After a long gaming session on your smartphone, you finally decide to give it a rest and charge your phone. A few hours later, when you check your phone’s battery status, it’s shocking to find that the battery is dead. No need to panic. This guide will provide 10 solutions to fix the problem of your phone battery draining while charging.
Why phone battery gets low while charging
Before you proceed with the troubleshooting process, it is important to understand what is causing your phone’s battery to drain while charging. Here are some common reasons:
- You are charging through USB port of PC or laptop. Since the power output is much lower than a dedicated charger, it can lead to battery drain if you do resource-intensive tasks.
- A loose or damaged charging port can prevent a stable connection to the charger and cause unstable charging or no charging at all.
- Using a damaged cable or charger.
- Using third-party low-quality chargers.
- Power supply issues with the wall outlet or the charger’s pins may not fit properly.
- A poorly optimized operating system can lead to increased battery drain.
- Degraded or damaged batteries.
Next, let’s focus on troubleshooting methods.
1. Your phone is overheating
If your phone gets too hot – due to extremely hot weather, long gaming sessions, or engaging in other resource-intensive tasks while charging – your phone may stop charging. This might make you think that the battery is draining while charging, but it is actually just a security feature to protect your phone.
We recommend that you avoid charging your phone while running resource-intensive tasks. This practice can help extend the life of your battery and prevent potential charging problems in the future.
Also Read: Are you seeing ‘Charging on hold’ message on the screen? Now find out what it means.
2. Avoid using wireless charging
Wireless charging is slower than traditional wired charging methods. Additionally, if you’re running resource-intensive apps or games, it may require more power than a wireless charger can provide. This can cause the phone to overheat and turn off the wireless charger, potentially draining the battery while charging. So, try charging your phone with a wired connection for continuous power supply and prevent possible overheating.
3. Check battery usage per app
You may have heard that poorly programmed apps are the main culprit for draining battery while running in the background. Although they cannot drain the battery while charging, a damaged battery can still cause problems. To identify such apps, check your phone’s battery usage screen. Here’s how:
For Android:
Each Android phone brand has a different way of checking battery stats. In the Settings app, use the search button to find the battery usage setting if you can’t find it.
- go there Settings > Device care > Battery.
- After that, tap on See details button and select Date To see which apps have used up your phone’s battery.
- Based on their usage, choose one application That you suspect may be draining the background battery. For example, we chose Instagram The app you could see was running in the background more than actual screen time.
- To prevent the app from running in the background, enable Background usage limit and place the application in a deep sleep. This can help you continue using battery-consuming apps without uninstalling them.
Also Read: Here’s how you can reduce 5G battery drain on Android and iPhone.
For iPhone:
- open up settings Application and navigate Battery section
- Scroll down and then tap on Show activity This tab provides an overview of apps running in the background that can drain the battery while charging.
- If an app like YouTube is eating up a lot of battery, go to Settings > General > Background App Refresh.
- Disable the YouTube app from running in the background. You can do the same for other apps that you feel don’t need to run in the background.
4. Perform battery calibration
At times, your phone may display incorrect battery information due to the phone’s OS or battery age. For instance, we encountered this problem with an older Samsung phone, which would randomly shut down even when the battery had 15% to 25% left.
To avoid such inaccuracies, we recommend Calibrate your phone’s battery. This ensures that you get accurate battery information while charging the phone. To do that, follow the steps below:
- Use it until your phone turns off due to low battery.
- Next, turn on your phone and let it turn off again to remove the remaining charge.
- After that, charge your phone until it indicates 100% charged.
This action should solve the problem of incorrect battery indication on your smartphone.
5. Use a fast charging adapter
If your phone supports fast charging and you’re still using a low-voltage adapter to charge it, you might face battery-draining issues while charging. This is especially noticeable when gaming. To avoid this, I would advise you to use a fast charger of the same brand, to ensure that your phone charges without draining the battery.
6. Update the phone
Sometimes, charging problems can occur due to a bug or faulty software update in the phone’s operating system, especially when using an early beta version of the OS. Consider checking for a software update on your iPhone or Android phone. If an update is available, install it as soon as possible. This step can help solve the problem of battery draining while charging.
Tips to extend battery life and prevent future charging problems
- Do not charge your phone more than 80-90%, because it creates more heat and stresses the battery. The same applies when the battery gets to 0%. Also, avoid charging overnight, as keeping the battery at 100% for long periods of time can strain it.
- Use the charger that came with your phone or a charger from a reputable brand.
- Avoid charging your phone in extremely hot or cold environments.
- Reduce screen brightness or enable adaptive brightness to save significant battery power.
- Keep your phone software up to date as manufacturers often release updates that improve battery performance.
- Avoid fast charging whenever possible. Use features like Battery Protection (Samsung) or Optimized Battery Charging (iPhone) to automatically adjust charging speed.
- Keep your charging port free of dust and debris. You can use a soft brush to clean it.
- Use battery health monitoring apps to get detailed information about app usage and its impact on your phone’s battery.
- Avoid heavy tasks such as gaming or video streaming while charging, as it may generate excessive heat.
Keep your phone alive while charging
We hope that one of the above solutions fixes the problem of phone battery draining while charging. If not, your battery or charging port may be permanently damaged. In such a case, visit the nearest mobile service center to replace your phone’s battery with an original one or change the charging port. This might fix the charging problem on your phone.
You can also fix the same problem on your Windows laptop.