Do rapid temperature changes damage a phone's battery?

[Greg55]

Its a hot summer here, i was charging my galaxy s7 and i realized it was as hot as an oven... I put it in the fridge until it became cold and then charged it fully and unplugged. I went to sleep then and woke up 7 hours later to see it 94% charged... It really shouldn't have been bellow 97%. Every battery consuming app or service like WIFI/cellular data etc was disabled. Only location and sync was on. I looked around 5 minutes without doing anything in particular and the batter dropped to 90% just like that... I think my phone's battery drains faster than it should. Any ideas to prove my theory? can going from too hot to too cold in a minute damage the battery?

 

[basroil]

Can it? Yes, under certain conditions you can permanently change the structure of the battery.

Is what you're seeing due to that? Not likely, probably just a random incident.

Should you ever put electronics in the fridge? ABSOLUTELY NOT! It's the easiest way to cause internal condensation and shorting

 

[sizzling]

All you can do is use the phone like normal and see if battery life has been reduced. Extreme temperatures hot or cold is not good for these batteries, I don't know rapid cooling will cause a problem but it doesn't seem like a good idea. Don't pay too much attention to the battery % on the phone, these things are an approximation and not that accurate. The only real test is how long the phone lasts under normal use.

 

[Greg55]

Can it? Yes, under certain conditions you can permanently change the structure of the battery.

Is what you're seeing due to that? Not likely, probably just a random incident.

Should you ever put electronics in the fridge? ABSOLUTELY NOT! It's the easiest way to cause internal condensation and shorting

well, it is supposedly the best water proof phone ever made thus far so i figured that if it can survive 15 minutes under water it can take 5 minutes in the fridge... I guess i will avoid doing it from now on.

 

[Greg55]

All you can do is use the phone like normal and see if battery life has been reduced. Extreme temperatures hot or cold is not good for these batteries, I don't know rapid cooling will cause a problem but it doesn't seem like a good idea. Don't pay too much attention to the battery % on the phone, these things are an approximation and not that accurate. The only real test is how long the phone lasts under normal use.

i guess i can live with that...

 

[basroil]

well, it is supposedly the best water proof phone ever made thus far so i figured that if it can survive 15 minutes under water it can take 5 minutes in the fridge... I guess i will avoid doing it from now on.

Would you stick your arm in a microwave for 5min because you can stick it in a pool for hours? It's basically that, don't do stupid things "just because", actually research what it will do

 

[gdeangel]

Apparently nobody here knows the old trick of putting the rechargeable battery in the FREEZER to extend its longevity.

Rechargeable batteries don't like heat. A lot of what's in the "battery" is electronics designed to control the battery temperature and keep it from getting too hot. If you were just charging it normally - not, for example, in a hot car with the windows rolled up - the circuitry should have prevented the temps from getting to the point where there would be damage.

I would TAKE THE BATTERY OUT OF THE PHONE first, then put it in the freezer (the battery, not the phone) next time. As for the phone electronics... next time blow air through the vent holes and let the cooling system work as designed. The air will carry away heat from the heat sinks that are protecting the critical components.

 

[basroil]

Apparently nobody here knows the old trick of putting the rechargeable battery in the FREEZER to extend its longevity.

1) You're going to break your battery that way, just like temps above ~50C are bad, ones below 0C are also bad
2) The actual "trick" is putting a lithium ion battery in a refrigerator (~5C, not -10 like a freezer) when it's at ~30% charge, which slows down chemical reactions. You need to let it return to room temp before charging though

 

[gdeangel]

Apparently nobody here knows the old trick of putting the rechargeable battery in the FREEZER to extend its longevity.

1) You're going to break your battery that way, just like temps above ~50C are bad, ones below 0C are also bad
2) The actual "trick" is putting a lithium ion battery in a refrigerator (~5C, not -10 like a freezer) when it's at ~30% charge, which slows down chemical reactions. You need to let it return to room temp before charging though

Not sure your 100% right. I've taken batteries that wouldn't hold a charge - or at least the circuitry in the charger flagged them as "bad", put the battery in the freezer for a couple hours, taken it out, and it charged while still cold. I've also taken a really old NiCad and frozen it overnight, returned it to room temperature, and charged it. It went from holding about a 5 minute charge to ~10 minute charge... nothing to right home about, but anyway, at that time I read that the freezer causes the electrons to migrate in a way that can sort-of restore a battery.

For what it's worth, my father-in-law, who was some kind of expert electrical engineer in his day, used to store all his regular household batteries in the refrigerator. That was just to slow discharge though I think. So I don't see the sense to having a 30% charged battery...

I think most chargers are set up to detect many kinds of conditions where the battery can be "bad" because it's drawing too much current, because the amount of current it's drawing isn't following the "healthy" charge curve, etc. I'm pretty sure that one major manufacturer of laptops was using a counter and after X charges, the battery would not charge because it was considered past it's useful life - it didn't matter if you charged it from 90% to 100% or from 5% to 100%, the life of the battery went -1 charge. As far as they were concerned, tossing a healthy battery in the trash just meant they weren't going to get sued for that 1 laptop fire that might occur with an old battery, and the number of charges was just enough that the battery would always be out of warranty.

Anyway, I think that changing the temp of the battery can sometimes circumvent some of that logic possibly.

 

[basroil]

Not sure your 100% right. I've taken batteries that wouldn't hold a charge - or at least the circuitry in the charger flagged them as "bad", put the battery in the freezer for a couple hours, taken it out, and it charged while still cold. I've also taken a really old NiCad and frozen it overnight, returned it to room temperature, and charged it. It went from holding about a 5 minute charge to ~10 minute charge... nothing to right home about, but anyway, at that time I read that the freezer causes the electrons to migrate in a way that can sort-of restore a battery.

Freezers are low enough temperature that the electrolyte in cheaper batteries can solidify, and charging them in that state will cause permanent damage. Don't compare nicad to lithium, it's like comparing a diesel car to a gasoline one, they might look the same, but the underlying physics are quite different.

For what it's worth, my father-in-law, who was some kind of expert electrical engineer in his day, used to store all his regular household batteries in the refrigerator. That was just to slow discharge though I think. So I don't see the sense to having a 30% charged battery...

Like I said before, storage in a REFRIGERATOR is fine, because it's usually ~5C. A FREEZER IS BAD, since it's temperature is usually -10C or less and low enough that some batteries can change phase.

 

[gdeangel]

I only mention the NiCad (and the Alkaline) experience to contrast the different function cold can play - restoring / extending battery life vs. diminishing battery drain.

For the Li-ion process described by basroll in the refrigerator @ 30%, if I understood, although it's not clear, is to slow discharge - i.e., for long term storage... because if they are stored for months with no charge, they pretty much die.

Now, as for freezing the Li-ion, I read on the web that "Li-Ion batteries are non-aqueous so freezing temperatures shouldn't harm a drained battery, but a fully charged battery might be hurt because the maximum voltage they can handle is reduced at cold temperatures." The case I described was a fully drained battery that refused to charge after several months. As I think I explained, I believe that in the chilled state, the current draw at charging was lower, causing the charging fail-safe's to not label the battery as bad.

All this is tangential to the OP's problem. Except the part that says freezing a fully charged Li-ion can reduce maximum voltage capacity, which seems like exactly what happened to him, although he only cooled it, but didn't freeze it. I was taking issue with the statement to never put [any] electronics in the fridge... but whatever, brassroll and I will just disagree on that point.

 

[Greg55]

In case anyone of you is still wondering, there is nothing wrong with the phone. I had forgotten that i didn't have the "always on" display enabled the time i considered as normal discharge while i had it enabled the time i witnessed a different discharge ratio... I had no idea this stupid shit would impact the battery so much. It is basically 10% down in 10 hours.