How adaptive charging saves your Android battery

Android adaptive charging.
Google

Poor battery life can ruin your Android experience. But even a large battery will probably still need to be charged at night. On top of that, batteries degrade over time. “Adaptive Charging” is a feature that aims to help all of these issues.

Why battery life gets worse over time

You may have noticed that the battery life will be worse if you use a phone for a long time. This is due to the “health” of the battery. As the batteries age, they lose some of their capacity and do not last long on a charge.

A brand new battery will have a battery condition of around 100%. This means that you get the full potential of the battery capacity. What erodes the health of the battery is the constant charge and discharge cycle. It is inevitable.

Keeping a phone charged in 20-80% charged range is best for the battery, but it is not always realistic in practice. You put your phone on the charger at night and wake up to 100% charge. While sleeping, the battery was in a cycle between 99-100% for several hours.

Typically, a smartphone battery is designed to maintain up to 80% health for 500 complete charging cycles. That means from close to 0% to 100%. In most cases, this is enough for how long you want to use the phone, but all of these charging cycles count. This is where adaptive charging comes in.

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What is adaptive charging?

Staying within the 20-80% range is ideal, but it’s hard to do when you plug in your phone for several hours each night. Adaptive Charging aims to take care of it for you in an intelligent way.

Adaptive charging keeps the battery at 80% most of the night. So just before you wake up, it will finally let the battery charge to 100%. This means that you avoid the constant cycling between 99-100% all night.

“Adaptive Charging” is the name of the feature on Google Pixel phones. OnePlus devices have a similar feature called “Optimized Charging”. Samsung Galaxy devices call it “Adaptive Battery” and also have a feature that allows you to close the battery at 85% all the time. (The iPhone also has a similar feature called “Optimized Charging”.)

Adaptive charging modes usually use your alarms and usage habits to determine the best time to reach 100%. If you find that the battery is not fully charged when you need it, you may just need to give it more time to get to know your routine.

All of these different features are aimed at reducing the damage that charging cycles have on batteries and preserving the health of the battery for as long as possible.

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When optimizations go too far

Battery optimizations sound good in theory, but they can go too far. Samsung is particularly guilty of taking extreme precautions to maximize battery life. These measures can negatively affect your Android experience.

Website “Don’t Kill My App!” ranks Android manufacturers and how their battery “optimizations” affect functionality. Aggressive app killing in the name of battery life can result in missed messages and poor app performance. If you are a Samsung user, you may want to turn off these features.

In general, most Android devices handle battery optimizations quite well. Battery life is an area where manufacturers are encouraged to make your experience as good as possible. If your Samsung phone has poor battery life, you may not want another one. But too much of the good can sometimes be bad.

In general, Adaptive Charging is a useful modern addition to Android smartphones. You should keep it enabled if it does not cause problems. Your battery will thank you.

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