Overcharging your smartphone was once a widespread fear among users. Many thought that charging your smartphone overnight was detrimental. But that’s simply not true anymore, as smartphones have become more durable with built-in protection.
Smartphones rely on built-in mechanisms to protect themselves from continuing to charge beyond the cap, which is typically set by the charger as well as the phone’s hardware and software. For example, iPhones have an 80% charge limit found in the Battery and Charging settings. But many other phones, including Android devices, have something similar. Additionally, depending on the model, you may even see a visual indicator that your device is protecting itself from charging beyond its limit.
On Samsung phones, starting with One UI 7, when you enable battery protection with maximum charge, you see a shield icon indicating that your device is protected against overcharging. This also means that your Samsung phone stops charging at maximum and will only continue if it drops below the limit (a lightning bolt replaces the shield).
The battery percentage on your smartphone may also display a leaf icon. When you see the leaf icon, it indicates that power saving mode is enabled. Disabling it will make the sheet disappear.
Choosing the Right Battery Protection Settings
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Samsung Galaxy phones have battery protection settings that help you streamline your options. On newer One UI devices, you’ll find two options: Basic and Maximum. Adaptive was once a third option, but it was replaced by Sleep Time Protection under Basic Options in an update.
Basic is what it should be by default unless you change it to Maximum. For One UI 7 and later devices, you will see a slider under Maximum to indicate an exact percentage: 80%, 85%, 90%, and 95%. With Basic, your phone will go up to 100%, stop charging, then resume once it hits 95%. Usually, 100% is the default: why limit charging to a lower level if you plan to use your device all the time? But that won’t solve the battery longevity problem.
It turns out that your smartphone battery, especially a lithium-ion battery, doesn’t hold up well to excessive chemical stress. This is all based on battery science: In the electrochemical reaction, the ions traveling from the cathode to the anode in the cell – the last bit of charge – are actually the most stressful on the system, like when you charge your phone from 80% to 100%. The point of not letting your device exceed 80% is therefore to maintain thermal stability during its charge cycle. But of course, there are always external factors that can affect the health of a phone’s battery, like the temperatures your device is exposed to during the process (bulky phone cases can dissipate heat poorly) and the type of charger you use. For this reason, using an unsupported charger is one of the things you should never do with a Samsung phone.
