With how much people use their phones on a day-to-day basis, it is increasingly important to keep your cell phone battery charged. While scientists are accidentally creating batteries that can last a lifetime, the rest of us still need to charge our phones once a day.
In a perfect world, we’d always be near a wall outlet to charge our phones, but that isn’t the case. As a result, many of us use a portable battery charger to keep our phones and devices topped up. However, a quick browse through some forums show a handful of commentators expressing doubt about portable chargers. Some even question if portable chargers can damage our phone’s battery life. Are they right?
Do Portable Battery Chargers Ruin the Battery Life of Your Phone?
Most cell phones require a wall charger or a portable charger that offers an output voltage of around 5V. However, if you’ve ever trawled through questionable eBay listings or spent time in a market with goods of dubious quality, you may have encountered knockoff portable chargers. These could potentially deliver a voltage higher or lower than what your phone requires. Charging with the wrong voltage can cause real damage to your phone’s battery. Perhaps that’s why some commentators have found that their battery was damaged.
On the other hand a good quality portable charger from a reputable company, combined with a suitable charging cable, should bring no issues whatsoever, especially if the voltage output matches your phone’s. In addition to that, quality portable battery chargers are efficient and will protect your device from overcharging, overheating, over-current and over-voltage. While this doesn’t mean you need to leave them plugged in all the time, it does mean that even if your phone is plugged in once charged, these portable chargers aren’t overcharging your device or impacting battery performance.
Why Do Charge Cycles Affect Battery Performance?
A weaker battery is also the result of the number of battery charge cycles. In general, a typical lithium battery will have at least 500 full charge cycles. Here’s how it works: Your cell phone battery loses its charge because of a chemical reaction that slowly occurs as you charge your device. Repeated charges will eventually render your device not being able to get a full charge. So if you fully charge every day for a year and a half, your battery will exceed 500 charge cycles and will noticeably perform worse. Thankfully there are a few phones that allow you to replace your battery if you are dealing with this issue.
What Can I Do?
In order to combat this common problem of batteries losing life, you can ensure to keep your phone away from physical damage and extreme temperatures on both ends of the spectrum. Both of these contribute to rapid battery life loss in cell phones. You can also learn why your cell phone battery loses its charge over time and avoid things that damage the battery.
In conclusion, no, charging your cell phone with a portable battery charger will not damage or affect the battery life. Of course you should be wary of using extremely cheap or knockoff models, and always be sure to look at the voltage of a portable battery charger before you buy it. Happy charging.
You say most phones have replaceable batteries. In fact, the trend has been more and more to phones not having replaceable batteries. Such phones are likely to have a short lifespan – which is precisely what the manufacturers want so they can sell you a new phone.
That’s true. However some phones still have replacement batteries. We will modify the text to make the distinction clearer.
Or maybe put it in this perspective. Some phones now do not have removable batteries because they’re waterproof/resistant.
For tablet computers which mostly have batteries that are not replaceable, can keeping the tablet connected to a charger nearly always mean that the rechargeable limit of 500 recharges is postponed?
That’s a good question. We’re actually not so sure. Batteries will degrade but whether it will be postponed is something worth exploring.
You guys are great, I have discovered you via one of the online reviews (i.e. https://www.crunchreviews.com/gadgets/best-power-bank/) and have purchased RAVPower 16750Mah which is simply a great product!
Thanks! We are stoked you like it.
Hi, I now own 4 Filehubs Plus, its one of the best accessories I have ever bought. I carry one anytime I leave the house for my phone (galaxy S5) and the debate over not being able to easily replace the battery, is exactly why I’m still using my S5 and now own 3, because I know the battery is the most likely issue that I will ever have with my phone, followed by lack of memory issues, both of which is solved by the File hub on most daily outtings. On longer days I carry a 20,000 mah ” powerbank” for my phone, and tablets.
The one product that I want, but can’t find is a CABLE that perform the functions of charging my phone, be an OTG CABLE and power the external device, all from an external charger/ “powerbank”. Does anyone know where I can get this “fictional” CABLE or am I going to have to build it?
Given your description, you might have to invent one yourself. Come work for us and turn your dream cable into the real thing.
My job gave all of its employees a portable battery charger, well, the thing caused my phone to overheat and it destroyed my iphone 5S yesterday.
We’re sorry to hear such terrible news. I hope your company provides a new phone and a RAVPower bank instead!
So does this mean, not charging upto 100% does not count as a full charge?
So is it then not advisable to just have my phone on the charger all day while at work, I pick it up and down multiple times to check messages. It is just a convenient place to put the phone on my desk. Will this damage the performance overtime? I used to just charge my phone overnight before having this device. (iphone user). Thanks!
You can have it on all day but it’s not optimal. Not only do li-ion batteries have a limited amount of charge cycles before efficacy decreases, but li-ions work better with small top ups, rather than going from 0-100%. We’ll have to explore this in a future blog entry. Just for your use, try and keep your phone between the 20% to 80% range. It’s kind of like a sweet spot for li-ion batteries.
Hi, I would like to ask you what this means,I’ve been having this problem for quite a well….there have been times where my battery dies way before it recharges 0%..like it dies at 20-30%. I have a built in battery and have been told that there is nothing wrong with my battery. So I’m not sure as to why it does that?
Hi Nico,
Honestly I am not sure what is going on with your battery. It does seem a bit strange. I would suggest you email support@ravpower.com to get your problem solved as we have a team of product specialists who know the ins-and-outs of all our products.
Hey, I would like to ask a question re charging my iPhone.
When using RAVPower overnight, once it gets to 100%, the battery setting shows that RAVPower still crashes the device afterwards. Is that normal akd/or is the way that iPhone renders wireless chargers? Thank you
My bad, a typo, *charges not crashes
Hi Ap,
Which model of charger are you using?
I’ve just purchased one of these power banks – its awesome!
Have been using a power bank for a while, I’ve noticed that over a short period of time that charging my phone through the portable charger has gone from being just as quick as charging through a wall socket to half as fast, any idea what’s caused this/what to do?
Hi Dom
This may be due to poor contact with the data cable. Please also note that if your mobile phone is a Samsung mobile phone, the charging current when the screen is on or used while charging is only 2/3 of the power-off charging (lock screen charging). Hope this helps!
Hi,Please tell me what solar panels I can get with the jackery. Theirs are sold out on amazon.
Hi there, if you are looking for a Jackery solar panel please contact Jackery. Thanks!
Hello there
My 6 years old daughter is a tab/mobile phone addicted as she has no partner to play inside the home or outside.
Can we charge our phone/tablets while power bank is charging? Thank you in advance for your quick reply.
Hi John, which power bank are you using?
You mention at the very end, and always be sure to look at the voltage of a portable battery charger before you buy it, but you don’t explain why? I just saw an ad for an Insignia 80w 26,000mAH charger. Will that work for two iPhones? Too much power? Just right? We have a laptop and an Amazon tablet (and iPad). If this “one size fits all” that would be great, but first and foremost it’s for the two iPhones.