Should I Plug In My Phone At Night?

Almost everyone nowadays has a cell phone. As a matter of fact, it's becoming increasingly popular to not even have a land-line phone in a house- everyone has their own personal cell phones.

When the first cell phone was made, battery life was considered a non-issue since the phone was so heavy you probably couldn't hold it up to your ear long enough for the battery to completely drain, but cell phones now are so small that people can, and sometimes do, talk on them for hours at a time. This, in addition to most phones being able to do more than just call people, has increased demand for phone batteries to last several hours.

Which leads us to this modern day dilema. Am I supposed to plug my phone in every night or let it drain all the way?

Batteries are similar to car tires in that they both wear down with use. Each time a battery is depleted (used up) and charged (filled up) it's called one "recharge cycle" Like tires, there's an average amount of use a cell phone battery takes before it starts seeing a degregation of quality. So the trick is to try and get the most of those recharge cycles. It used to be that you had to "train" a rechargable battery on how much of a charge it should hold by letting it drain down all the way and then charging it back up. Modern batteries though don't require that sort of babying, and will hold the same amount of charge if you charge it from empty or nearly full.
 
Almost every tech-person agrees that the best way to treat a rechargable battery (this applies to cell phones, laptop computers, iPods, and anything else with this kind of battery) is to let it drain down to low (but not all the way) and then charge it up. You don't want it to get so low the device turns off. This means the battery has "died" and has absolutely no charge left. This damages the battery, but don't worry, the battery can still be charged back up; This is not a permanent kind of "death".

This is the way I usually explain phone charging to people: Most of us drive our cars until our gas meter shows we're getting close to "E". (Or, if you're my husband, you drive it until the gas light turns on and then you figure you still have 30 miles. Drives me nuts!) Once our car says we're low on gas we go to a station and fill it back up. That's what you should do with your electronic devices. Use them until they're low, and then fill them up. You wouldn't want to drive your car until you had absolutely no gas and the car stopped would you?

Here's the catch. I use my cell phone until it's about 2/3 depleted every day. If I left it unplugged at night I'd only get half way through the next day before my battery died. (Which is bad.) Because of that, I plug my phone in every night. I know I could have my phone's battery last longer if I didn't, but we're talking about a difference of a few minutes worth of use after I've been doing this for a year. By the end of two years it might be a half-hour difference.

That being said, it is better to let your phone get low before charging it, but if doing so would cause you to be constantly watching and babying your phone,  don't worry too much about charging it every night. It won't ruin your phone.

Practical Tip of the Day:
I've run into a fair amount of people who use their smart-phones (phones that do lots of other things besides making calls) so much that they can't even make it a whole day without needing to charge. If you find yourself to be in that group of people, or if your phone's getting older and the battery doesn't last very long, there are cases you can put your phone in that have an additional battery. They usually make your phone larger (because of the size of the additional battery), but often double the amount of usage you can get from your phone before needing to charge.