There are a few things you should not do with your battery. The limited two-year lifespan of lithium-ion batteries can be reduced even further if you don’t avoid certain behaviors. We’ll tell you which ones they are in this article.

The battery is the most sensitive part of our smartphones and their usable lifespans can be affected by our behavior. Several series of measurements by the Battery University have produced significant results. Now, get ready for the shocking findings.

Don’t charge your smartphone at a computer

Charging via the USB port of your PC not only takes longer, it is also harmful. Tensions of USB ports often vary and create greater heat generation. This has an affect on the service life of batteries. The materials used for electrodes and electrolytes are really stable only in a small temperature spectrum and they dislike when you rip them from their comfort zone.

If your charge your battery hard, especially in connection with high voltages, it can lose capacity within a few months. The Battery University notes a fall to 65 percent of its original capacity when the battery is warmed to 40 degrees Celsius.

So, ideally, use the original charger and connect it to an electrical outlet. The supplied transformer provides a direct current, which should not heat a battery – thus maximizing its service life.

Don’t completely drain your battery

If your battery level drops to 2 percent, it is already too late to find a charging socket. Be aware that if your battery discharges too deeply, it may cause damage and premature aging.

In its long-term test, the Battery University found that regular, to-the-limit discharging led to an overall lifespan of only 300 to 500 charge cycles, while batteries which had been discharged to only 25 to 50 percent could reach 1,000 to 2,500 cycles.

So don’t shy away from charging the battery even if there’s another 30 or 50 percent charge left.

Don’t charge the battery overnight

The structure of the battery is so composed that, during charging, the lithium ions are pressed into a graphite lattice. The problem here is that the lithium ions react nastily with crystals when they meet and connect. And the greater the battery is charged, the more likely these connections are.

These crystals are sharp, big and destructive. They are so large that the graphite lattice, which should be confined, actually break up little by little. And with fewer of these individual cells remaining, there is logically less space for lithium-ion…ergo less battery capacity.

So don’t charge your battery to 100 percent. Unfortunately, there is no app that stops charging at, say, 80 percent so you must make sure yourself that your smartphone is not overcharged. Battery University even found that when you regularly charge your battery to only 70 percent, you can still get more than 1000 cycles from it.