I live in the polar vortex and so walking outside I’ve had a full phone battery go dead in under twenty minutes. We’re talking idk ≈ -40F. When it’s warmed up again there it is suddenly at 60%. I don’t expect to understand well because I know little about batteries, but what’s the deal? And how is it that once it’s warmed it is not only fully functional but has retained charge? At what temperature does this effect begin to take hold?
In: Technology
The energy stored in batteries is released via a very carefully controlled chemical reaction, and like all chemical reactions they can be positively or negatively affected by temperature.
For many batteries, at lower temperatures it takes more of the battery’s potential energy to keep the reaction going vs. actually power the electronics in your phone.
>At what temperature does this effect begin to take hold?
That depends entirely on the specific chemistry of your phone’s battery, and that’s not something that would be precisely known (it’s presumably a lithium-based battery, but we don’t know what specific variety of lithium battery it is).
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