Charging and recharging

                   Charging and recharging

So how do you make your lithium-ion battery last as long as possible? You may have heard you need to do a full charge and discharge when your device is right out of the box—but this doesn't really matter on modern batteries. What matters most is how you charge your phone or laptop after you've started using it.
Shallow discharges and recharges are better than full ones, because they put less stress on the battery, so it lasts longer. When your battery is discharging, Battery University recommends that you only let it reach 50 percent before topping it up again. While you're charging it back up, you should also avoid pushing a lithium-ion battery all the way to 100 percent.
If you do fill your battery all the way up, don't leave the device plugged in. Instead, follow the shallow discharge and recharge cycle we just mentioned. This isn't a safety issue: Lithium-ion batteries have built-in safeguards designed to stop them from exploding if they're left charging while at maximum capacity. But in the long term, electronics will age faster if they're constantly plugged in while already charged to 100 percent.

These are all guidelines, by the way: There's nothing dangerous about keeping your phone charged overnight, and modern phones and laptops include mechanisms for minimizing the strain on the battery if your device is plugged in all the time. Fortunately for users, small tweaks and improvements are made to the technology each year, so every time you upgrade your smartphone, you're getting a lithium-ion battery that should go further between charges and last longer overall.