If charging of phones overnight is supposed to be a crime, almost every user would be guilty by now. Overnight charging is an attitude that almost everyone has become used to. It may look as if it is a normal thing to do but looking at it from the technical point of view, it is very wrong.
It is only normal that after using your smartphone during the day, you allow it to charge while you sleep. But unfortunately, you may be doing your phone more harm than good.
This may not be the first time you are hearing about overnight charge warnings. You probably have come across couple of them already. But you don’t know exactly why you should stop charging your phone for that long.
Charging iPhone Overnight VS Daytime Charging
A tech advisor on TikTok by name @shoandtech has shed more light on how much damage you are doing your phone if you charge it overnight. And of course, how much good you will be doing to your battery health if you stop this act.
According to Shoandtech, he bought an iPhone 13 Pro Max back in 2021 which he barely charge it overnight. The phone is now a year old but surprisingly, the battery strength is still at 100%.
On the other hand, his wife also uses an 
13, the regular one. They bought the phone three months after he bought his iPhone 13 Pro Max. His wife charges her phone almost every night when going to bed. Her battery health has now dropped to 93% in just 9 months.
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He also has another iPhone 12 Pro he bought two years ago. And guess what? The iPhone 12 Pro still has the full 100% battery capacity intact. This is a very rare achievement for a two-year-old phone.
He concluded the video by saying “If you care about your battery health, whether you want to sell it or get the best battery performance. Then you should quit the habit of charging your phone overnight.
How Overnight Charging Affect Your Battery Life
Now let us go a bit technical on this. Whenever you charge your phone to 100%, it automatically switches to the ‘Trickle charge mode”. This mode holds your phone’s battery at 100% until you unplug it. Simply put, it makes sure that no more power enters the battery.
Holding out power for a longer time even though there is more power coming in means one thing. More stress on your phone’s battery. Keeping the battery under stress for a long time also means your battery will begin to wear out with time.
Apple has tried their best to battle the battery degradation with the introduction features like the Optimized Battery Charging. This feature was introduced in 2018 with the iOS 11.3.
What it does is that it slows down the charging process when you are charging at night. When your battery reaches 80%, it begins charging slow so that it attains 100% just in time for you to unplug it.
In as much as this feature is better than not having at all, it still cannot maintain your battery health at 100% after two years. You do recall that in the TikTok video, Shoandtech stated that his wife has the ‘Optimized Batter Charging’ turned on. Yet her battery health was down to 93% after three months.
Best Practice To Keep Your iPhone’s Battery At Optimum Capacity
You don’t need magic to keep your battery capacity at the highest capacity. You just have to follow these simple guides and you will be amazed at the end result. As we have already explained, avoid overnight charging. If you are about to sleep and your phone has about 70% of battery, you don’t have to charge it.
Also, allow your battery to drain down to 20% or less before you charge it. You do not have to charge your phone the moment it drops to 90 or 80%. Frequent charging also contributes a lot to wearing off phone batteries.
no, don’t wait to be below 20%. The optimum range is 20% min to 80%max. Don’t go below 20, don’t go over 80 and you will preserve your battery.
Going on year 2, 100% cap, charging overnight…every night.