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For most people with a smart phone, maintaining sufficient battery life throughout the day is almost always paramount. Having said that, most cellphone users like to fit in charging when convenient, which is why many people don’t carry tethered chargers as regularly as they do their devices. Many consumers and industry experts are hoping the method of wireless charging can help ease the burdens of people constantly worrying about their battery percentage. Wireless charging is a pretty straightforward concept for the most part. If your smart phone is equipped with a special case or battery, you simply rest the device on top of the charging bad without any additional attachments.
Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS), said that while you cannot overcharge a smart phone or tablet battery, as the electronics will not allow it, keeping it fully charged will hasten its degradation.
"Frankly, the higher you are in the [charge] state, as you creep up to 90%, 95% to 100% charge, the more degradation the battery will see," he said.
As a lithium-ion battery charges and discharges, ions pass back and forth between a positive electrode (made of lithium-cobalt oxide or lithium iron phosphate) and a negative electrode (made of carbon graphite).
As a battery charges, the positive electrode gives off lithium ions that move to the negative electrode and are stored as energy. As the battery discharges, those ions move back to the positive electrode to be used as electricity. As those lithium ions move back and forth, the electrolyte that acts as the transport medium degrades over time.
The higher the state of charge, the faster the electrolyte degrades, Srinivasan said.
Therefore, it's best not only to keep your smartphone below its top charge, but also to keep the charging and discharging pendulum from swinging wildly.
"In general, if you swing the battery charge from top to bottom, that's the worst thing you can to for the life of the battery. If you can cycle the battery between 45% and 55% that's the best thing you can do," Srinivasan said. "But, in general, just make sure you don't keep it fully charged."
Wireless charging isn’t a new concept, and has actually been around for several years. Having said that, it’s one that most people don’t quite understand. The technology enabling the cellphone battery to regenerate by having it rest on the pad seems more complicated than conventional tethered chargers (at least from a technical standpoint), and can confuse people trying to understand. Especially with companies like Apple bringing this technology to their newer phone models, it’s inevitably going to grow in popularity.
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Mobile