Aquila
Retired Moderator
No links, So, you're the source for your knowledge. OK.
I get why you might want additional links, but it's not his job to do your research for you. However it should be noted that nothing in the statement that you quoted is debatable.
Here's the statement: "Fact of the matter is, every single one of these batteries has a finite life, and how long (or short) that life is depends on how it is used. Some usage patterns help more than others, some hurt more... some 'best practices' can be a major pain in the butt for some people, but no one is forcing you to follow any of them".
Every battery does have a finite life. That's common sense. How it is used does impact the longevity, also common sense. Usage patterns being helpful or harmful is just restating the same thing, so falls under common sense. Best practices being a pain in the butt for some people is also common sense. And no one forcing you to adhere to best practices, also common sense.
There's no need for a citation for any of that because it falls under common knowledge that we all share by virtue of being able to recognize that obvious statements are obvious. I mean, sure, we could go grab an article from a scientific journal which would establish that batteries do not have infinite lifespans and we could link to battery university or wherever to show that there are things that are recommended and that there are other things which are not, and that those things are recommended, or not, based on their impact to overall battery health. Or we could just recognize that obvious statements are obvious and move on.
I'm still running my three year old Droid Turbo. A beastly 3,900 mAh battery. For the first 18 months or so I could get through almost 2 days without recharging. After running it down to 30%-40% I would put it on the charger in the afternoon/evening of the 2nd day and either pull it off somewhere in the 90% full charge range or when it hit 100%. Toward the end of two years I was finding I needed to charge it around noon and then it was in the morning. Finally, for convenience sake, I just stuck it on the charger when I went to bed the previous night.
Now here I am three years later and I usually can't make it to bedtime before I have to charge my phone.
So, my question is: If I were to be OCD about charging my battery, never let it surpass 100% charge for more than an hour, what would be my gain in battery longevity? Would I just now be going to overnight charging? Or would I have shifted my charging routines back only a month or so?
Because unless you can show me I'd save more than three months of degradation following all the crazy battery care theories I see on the internet, I'm not going to worry about it. And I am someone that keeps their phone for at least two years.
It is incredibly unlikely that we're going to run into someone in the forums that is going to have the qualifications to be able to take the information given above and be able to quantify anything conclusive. There's not enough information and there are so many variables that I'd seriously doubt anyone who even tried. Here's what we know: Your battery life was good and progressively got worse. Yeah, that's common sense, we know that happens. The question of how much it ought to happen under ideal conditions versus the rate at which yours deteriorated is one that isn't going to be answered here. Most of that question would revolve around the battery itself, compared to other batteries from that specific batch. The rest would center less on your charging habits than on your usage habits. When and where the device was used and what for and for how long. What temperatures was the device exposed to, what was the signal strength, what was the rate of idle discharge, what was the rate of usage discharge, was turbo charging utilized or third party chargers using QuickCharge 2.0 or generic usb chargers that max at .5A, etc.
The complexity of that question is why the best practices ought not be taken as gospel, but instead used to construct general guidelines of how and when to charge IF your goal is to maximize the longevity of the battery.