14 DAY TRIAL // Owners of most smartphones know this – our device’s battery usually doesn’t last more than a day. That’s because we tend to actively use our handsets throughout working hours, accessing the internet or for media consumption.
Like a lot of people I know, I also have the tendency to leave my smartphone charging overnight. But is that the responsible decision to make? Will it hurt the handset’s battery life in the long run? And how much money are you actually wasting by doing?
More than that, sometimes I don't even bother to plug out the charger, I just leave it there for convenience. But isn't this behavior going to put a toll on my savings?
Keeping your smartphone charger plugged in all the time won't cost you a fortune
Luckily, it turns out that the costs of leaving your charger plugged into a wall aren’t that big. Cambridge professor David MacKay explains that keeping your charger plugged while not in use over a year amounts to the energy one would require to run a hot bath.
As professor MacKay puts it “obsessively switching off the phone charger is like bailing the Titanic with a teaspoon.” Don’t get the wrong idea, it’s OK to unplug your charger once you’re done using it, but don’t kid yourself, you won’t be saving huge amounts of energy, just a tiny-tiny bit.
To drive the point home even further, Tech Radar talks about a study conducted back in 2012 by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which showed that a charger plugged in a wall used an average of 0.26 watt. When a smartphone was connected to the charger, the amount of electricity went up to 3.68 watt.
When the phone becomes fully charged, the figure descends to 2.24 watt. The study also calculated the costs of charging a smartphone for the average household per year, which amounted to $5.30 / €4.33.
So, as you can see, the costs are quite negligible. Anyhow, you probably shouldn’t be charging your phone overnight due to another reason. It’s not healthy for your device’s battery to charge for long periods of time after it hits 100%.
It has been shown that doing this on a regular basis will cause your battery to degrade so you’ll end up having to replace it sooner than expected.
