 Gallup survey showing that 44 percent of smartphone users planned to upgrade their devices as soon as their providers allowed it — usually after two years, about the length of time it takes for batteries to start showing signs of wear.

So you can go one of two ways here – you can buckle down and take precautions to make your phone last, or you can throw caution to the wind and move on after two years.

Either way you’re going to want to keep an eye on Digicape, South Africa’s largest independent Apple retailer.

They’ve got the best deals on all the latest gadgets, and they also have a dedicated Classified section if you’re looking to snap up a second-hand item.

If you’re a tech junkie like Seth, you might want to hop on that AirPods train too.

Happy charging, friends.

[source:newyorktimes]