GoKawiilJoe Maring / Android Authority
Battery degradation is perhaps the biggest concern if you want to keep a phone for three years or longer. Fast degradation means terrible battery life after just a year or two. This wasn’t a huge deal in the late 2000s and early 2010s, since user-replaceable batteries let you easily switch to a new cell. But we now live in an era where most people have to take their phone to a repair center to get the battery replaced.
It used to be relatively easy to understand the battery degradation information smartphone makers disclosed. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that some mobile brands are quietly trying to redefine how degradation is measured. But why?
Which metric do you prefer: charging cycles or years of battery health? 20 votes Charging cycles 65 % Years of battery health 35 %
How is degradation usually measured? And what changed?
Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
Battery degradation is typically measured in terms of charging cycles. A charging cycle is how often you’ve fully drained a battery’s capacity. Using your fully charged phone until it hits zero counts as one charging cycle. But a charging cycle doesn’t necessarily mean using 100% of a battery’s capacity in one go, either. For example, if you charge your phone to 50% and use it until it’s dead, then charge it to 50% and use it until it hits zero again, that’s a single charging cycle too.
Apple and Google say their recent phones can last for 1,000 charging cycles before reaching 80% effective capacity. Meanwhile, Samsung is the king in this regard, as its high-end phones can last for 2,000 charging cycles. These figures give us a rough idea of how long a phone battery will last before it degrades significantly. For instance, 1,000 charging cycles is equivalent to just under three years of use if you fully discharge and recharge the battery daily. More moderate usage means you won’t be charging as often, which means your battery will soldier on a little longer before reaching its rated number of cycles.
The arrival of silicon-carbon batteries coincided with some smartphone makers changing the way they measure battery degradation.
OnePlus, OPPO, and vivo all claimed 1,600 charging cycles on some phones prior to the introduction of silicon-carbon batteries. This claim extended to devices like the OnePlus 12, vivo X100 Pro, OPPO Find X6 Pro, and Find X7 Ultra. In fact, OnePlus and vivo specifically claimed that their phones had 1,600 charging cycles or four years of battery health.
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