“If you wear your battery down 50 percent then charge it back up, that’s half a cycle,” says Weins. “Apple claims their phones can run 400 cycles then are at 80% capacity - that’s what they claim,” he says, noting the reality, for him, is “a fair amount worse than that.”Īnd even if you only use a fraction of your phone’s battery and then recharge it to 100 percent, that still counts towards a full cycle. In general, smartphone batteries have a life of between 300 to 500 full-charge to fully-discharged cycles, estimates Weins. “Batteries in phones have a finite lifespan - the more that you use them, the faster that battery wears out,” he says. Of course, these mobile devices have their own challenges when it comes to power management - namely batteries wearing down - but according to Weins, shutting your smartphone off won’t necessarily help save your battery. Smartphones, meanwhile, have batteries and only draw power from an electrical outlet when they are plugged in. Even energy-saving sleep modes sip “vampire power,” a small amount of electricity that, when added to all the other computers not completely turned off, totals significant wastefulness.
When computers are left on, they use electricity, and electricity costs money. Your IT department likely recommends that you power down your computer nightly simply as a cost-saving measure, says Weins. The reason why shutting down your computer is good advice in the first place is the crux of the issue.
