Photo: dpa/Felix Hörhager
I recently accidentally broke my phone and then took over one of my dad’s older devices. I quickly noticed that the battery performance of the device is relatively low. Why does a battery lose storage capacity?
Just like batteries, rechargeable batteries are filled with various chemical substances that react with each other. The batteries that are usually installed in phones today are lithium-ion batteries. This contains lithium atoms from which the outermost electron has been removed, which are therefore electrically charged and function as charge carriers. If the device has been running for a while and has undergone a large number of charging and discharging cycles, the battery changes, some of the lithium accumulates as metal and is no longer available. The structure of the electrodes can also change adversely. And so the storage capacity of the battery decreases.
Can the reduced performance also be attributed to incorrect treatment?
If you want to ruin a battery as quickly as possible, you should leave it at 100 percent charge at high temperatures. But if you want to give it as long a life as possible, then you should only discharge the battery to a maximum of 25 percent and never let it fill more than 80 percent. You should also avoid temperature extremes.
If I keep the charge between 25 and 80 percent at all times, will my phone’s performance remain stable?
It also shrinks. Just slower. Even under ideal conditions, after two or three years of use, you’ll only have 80 percent. There’s nothing you can do about it.
According to Adam Riese, the battery capacity should then be at zero after 15 years at the latest.
It will probably never go to zero. However, at some point the battery will be so weak that the phone can no longer be used properly. Apart from that, old smartphones have a security problem because at some point the operating software can no longer be updated. Network technology is also changing. You probably won’t be able to use it for 15 years because of this.
Is lithium a light metal that workers extract from the earth under terrible conditions?
Lithium itself is currently mainly extracted from salt lakes in South America. Bolivia and Chile, for example, have large deposits. As far as I know, the working conditions there are not as devastating as, for example, in African mining. In the Bolivian Andes, the scarcity of water is a particular problem because it is needed in large quantities to extract lithium. However, there are also ores containing lithium that are mined. Like in Australia. The working conditions there are not much different than ours, I would say.
So at least I don’t have to feel guilty about batteries?
Wrong thought! Common battery types also contain cobalt. And this is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, in mines that often collapse. Not uncommon from children. Around two thirds of the world’s cobalt production comes from there.