When it comes to smartphone battery, there are two things you need to consider – battery life and battery health.
- Battery life basically refers to how much battery is left based on the current charge. This is typically displayed in your phone’s status bar and should be able to give users a rough idea of how much battery they have left before the phone runs out of juice.
- Battery health, on the other hand, refers to the overall health/lifespan of the battery. This is something that degrades over time the more times you charge it. It is measured in cycles where each charge from 0-100% counts as one cycle, and typically speaking, all lithium-ion batteries used in our mobile gadgets have a finite number of cycles.
Why Is Battery Health Important?
The health of your battery also determines how much of a charge it can hold. For example, a phone with a 5,500mAh battery with a battery health of 100% means that when the phone is charged to full, it will hold 5,500mAh as promised.
However, as its health degrades over time, it might drop to 95%, in which it means that when your phone is charged to 100%, you’re actually not getting the full 5,500mAh battery, which is why phones with degraded battery health feel like they run out of juice faster. Typically speaking, once battery health drops past a certain point, it might be time to replace it.
So, if you’re wondering why your phone is no longer lasting as long as it should, maybe you should check its health, and here’s what you need to do.
Checking Your Android Phone’s Battery Health
Using A Dial Code
- Launch your phone’s dialer app
- Type in *#*#4636#*#*
- You should now be brought to a menu
- Look for “Battery information”
If you do not see “Battery information” or anything similar, then it looks like your device won’t be able to access this feature.
AccuBattery
Given that different handset manufacturers design their battery settings page differently, with some displaying more/less information than others, a good way to ensure consistency would be to use a third-party app.
In this case we’re using AccuBattery which is one of the most popular tools out there for checking not just battery health, but other battery-related information.
- Download and install AccuBattery
- Launch the app
- Tap on the Health tab at the bottom of the screen
- Under Battery Health, it will show you the health of your phone’s battery
It should be noted that AccuBattery works best by running it through several charges so it can get a better understanding and reading of your phone’s battery. So running it through its paces over the course of the next few days will probably give you a more accurate reading compared to the first time you launch it.
Other features of AccuBattery that you might want to take advantage of include the ability to set an alarm to remind you when your phone has charged up to a certain percent. This is because many have recommended that you should actually stop charging your phone when it hits 80% to prolong its battery life, so that alarm could come in handy.