You’re Doing It Wrong: 3 Bad Habits That Are Ruining Your Phone’s Battery

Gadget Hacks
13 min readJul 20, 2018
Cover image by Jon Knight/Gadget Hacks

I was in college, and my 15-inch Sony Vaio laptop was my prized possession. It was my first PC and probably the most important thing I brought with me to my dorm — it was both how I completed my assignments and my primary source of entertainment. How could it turn its back on me in my time of need?

During my freshman year, I was working on a report for a group project due the next morning. About halfway into the research paper, I saw my battery percentage dip to 15%. I had only been using my laptop for about hour and a half, so I was surprised as to how quickly it needed to be recharged. I frantically search my bag and to my dismay, I forgot my AC adapter. With no USB drive (and cloud storage not widely available back then), I was forced to complete my paper on my dying laptop.

I started by dropping the brightness level down to barely visible and changing Windows’ power levels to balanced. With these adjustments, I was able to eke out 20 more minutes before my laptop shut off from the low battery. I didn’t get that paper on time, resulting in a C+ after the late submission penalty.

At the end of the day, my laptop’s crappy battery was my own fault. Out of the box, my laptop could hold a charge for about 5 hours — but in six months, that was reduced to less than two…

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