this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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Technically, wired charging degrades the battery less than wireless charging, mainly because of the excessive heat generated by the latter. The same way slower wired charging generates less heat. Lower and upper charging limits also help (the tighter the better).
But I personally don't bother with it. In my experience, battery degradation and longevity mostly comes down to the "battery lottery", comparable to the "silicon lottery" where some CPUs overclock/undervolt better than others. I've had phone batteries mostly charged with a slow wired charger degrade earlier and more compared to almost exclusively wireless charging others. No battery is an exact verbatim copy of another one. Heck, I had a 2 month old battery die on me after just ~20 cycles once. It happens.
Sure, on average you might get a bit more life out of your batteries, but in my opinion it's not worth it.
The way I see it with charging limits is that sure, your battery might degrade 5% more over the span of 2 years when always charging it to 100% (all numbers here are just wild estimates and, again, depend on your individual battery). But when you limit charging to 80% for example, you get 20% less capacity from the get go. Unless of course you know exactly on what days you need 100% charge and plan your charging ahead of time that way.
Something I personally could never be bothered with. I want to use my device without having to think about it. If that means having to swap out the battery one year earlier, then so be it.
Additionally, if you follow the "stay between 20% and 80%" advice, you're only ever getting 60% of your battery's capacity.
Why not just use it normally and get 100% of it? And then sure, in 3-5 years the battery may have degraded down to only holding 60% of a charge, but that means you're effectively in the same boat as above, except you got way more usability from the phone in the meantime, and you've not had to spend time stressing about your battery.
There's also nothing stopping you from spending £30-60 and getting a new battery after 4-5 years.
Because in 3-5 years I can just press a button and magically have 100% again when I need it. It's not the same boat at all.
The real question is why would you deliberately accelerate the degradation when you don't need it?
I already explained why you'd want to... So you get more use of your battery, and you're not having to think about your battery constantly.
It's virtually pointless to micromanage your phone battery like that.