The manufacturers that make your smartphone's lithium-ion battery say it'll have a lifespan of 300-500 charging cycles, according to Battery University, a leading resource for information on batteries.
Every time you plug in your phone to charge when its below 70%, it goes through a "charging cycle."
So, technically, your smartphone's battery is only designed to work properly between under a year and under a year and a half. That doesn't sound very good.
According to Battery University, your smartphone battery's capacity can reduce down from about 94-88% capacity out-of-the-box down to 84-73% after just 250 cycles. That's 10-15% in eight months. In a year, or 365 days, your battery's capacity could reduce 15-22%.
And that's not taking other factors that have a huge impact on your battery, like long exposure to heat and leaving it plugged in for a long time even when its reached 100%.
However, your smartphone battery's manufacturer is being too harsh on itself. To be fair, that estimate only really applies if you charge your phone from zero to 100% every time, which is called a full-discharge cycle.
With the assumption that most of us might not wait till our phones reach zero percent before charging it to 100%, it's likely that our phone batteries have more than the manufacturer's 300-500 charging cycle lifespan.
In fact, if you wait till your battery is down to around 25% before plugging it in, you might have closer to 2,000 to 2,500 charging cycles before your battery is permanently damaged from the harsh effects a full-discharge has on a battery.
Yet, while your smartphone battery might sustain enough charging cycles for five years, you're probably doing a lot of other things that are reducing its capacity.
