Why is it bad to leave your electronics always charging?
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The lifetime of lithium batteries is best measured by charge cycles. It doesn’t really matter to the battery whether you discharge it to 10% or 50% before you charge it; they’re pretty close in terms of how much it affects the overall health of the battery. Similarly, discharging only to 90% and back to full is also consuming some of the lifetime of the battery.
Chargers are designed not to overcharge and damage batteries, but the way they do this can vary. One common way is to charge the battery to 100% and then stop charging completely. If the device is turned on, it will then discharge the battery slightly before detecting a need to resume charging. Over time, this repeated charge-discharge cycle will degrade the battery health.
This is less of a concern with modern electronics, but is worth keeping in mind. If you have a laptop, it’s probably a good idea to not connect to a charger 100% of the time if you want to keep the battery as healthy as possible.
With phones, it’s worth considering if using a charger is necessary. If you can get away with charging once a day, or overnight, that will be better for your battery.
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