How Do I Keep My Electronic's Battery Healthy?

It happens to phones, laptops, tablets, and everything else that uses rechargeable batteries (which seems to be increasing with every year). At first everything is fine, but slowly... eventually... you notice that the battery just doesn't seem to hold a charge as well as it used to. Maybe you used to only have to plug your phone in once every couple days, but now you have to charge it multiple times a day. Maybe your laptop used to never dip below 60% between uses, but now you get low-battery warnings regularly. Here are some tips for maximizing your electronic's batteries:

1. Check your settings- There are many things you can turn off, minimize that will help save on battery usage. Similar to how a car that's laden with weight uses more gas, a computer with lots of things turned on will use more electricity.
1. Turn off unneeded settings- New devices will often come with certain settings turned on by default to help maximize your user experience, but you may find that they're not needed for what you use the device for. For example, many devices come with bluetooth turned on. Bluetooth is a wireless technology used for connecting to different devices like wireless keyboards, your car, or wireless headphones. (You can read more about bluetooth here: What is Bluetooth?) 

   

   If you see this symbol, it likely means bluetooth is turned on for your device.

2. Dim your screen/keyboard backlighting-  Most electronic screens nowadays have the ability to adjust their brightness levels, and some computers even have light-up keyboards to make it easier to type in dim lighting. While these make it easier to use the device, they can also use a lot of battery power. Set your screen brightness as low as is comfortable for you, and if your device has it (Apple products like iPhones, iPads and Macs have this, for example) turn on auto-brightness so the screen automatically brightens and dims according to the amount of light around.
3. Put your device to sleep/turn off as needed- Not using your device for awhile? You can turn the screen off by either clicking the lock/unlock button (for mobile devices), or you can put your laptop to sleep by simply closing the lid. Depending on how long you'll be away from you computer, you may choose to turn it to screensaver, put it to sleep, hibernate, or turn it all the way off. You can learn more about which option is best for you here at When should I turn off my computer?
2. Don't completely drain it- Completely draining a battery (to the point the device shuts off) is bad for the battery, and while doing it once or twice likely won't have any noticeable effect on it's long-term lifespan, repeatedly doing it will put unnecessary wear on it. Think of it like exercising- you go until you're tired, but not until you pass out from exhaustion.
3. Don't be afraid to use it either though- On the other end of the spectrum, some people get laptops, but then leave them plugged in 99% of the time because they're afraid of using the battery. This can be just as harmful as the battery can "forget" how to hold a charge. Using the exercise analogy again, you don't train for a marathon by sitting around conserving your energy for weeks before.
4. Avoid extreme temperatures- "Don't leave electronics in any conditions you wouldn't leave your child." Both extreme heat (leaving it in the car for hours in the middle of summer) and extreme cold (leaving it in the car overnight during winter) can have detrimental effects on your battery. The optimal operating temperatures for lithium ion batteries- the kind used in most rechargeable electronics- are the same temperatures that you'd feel comfortable in. Because of this, also be mindful about using laptops on beds where blankets and pillows will retain heat and warm up the laptop unnecessarily- use a surface that wicks away heat like a wooden desk or plastic stand. You can read more about other weather dangers here at Hidden Winter Hazards for Your Electronics.

When Should I Charge My Laptop?

Almost everyone who has owned a laptop has wondered when the best time to charge it is. You want to maximize your battery life after all. Laptop batteries are not cheap, and having a laptop whose battery only lasts an hour or so isn't very effective. Here're some simple tips for how to make sure your laptops battery is up to snuff for as long as possible.

1) Don't run it all the way down. Laptop batteries- or any rechargeable battery for that matter- is a lot like your muscles. This simply means that you shouldn't let your laptops battery drain all the way down to where the computer shuts off on you. (AKA 0% charge) This would be like exercising until you pass out to train for a marathon. You'd end up doing more harm than good to your body, and when you let your battery completely drain it puts extra wear on it as well.

2) Don't leave it plugged in all the time either. Similarly, you wouldn't want to sit around all day either to "conserve your energy" for your marathon. Just like your muscles can atrophy, your laptop battery can as well. This is a common misconception about laptop batteries. A lot of people will leave their laptop plugged in 24/7 at a desk and only use its battery once or twice a year. Could you imagine trying to get up and walk around if you had been laying in bed 24/7 for several months?

3) Use a surge protector. Using a surge protector when you charge your laptop will help ensure that no electrical surges get to your laptop and overwhelm the battery. Yes, most chargers have mini-protectors to help prevent this, but if you haven't looked lately, laptop charges aren't the cheapest thing to buy and it is possible for a surge to be strong enough that it trips the charger and still gets to the laptop with enough force to damage it.

Practical Tip of the Day:
When monitoring your laptops charge, I generally recommend looking at its percentage left instead of the time estimate. This is because the estimated time left can fluctuate wildly depending on what you're doing. Browsing the web? Your battery will last longer. Editing a movie? Shorter. Screen brightness turned down? Longer. Watching a movie with the speakers turned all the way up? Shorter. You get the picture.

What is Bluetooth?

Your phone has it, your computer has it, your car has it, it seems like just about everything nowadays has it. Bluetooth has become so ubiquitous that it seems a given for any electronic device to have it, but what is Bluetooth? I've been asked this many times, especially in how it's different from WiFi.

Hedy Lamarr. Bet you weren't expecting her in here, were you? This famous actress was actually one of the people that helped invent Bluetooth, though it wasn't called that at the time, and it certainly wasn't invented so you can control your toaster with your computer. She helped invent a way for radio signals to be sent in such a way that they couldn't be blocked or intercepted as part of the wartime effort, but the military simply filed the technology away.

Modern Bluetooth is, in the simplest terms, a way for a wireless signal to be sent in such a way that it "bounces around" various frequencies. Think of it as if you were trying to have a secret conversation over walkie-talkies. You'd hop on one channel, say a couple words, switch to another, some some more words, etc. for your whole conversation. Electronics do this using short-wavelength radio signals, and by using this technology, you can use multiple wireless devices at once with no ill effect.

Even if you have twenty Bluetooth devices turned on and working at once (you have a Bluetooth headset on your phone, wireless mouse and keyboard on your computer, wireless printer, etc.) you'll get no interference between them because they're jumping around on their signals enough that it's highly unlikely that any two objects will be using the same wavelength at the same time, and even if they do, they use it for such a short amount of time you won't notice it.

Practical Tip of the Day:

Most phones and computers that have Bluetooth capabilities have it turned on by default. Having this running if you're not using it can not only drain your battery, but can also be a security hazard. If you see the Bluetooth symbol (see right), go into your settings and turn it off until you do need it.

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.