Make your battery last, without the folklore
Most battery advice is a decade out of date. Six changes that measurably help, and four myths worth dropping.
Lithium-ion chemistry has not required "full discharge cycles" since nickel-cadmium went away. Yet the advice persists, passed down like a family recipe. Here is what actually matters.
What helps
- Keep it cool. Heat is the single largest factor in long-term capacity loss. A phone left on a car dashboard ages faster than one charged twice a day.
- Stay between 20% and 80% when convenient. Not religiously — the top and bottom of the range are simply where the chemistry works hardest.
- Use the adaptive charging setting. It holds at 80% overnight and finishes near your alarm, which is exactly the right behaviour.
- Turn down the screen. The display is usually the largest single consumer, by a wide margin.
- Audit background location. Very few apps need it "always".
- Prefer dark themes on OLED. Real savings on OLED, no savings at all on LCD.
What does not help
- Closing apps from the multitasking view. Relaunching costs more than leaving them suspended.
- "Calibrating" the battery with a full drain. This ages it slightly and calibrates nothing.
- Third-party battery saver apps. They run constantly in order to tell you about things running constantly.
- Turning Wi-Fi off. Wi-Fi is considerably cheaper than cellular data.
Do the first three and skip the rest. That is the whole guide.