Does a low-battery warning strike fear into your heart? Sometimes, this annoying notification arrives after you forget to plug in your phone. But other times, it’s a mystery; you leave the house at full battery, and halfway to your destination, your phone dies.
At 0%, your dead battery is as good as an expensive paperweight. Here are some of the reasons why your phone dies so quickly.
Article Breakdown
1. It’s Working Under Extreme Temperatures
If you live in a state like Michigan, where it regularly dips below 20°F, you might have noticed your phone dies after a few minutes of being outside. That’s because the cold slows the electrochemical reaction that powers your battery. It can even stop it entirely if the mercury drops low enough.
Fast forwarding to the summer, high temperatures can similarly impair your battery’s ability to function.
Your phone is just like you — it has a relatively small window of temperatures where it’s happy. If you go beyond its comfort levels in either direction, you could permanently damage your phone’s ability to hold a charge.
Remember this as you take your phone on your daily adventures. Keep it out of the sun during the summer and try to keep your phone in your pants pocket during the winter.
2. Your Phone is Old
Every battery has a lifespan. Most last between two to three years, or about 300 to 500 charge cycles. However, yours might be dying faster if you make the following mistakes:
- You plug it in before it reaches 50%
- You leave your phone charging overnight
- You let your phone get to 0% before you charge it
- You expose it to extreme temperatures that damage the battery
Eventually, an old phone will die, and there’s only so much you can do about it. You have the option of replacing the battery or getting a new phone.
Either way, you could wind up having to pay out of pocket for the repairs or replacement.
If you don’t have that kind of savings, you could check a local line of credit for help. That means looking for a MI line of credit if you live in the frosty state of Michigan.
If approved, you can use a line of credit in Michigan to cover a repair or replacement phone you can’t otherwise afford on your own. But a word to the wise — only use a line of credit when you can’t live without your phone and there’s no other way to save up for this expense.
3. Bad Habits
You’re connected to Wi-Fi, running Google Maps, and playing your favorite Spotify Wrapped playlist, all with several apps running in the background. Does this sound familiar? Most people overwork their cell phones like this every day, but these bad habits can drain a phone’s battery very fast.
Consider these tips to preserve its battery life:
- Close apps when you’re done using them
- Go into settings to find your battery optimization option to close background apps
- Switch off Wi-Fi and data while you’re sleeping
- Turn off your phone’s location when you aren’t using Google maps or other apps that track your location
- Reduce your screen brightness
- Turn off the Always On display
A bad battery is an eventuality of any older phone, but you can hold off a replacement or repair by following these tips you learned here today.