Best practice with respect to battery life

[RhinoCan]

I bought a brand new Pixel 7 this week and am deeply impressed by the battery. My old Pixel 3 was getting so bad that a half hour of steady use would cause it to demand a recharge, which was the main reason I upgraded to the Pixel 7. So far, I've only had to recharge the Pixel 7 once since it arrived on Wednesday and it still has about 50% charge after 3 days of frequent use.

I would appreciate some advice on the best approach to recharging the phone. In the old days, rechargeable batteries had issues with "memory": you needed to pretty much drain them completely before recharging to maximize the battery life. I'm pretty sure the Pixels have a different chemistry that means that's not an issue. Can anyone confirm that?

I'm inclined to put it on the charger every night while I sleep so that it is fully charged in the morning. It looks like it is easily going to last the day so that it's quite likely it will still have a significant amount of charge each night when I go to bed. (I do NOT have the "extreme" battery conservation turned on.) Is nightly charging a reasonable practice or should I proceed differently?

 

[B. Diddy]

You are correct -- modern lithium batteries have no memory. You can charge them as high as you want or let them discharge as low as you want, and that won't immediately affect the battery's health. However, the lifespan of lithium batteries can be prolonged by avoiding regularly discharging to zero. Experts generally agree that keeping a lithium battery between 40% and 80% is ideal, but this is not very feasible in real world usage. The benefit of keeping a battery in this range is only noticeable if you plan to keep the device for longer than, say 4-5 years, so for most people, this won't matter very much.

I never worry about charging up to 100%, but I tend to recharge when the battery gets to 30-40%.

Battery University is a great resource if you want to learn more: https://batteryuniversity.com/article/bu-808-how-to-prolong-lithium-based-batteries

 

[RhinoCan]

Thank you!

 

[Jx J]

Battery university is a great resource.

I've had LiIon batteries swell up after being constantly being charged to 100%. Including:
1 Samsung phone (easily swapable battery)
2 LG G7 phone
3 Dell laptop at work.

So I figured it's time for countermeasures !

My newish Samsung tablet has a menu option to limit the max charge to 85% to prolong battery life. I like that feature, but unfortunately google do not provide it on the Pixel.

However, at home I have my regular charger connected via a countdown timer plug. I know 15 minutes is approximately 5% on the regular wireless charger, so it's very easy to set my pixel to stop charging at just over 80%.
I aim to avoid going below 50% at home.

 

[mustang7757]

I've always charged between 5 to 100 over the years and haven't had much issues with battery, if your going over 3 years keeping the device most likely 30 to 80 would help but if you go more than 3 years expect battery replacement some time afterwards and gaming a lot takes a toll on battery life so avoid it .