TL;DR
- Limiting your battery life to 90% can actually help it last longer, though you’ll obviously get less battery life than normal but for many this may be more than adequate.
- Charging 20% to 90% is a lot less hard on a phone than charging from 0 to 100%.
- You’ll want to set up two easy routines to make it so your phone stops charging when it reaches 90%.
Many of the latest Samsung devices support seven years of OS and security updates, which means the phones will still be safe to use and feature all the best new software improvements for a long time to come. There’s just one issue: there’s a good chance your battery won’t make it that long before you run into serious degradation. Is there anything you can do to slow this process down? Actually yes, and there’s a simple routine to help you do it, as first suggested on Reddit.
What we want to do is limit your phone from charging past 90%, or 80% (or even lower) if you prefer. Why does this help? Simply put, charging a battery from zero to 100 percent is pretty hard on a phone. There are many who recommend never letting your phone drop below about 20% and never charging it more than 80 to 90%, such as sources like Battery University. In fact, charging your phone multiple times from 20 to 80% is just as detrimental to battery life as charging from zero to 100 once.
I always try to get my phone onto the charger when it gets about below 2, personally, though I admit I tend to fully charge to 100% most of the time. To limit your charging to 90% you’ll need to actually set up two different routines. And yes, we tested this ourselves to ensure it works as it should.
Let’s jump in and show you how to limit your battery life using Samsung routines:
1. To set up the first routine, you’ll start by going to Settings > Modes and Routines > Routines.
2. Next, you’ll want to click on the Plus symbol at the top to create a new routine.
3. A new window will pop up with If and Then fields. Click the Plus on If, and in the search box enter Charging Status. Make sure you select the wired and wireless options under charging if they aren’t already on. Select done.
4. Next, we’ll hit the Plus symbol next to If once more. Search for Battery Level and set the interval to 90 (or whatever you wish to cap your battery at) and ensure the Below option is selected. Hit the Done button on your touchscreen.
5. Go to the Then column in your Routine and hit the Plus button. You’ll want to select the action Battery Protection by typing it into Search.
6. Set Battery protection to On, and Maximum. This will ensure your battery will stop charging at the specified percentage. Hit Done.
Now it’s time to set up the second routine:
Follow the same steps as before to start creating a new routine:
1. Start by clicking the Plus symbol on the If section.
2. Put Charging Status into the search box. Just like before, you’ll want to make sure you set the Charging status for both wired and wireless.
3. Next you’ll want to add the condition battery level as well, setting it to above or equal to 90%.
4. Finally, you’ll want to go to the If set and select the action Battery Protection. Set the action to Max and ensure Battery Protection is set to On.
If you were successful you should now have two different charging routines. In the example above we used the Green and Red power symbols and Charging Protection on/off to identify them, but again you can use whatever works best for you.
Let’s be honest here: Even with careful planning it’s still very likely you won’t make it a full seven years without noticeable battery impact, but limiting your charge capacity can potentially buy you a few more years with it than you’d have otherwise. Of course, the best move is to replace the battery yourself or through a professional repair service after a few years.
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