I tried to kill my phone’s battery for science! 👨‍🔬

📱 I got my smartphone on 03/05/2020 because the battery inside my previous one had puffed up into a spicy pillow, forcing the back of the phone open. Since then, I have used my phone heavily, charging it at least daily. I follow some good practices, like trying not to run it flat or using it as a coaster. But I drop it at least once a week, leave lots of apps running and I charge it overnight every day when I go to bed! "Shock, horror!"

My phone is unexceptional, making it a reasonable benchmark. It didn’t cost >£1000; I’m looking at you, Apple and Samsung, nor was it so underpowered or poorly made that it is now an electronic paperweight or a ball of smoke and fire. I still use it every day.

🔋 When the battery was new, it had a capacity of 3,800 mAh. For comparison, the iPhone of the day had 3,110 mAh. I have had my phone for 1527 days, and let’s assume I only charged it once a day, which is a conservative estimate given how much I use it. We now know what the battery was like when it was new, how long it has been used, and roughly how many times it has been charged. Now, to test how much life it has left.

Unfortunately My phone doesn’t track these things, but luckily, there is an app for that! So I downloaded it and set about draining my battery. I ignored warnings at 20, 10, 5 and 2 percent, reminding me to charge. It did, however, eventually shut off. I then held in the power button. It would vibrate, and an animation would appear on the screen, reminding me to plug it in; I kept doing this for about 15 minutes. Eventually, it didn’t have enough energy to summon the vibration motor. The animation was still appearing, so I continued until there were no signs of life. I plugged it in and let it charge to full. And... It didn’t register in the app. 😭 Luckily, it had decided of its own volition to count a previous partial charge and calculated a state of health based on that.

✔ The results: Battery health 71%

When new, the phone had just shy of 9 hours of regular use. Now, it has lost 29% of that, I should get around 6 hours and 20 minutes. With fast charging, I can plug it in, and 20-30 minutes later, a decent chunk of charge is back. If we assume I only did one charge a day and it decayed uniformly, it lost just 0.02% of its capacity per cycle.

So yes, batteries degrade like everything else, but I think they last much longer than people give them credit. The generally considered end-of-life of a battery is when it has reached 80% of its original capacity. My phone reached that months ago, and I didn’t even notice. After four years, I have no plans to replace it.

Is planned obsolescence a thing? You better believe it.

🛠 Have manufacturers made modern devices obnoxiously difficult to repair? In many cases, yes.

Are batteries a ticking time bomb that will die in a ball of fire after two years? In my experience, No. ❌