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Should I leave iPhone plugged in when tethering?

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PowerMan572

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 11, 2014
4
0
I know tethering is hard on the battery, so I'm wondering if I should just leave my iPhone on the charger the entire time I'm tethering?

The reason I ask is because I also thought I read that you should let your battery drain before charging it again. If I do this, I might have to charge it over and over throughout the day. (I don't think this is very good for the phone.)

I'm not sure what is best for the phone. I came from Android, so I didn't have to worry about this. I could just replace my battery once a year.


What are your thoughts on keeping the phone plugged in or not plugged in when tethering? I'll be tethering for around 8 hours each time while I'm at work.
 
Definitely keep it plugged in.
And do not drain your battery before recharge. The only time you'd need to do it would be when you'd want to calibrate your battery.
 
No doubt if a plug is available, leave it plugged in. I used to worry about my battery like you but got over it and just use my phone and not worry about it. I never discharge my battery and even after a year my iPhone batteries still are in excellent health.
 
If you're tethering a laptop, you can connect your iPhone to the laptop via USB and have it share the internet connection over the cable instead of using WiFi or bluetooth. It's a lot more reliable, and you can charge your phone from your laptop at the same time you use the internet connection.

If the laptop runs windows, you'll need to install iTunes first. And if it's running linux, you need to install the right drivers.
 
XT550 said:
Definitely keep it plugged in.
And do not drain your battery before recharge. The only time you'd need to do it would be when you'd want to calibrate your battery.
Click to expand...
You don't calibrate lithium ion batteries. They do not have memory like a nickle cadmium battery.

Letting a lithium ion battery go below 10% shortens its life and you should avoid ever letting them get that low on charge. It is better to never let them go below 20%.

Apple says to plug your battery in as soon as you get the low battery warning.

I carry the Motorola power pack micro on my keychain, which works great for android. I hope they can make one with the qualcom quick charge technology.
 
JulesJam said:
Do you mean you drain it to zero? Because if you do, you are doing something that is not only unnecessary, it is harmful.
Click to expand...

I wasn't aware that it was harmful. This is the first time I'm hearing this. I bought an iphone 4s 2 years ago and I probably let it discharge to 1-10% at least once per week and the battery still works perfectly. Did the 4s have a different type of battery than the 6? I have a 6 and I want to be careful not to damage the battery.
 
FieldingMellish said:
I also don't pay attention to those guys holding signs that say the end is near.
Click to expand...
Or apparently, science.

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wolfaaron said:
I wasn't aware that it was harmful. This is the first time I'm hearing this. I bought an iphone 4s 2 years ago and I probably let it discharge to 1-10% at least once per week and the battery still works perfectly. Did the 4s have a different type of battery than the 6? I have a 6 and I want to be careful not to damage the battery.
Click to expand...
Idk what the iP4s had but the iP6 has a lithium-ion polymer battery.
 
Based on Apple's own page on batteries, all that really makes a difference in the health of a battery is total charge cycles. A cycle is calculated based on every 100% TOTAL the battery is drained and charged. Let's say I charge every time my batter is at 50% and hit 100%. I then wait until 50% until I charge it back to 100%. That is one charge cycle regardless of how much time it took me.

There are also apps out there that tell you your charge cycles (they are recorded by the OS, though Apple hasn't made this a default statistic for some reason).

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JulesJam said:
Do you mean you drain it to zero? Because if you do, you are doing something that is not only unnecessary, it is harmful.
Click to expand...

I would imagine that Apple's hardware/software keep the battery from discharging to "dangerous" levels. The link below explains everything I would think almost anyone would want to know about lithium ion.

In short, you are right, it shouldn't be completely discharged. But when a phone is at 0 it is still not completely discharged. So I imagine the proer safeguards are in place.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries
Li-ion should never be discharged too low, and there are several safeguards to prevent this from happening. The equipment cuts off when the battery discharges to about 3.0V/cell, stopping the current flow. If the discharge continues to about 2.70V/cell or lower, the battery’s protection circuit puts the battery into a sleep mode. This renders the pack unserviceable and a recharge with most chargers is not possible. To prevent a battery from falling asleep, apply a partial charge before a long storage period.
Click to expand...

I have personally never even seen a lithium ion battery unable to be charged even after stored for a very long time. That's not to say it doesn;t happen (I am sure it does), but it's hard to "force" it to that point I would think.
 
JulesJam said:
You don't calibrate lithium ion batteries. They do not have memory like a nickle cadmium battery.
Click to expand...

Calibration is for batteries that have charger controller. You do calibrate li-ion batteries, so the controller can relearn the usable capacity.

Apple claims that its devices with built-in batteries doesn't need calibration, but I do calibrate it once a couple of months and never had problems.

I would leave my iPhone on the charger, so it wouldn't use the battery and waste a cycle..
 
leventozler said:
Calibration is for batteries that have charger controller. You do calibrate li-ion batteries, so the controller can relearn the usable capacity.

Apple claims that its devices with built-in batteries doesn't need calibration, but I do calibrate it once a couple of months and never had problems.

I would leave my iPhone on the charger, so it wouldn't use the battery and waste a cycle..
Click to expand...

Now this is something that I am confused on. Does it actually not use the battery cycle? My understanding is that it does (and that you are not using 100% auxillary power).

I can say for certain my macbook works that way. I got it with a dozen cycles on the battery (basically new) and is has about 150 now. It hasn't spent nearly that amount of time off the charger (its bsically a desktop replacment). I used it off the charger once (for the whole day) and thats it.
 
lordofthereef said:
Now this is something that I am confused on. Does it actually not use the battery cycle? My understanding is that it does (and that you are not using 100% auxillary power).

I can say for certain my macbook works that way. I got it with a dozen cycles on the battery (basically new) and is has about 150 now. It hasn't spent nearly that amount of time off the charger (its bsically a desktop replacment). I used it off the charger once (for the whole day) and thats it.
Click to expand...

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201585
 
lordofthereef said:
I would imagine that Apple's hardware/software keep the battery from discharging to "dangerous" levels.
Click to expand...
Li-ion polymer batteries self-discharge when left sitting over time. So while there may be that circuitry inside, over time the physical properties of the material are such that they continue to discharge until they are fully discharged unless you connect them to a power source.
 
leventozler said:
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201585
Click to expand...

That link didn't really do anything to explain my question lol. I understand what charge cycles are. What I don;t understand is how much, if any, battery is consumed while plugged in. I am fairly convinced battery is, indeed, consumed while plugged in. Otherwise I shouldn't have more than maybe half a dozen charge cycles on my Mac.

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JulesJam said:
Li-ion polymer batteries self-discharge when left sitting over time. So while there may be that circuitry inside, over time the physical properties of the material are such that they continue to discharge until they are fully discharged unless you connect them to a power source.
Click to expand...

Right. I was merely saying that discharging a phone to "0" and then charging it up again isn't going to damage the battery, as was implied. If that isn;t what you were implying then I misunderstood.

For the record, AFAIK, all batteries discharge, to some degree, over time.
 
lordofthereef said:
That link didn't really do anything to explain my question lol. I understand what charge cycles are. What I don;t understand is how much, if any, battery is consumed while plugged in. I am fairly convinced battery is, indeed, consumed while plugged in. Otherwise I shouldn't have more than maybe half a dozen charge cycles on my Mac.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure, older models required battery to be present to fully utilize the CPU. If that's still the case (battery kicks in when doing something CPU/GPU intensive), and if you're using it for gaming/encoding etc. it may use the battery.
 
lordofthereef said:
Right. I was merely saying that discharging a phone to "0" and then charging it up again isn't going to damage the battery, as was implied. If that isn;t what you were implying then I misunderstood.
Click to expand...
No, what I was saying was the problem is letting it get to zero - that harms the battery and since there is no memory in a Li-ion-polymer battery, you don't benefit from doing it.
 
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