{"id":814763,"date":"2026-08-15T19:14:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T19:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/814763\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T19:14:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T19:14:15","slug":"my-mom-charges-her-galaxy-s25-to-100-daily-our-batteries-tell-very-different-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/814763\/","title":{"rendered":"My mom charges her Galaxy S25+ to 100% daily; our batteries tell very different stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

My mother and I have the same phone. We ordered ours at the same time from our carrier. We own a Samsung Galaxy S25+<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While we both love using our Samsung phones, our routines and settings are different. One of those habits is charging, as well as battery-saving.<\/p>\n

I’m adamant about charging my phone irregularly and keeping the maximum charge at 80%, while she steadily keeps hers at 100%.<\/p>\n

It’s been a year since we bought our phones, so I wanted to take a snapshot of our battery health and compare our practices.<\/p>\n


\n \"A<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\tThe truth about phone battery myths: What actually extends battery life?
\n\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

We reveal the secrets on battery saving<\/p>\n

Our approaches for maintaining phone battery health<\/p>\n

We are similar but still deviate<\/p>\n

\"Phone
\n Credit:\u00a0Lucas Gouveia \/ Android Police<\/p>\n

I usually keep my phone’s charge between 20% and 80%<\/a> when I can, though it has dipped to 15% or lower a few times.<\/p>\n

My mom charges her device more frequently; she likes to top it off before work and charges it overnight, while I never do.<\/p>\n

Our usage is different, but not by much. We both tend to watch videos, listen to music, use various apps, and use it for texting.<\/p>\n

Neither of us truly games on our Galaxy S25+. I use it more for Galaxy AI features than she does, comparatively speaking.<\/p>\n

All in all, we are both considered moderate-to-heavy users.<\/p>\n

Another difference is how we use our battery-saving options. I use a custom battery-saving mode to maintain my phone’s battery health.<\/p>\n

At the same time, my mom turns it on manually when the battery reaches a certain level, usually when it starts falling below 20%.<\/p>\n

I have also customized my screen timeouts and turned off adaptive brightness, opting to adjust it manually instead. She keeps the default screen timeout and uses adaptive brightness.<\/p>\n

These options influence how often we may need to charge your devices. I focus on maximizing daily battery life<\/a>, while she focuses on normalized patterns.<\/p>\n

But the biggest difference is changing the maximum charging capacity<\/a>, since that’s supposed to influence the long-term health of your phone’s battery.<\/p>\n

As a device charges and discharges, its capacity diminishes over time<\/a>, primarily due to chemical degradation in the phone’s lithium-ion battery.<\/p>\n

Heat is a byproduct of charging and discharging. Sometimes, during the last 10% of charging, a lithium-ion battery can generate significant heat due to internal resistance.<\/p>\n

Heat is what we fear, as it can damage internal components, such as the battery.<\/p>\n

To combat this, I became diligent in my charging practices.<\/p>\n

I keep my maximum at 80%, and I top off my device when it gets near 20%. Typically, my phone’s charge is in the 50% to 60% range.<\/p>\n

Though I know this won’t have an immediate impact on my battery health for a few years, I decided to run some tests and compare them to my mother’s, who doesn’t believe in these practices.<\/p>\n

The first test involved doing a general diagnostic phone check. I ran the Samsung Members app’s diagnostics test first.<\/p>\n

I used that test to ensure that there was no major fault with our batteries.<\/p>\n

Secondly, I checked our devices at 78% to 79% and took a quick snapshot of the estimated time from the settings menu.<\/p>\n

\"samsung\"battery<\/p>\n

I use dark mode; she uses light.<\/p>\n

\"my\"a<\/p>\n

After I downloaded two apps that have been fairly decent at checking my device’s battery health<\/a>, those apps are Battery Guru and AccuBattery.<\/p>\n

The results were not surprising except for one thing<\/p>\n

My 20% maximum charge capacity loss is noticeable<\/p>\n

\"smartphone<\/p>\n

On the fourth day of the test, the battery capacity estimate for my mother’s phone, measured by AccuBattery in the charging section, was 4,505.0mAh.<\/p>\n

Mine was at 4,406mAh. I assume that, since this is a stat measured while charging, my 80% cap influences the estimated battery capacity (so I should have a smaller number by default). This is true. I cross-checked it.<\/p>\n

Comparatively, our numbers are not far off given that I am only charging up to 80%, whereas my mother diligently keeps hers at 100%.<\/p>\n

The Samsung Galaxy S25+ has a design capacity of 4,755mAh (Samsung officially rates it at 4,900mAh).<\/p>\n

The next value I checked was the Health section. I set my maximum charging capacity to 100% for this test so I could more accurately reflect the estimated health.<\/p>\n

Mine was set to 95%, and so was my mother’s.<\/p>\n

\"the\"measured<\/p>\n

I also decided to check what Battery Guru estimated.<\/p>\n

Battery Guru is my go-to app because it helps me manage wakelocks<\/a> that can sometimes interfere with my device’s screen time, so I have had it on my phone since I installed it a year ago.<\/p>\n

I am more inclined to trust Battery Guru’s estimated values since the more charging\/discharging cycles it detects, the more data it can measure.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, this wouldn’t hold true for my mother’s phone, since I only had four days to run these tests and had to install both apps on the first day.<\/p>\n

For my mother’s phone, the status is “learning” (technically, my status changed to learning for the 100% capacity test), even though it’s been four days since I conducted the test \u2014 which likely means she just isn’t charging or discharging it frequently enough.<\/p>\n

I semi-expected this because she takes care of her phone, and while we are in a similar category as moderate-to-heavy users, I lean more toward the heavier side than she does because of my job.<\/p>\n

Based on the data, battery health was measured at 98%, and her capacity was evaluated at 4,671\/4,755mAh, which is again quite healthy.<\/p>\n

For me, it was at 94%, measured at 4,460\/4,755mAh. That’s still healthy given how hard I push my phone.<\/p>\n

\"battery\"Battery<\/p>\n

All in all, our batteries are still in pristine condition after a year of use. However, I have yet to see if my 80% maximum has paid off.<\/p>\n

In theory, it should, since I am not exposing the battery to a higher voltage during the final stage of its charging cycle.<\/p>\n

Though I expect to notice a slowdown with age (less wear and tear) after a few years of use.<\/p>\n

The rate at which it does should be less \u2014 but the question becomes: How much?<\/p>\n

So far, my mother’s phone’s battery seems to be in better condition, though this may depend on our usage patterns and the accuracy of these tests \u2014 these are still third-party apps, not official Samsung tools.<\/p>\n

But I was surprised to see mine being worse by a noticeable amount.<\/p>\n

Your choice of charger matters too<\/p>\n

While these tests were done in the same household, I was able to use the same charger for both.<\/p>\n

I avoid third-party, cheap chargers that don’t match my phone’s wattage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I have been punished by using inexpensive cables that have actually heated my phone, regardless of my settings.<\/p>\n

If you notice your device heating up while charging, it might be due to your charger, rather than the settings you’re using.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My mother and I have the same phone. We ordered ours at the same time from our carrier.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[165,74],"class_list":["post-814763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-mobile","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/814764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}