4 Charging Mistakes That Are Shortening Your iPhone’s Battery Life: Using Low Power Mode & More

Charging your iPhone isn’t as simple as it seems. While the act of plugging in your charger and letting it do its job sounds abundantly clear enough, the fact remains: many iPhone users are making a number of mistakes every single day when changing their devices. These mistakes may not be felt in the short-term, but over time, they can eventually lead to battery degradation .

The last thing you want is to have to replace your battery after only owning your expensive iPhone for a few months or worse: dealing with a phone that is slower than it should be and needs to be replaced before you are up for the financial burden and headache of upgrading to a new model. Luckily, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to learn a few tips and tricks on how to charge your phone more effectively.

The experts from Payette provide tips on some of the worst iPhone charging mistakes you could be making that are shortening your phone’s battery life.

1. Not Using MFI-Certified Cables

Made-for-iPhone cables are what they sound like — they have an Apple-certified chip built into them that makes them compatible with your iPhone. If you choose cheaper cables and ones that lack MFI certification, you will see a pop-up on your iPhone that reads “This accessory may not be supported.” These cables can deliver the wrong charging speed to your phone and cause your phone battery to heat up and degrade.

Fortunately, you can find MFI-certified cables nearly everywhere these days, including on Amazon — and they don’t have to cost a lot.

2. Using an Overpowered Wall Charger

Even though wall chargers lack MFI certification, it’s important not to purchase one that is a fast charger but isn’t an Apple fast charger. The reason to avoid this mistake is similar to the cable mistake: a charger that has too many amps for your iPhone will charge the battery too fast and cause it to overheat.

3. Never Cleaning Your Charging Port

If you think about of the places where you place your phone throughout the day and all that it is exposed to, it doesn’t come as a shock that your phone — including the charging port — can get dirty and dusty. A dirty charging port can get in the way of an effective charging session. You may even find that it doesn’t charge all of the time and is inconsistent in how fast it charges.

The solution is simple: grab a clean toothbrush and brush the debris out of the charging port.

4. Relying on Low Power Mode All of the Time

Instead of turning off Low Power Mode, which disables a number of features that are draining your battery, the experts at Payette recommend simply turning off those features. Some of those battery-consuming features include Background App Refresh, Mail Fetch, Visual Effects, Hey Siri, and intense screen brightness. If you constantly find yourself wanting to turn on low power mode, you could have a software or hardware problem that you need to address so that your phone won’t run out of battery power so rapidly.