Do You Need To Charge Your New Phone’s Battery For 8 Hours?

Despite the advancement in battery technology, consumers are still told to charge their new smartphone for at least 8 hours before using it for the first time. The rationale behind this is to ensure your phone charges to its maximum capacity (100%) and that it will be able to reach this level for each subsequent charging cycle.

This is true of phones that used Nickel Cadmium batteries, which retained a memory of its initial charge state. Thankfully, Lithium-ion or Lithium-ion Polymer (LiPo) are not susceptible to this memory effect. In fact, you are free to use your smartphone the moment it’s taken out of the box. Charge it only when the battery runs low.

At said time, charge the battery till it’s full, then you are free to unplug it without fearing any “memory effect” repercussions. That said, it is advisable, for the sake of battery health, that you do not let your charge levels dip below 20% or charge state rise above 95% for extended periods of time. This will ensure that your battery’s full charging capacity can be maintained for a longer period of time.

Unlike older battery technology, lithium-ion batteries count a charge cycle differently. As you know, every battery has a finite lifespan (number of useful charging cycles). A charge cycle is defined by how much of the battery’s 100% capacity you’ve used. For example, if you used 35% of charge and decided to plug it in (65% charge remaining) and charge it to 100%, this isn’t considered as 1 cycle.

Instead, for the battery to complete said 1 cycle, you would also need to deplete the 65% charge that was available before you plugged the phone in (entire 100% of previous charge state). For a more in-depth explanation, take a look at a similar article that Apple published some time ago.

The simple answer here is that you no longer need to charge your phone for 8 hours or more for the first time or during subsequent charging cycles. Besides having smarter batteries, the software built into our phones helps monitor the charge state and charging rate to extend their lifespan for as long as possible.

Sony and Apple have trickle charging tech built into their phones. They will allow batteries to charge quickly to 90% then slow down the charging rate (trickle charge) as it nears 100%. This is done based on your settings or on your alarm timer. This way, you aren’t purposefully wasting electricity and diminishing battery health.