Why Does Your Smartphone Lose Charge, Even When You Don’t Use It?

A modern smartphone usually has numerous apps running in the background, which consume considerable battery power. Besides, several other factors can cause your phone to die unexpectedly, such as poor network reception, poorly designed apps, and the battery’s composition.

Many people often complain about the battery of their smartphones draining away, even when they don’t use it as frequently as others. This issue seems to occur with all types of smartphones, regardless of their brand, purchase cost, or age. The battery will drain to zero even if the phone is not always used.

To be fair, this problem has a psychological aspect; a user may not realize that they use their phone a lot, even if they do. So, in many cases, the phone battery drains because it is used all the time, despite what the owner claims.

In this article, however, we will discuss the top four reasons phone batteries discharge when NOT in use.

1- Background Apps

When discussing the battery life of a smartphone, many people evaluate or express their opinion on the quality and power of the battery based on the number of applications and programs they utilize on their phone.

This means that if a user mainly opens five applications on their phone, they will assess their phone’s battery life based on the length of time it runs these five applications before requiring a recharge.

But here’s the thing… although we only judge the phone battery based on the apps we use actively or frequently, the battery must provide for and support ALL apps and programs that run on the phone.

And that includes background apps.

These are casually referred to as “background apps” because, well, they run in the background. Even when you put your phone to ‘sleep’ and turn the screen off, it still has to do some stuff in the background, such as communicating with a tower, listening for incoming texts and calls, and so on. (Source)

Background apps not only comprise ‘mainstream’ apps like Facebook, LinkedIn, Gmail, etc., but also Bluetooth, WiFi and even GPS.

If the ‘Location’ feature on your phone is turned on, it means your phone is constantly communicating with GPS satellites, which use up power. You can check the apps consuming your phone battery by going to your phone’s Power Settings. This will show you how your phone’s power is being utilized.

It is these apps that consume power, which is why your phone battery drains even when it’s not being used (actively).

If your phone battery is otherwise ‘healthy’, then this is usually the top reason why your phone battery will drain over a period of a few hours.

2 – Bad Network Reception

Have you ever noticed that your phone’s battery drains faster when you have bad reception? This is especially true when you’re traveling through an area with poor network coverage. 

This is because when your phone is in an area with bad reception, it uses more power to boost its transmitting power so it can find a cell tower to connect with. 

In other words, when your phone has a weak signal, it keeps searching for a signal, which consumes a lot of battery power. (Source)

Therefore, if you want to conserve power while traveling, you must keep your phone switched off or on Airplane mode.

3 – Bad (Battery-hogging) Apps

Certain apps are designed to consume a lot of power, often due to their numerous features. However, users may be unaware of how much battery these apps use as they access and interact with them without realizing the load they put on their phone’s battery.

It may come as a surprise that some of the biggest social media apps are the biggest battery hogs, as they run many background processes on your device all the time.

A user may use just one app on their phone, but if that app is designed to consume a lot of power, then it will drain the phone’s battery rapidly, leaving the user disgruntled with their battery’s quality and longevity.

4 – Battery Composition And Quality

Not all phone batteries are made with the same level of quality. Some smartphones are produced using substandard battery components, which can impact the battery’s overall durability. If you purchase a new battery and it drains quickly, you likely end up with a cheap, knockoff product.

That’s why phone companies often warn their customers in the manual not to use generic batteries in their phones.

It is important to note that a battery will inevitably lose its charge over time, regardless of whether it is being used or not. This is called self-discharge. Even when a phone is completely powered off, the lithium-ion cell inside loses roughly 5% of its charge in the first 24 hours and then about 1-2% per month at room temperature (a rate that roughly doubles for every 10 °C the battery gets warmer). So if you charge a modern smartphone to 100%, switch it off, and retrieve it after several months, it will still have lost a meaningful chunk of charge with no apps to blame.

In a way, getting drained is a battery’s fate, no matter what the circumstances.

There are several reasons why smartphone batteries discharge over time, even when they are not being used that much. A modern smartphone typically holds a charge for about 24-48 hours of light, mostly-idle use; heavy use (gaming, GPS navigation, video calls) cuts that to a single working day.

However, if your phone battery’s performance is so poor that it needs to be charged every 2-3 hours, then you should probably get it checked and/or replaced by a professional.

Does Your Phone Lose Battery When It’s Switched Off?

Here’s a question that trips up almost everyone: if you completely power down your phone and leave it in a drawer, does the battery still drain? The short answer is yes, just far more slowly than when it’s switched on.

The first thing to realize is that “off” is rarely all the way off. Notice how your phone still shows the correct time the instant you switch it back on, and how some models can sound a scheduled alarm or even power themselves on at a set hour. That only works because a tiny clock-and-wake circuit stays awake after shutdown. It sips a minuscule current, so on its own it barely moves the battery.

The bigger reason is plain chemistry. As noted above, a lithium-ion cell slowly leaks charge on its own through self-discharge, roughly 1-2% per month at room temperature once it settles down, and faster the warmer it gets. A switched-off phone has no screen, no radios and no background apps burning through power, so this gentle self-discharge is essentially all that is left to drain it. That is why a phone you turn off at full charge might be down only a few percent after a month, rather than dead within a day.

If you genuinely want to slow the bleed, Apple’s own guidance is to power the device down before storing it, since that stops the active drain and leaves only self-discharge to deal with. (Source)

Can A Phone Battery Die If You Don’t Use It For Months?

Leave a phone untouched long enough and self-discharge eventually wins. At 1-2% per month, a fully charged battery can crawl toward empty over roughly a year, and a phone that started out only half-charged gets there sooner. The real hazard isn’t the slow drain itself, but where it ends up: a cell that sits at zero for a long stretch can slip into a deep-discharge state.

This matters because over-discharging a lithium-ion cell does lasting harm. When the voltage falls far enough, the copper current collector inside the cell can begin to dissolve and later redeposit, which permanently eats into capacity and can even seed internal short circuits. (Source) Modern phones fight this with a battery-protection circuit that cuts the cell off before it reaches truly dangerous lows, but a phone left flat for many months may still refuse to switch on and need a long stint on the charger, or a trip to a service center, before it revives.

Apple is blunt about the consequence: if you store a device with its battery fully discharged, the battery “could fall into a deep discharge state, which renders it incapable of holding a charge.” (Source)

So if you are putting a phone away for a while, don’t stash it dead or at 100%. Apple recommends charging it to around 50%, keeping it somewhere cool below 32 °C (90 °F), and topping it back up to half every six months or so. A spare phone treated that way will still be perfectly usable when you dig it out; one abandoned at 0% for a year might not be. It is also worth knowing why these cells are sealed inside modern phones in the first place.