Stephen

That advice is incredibly short-sighted and fundamentally misunderstands modern smartphone batteries. Calling battery protection ridiculous ignores the actual chemistry.

​When a lithium-ion battery sits at 100 percent charge it is in a state of high voltage and maximum physical stress. If you leave it plugged in overnight without protection it constantly trickle charges back to 100 percent which bakes the battery in that stressed state and accelerates chemical degradation. Capping the charge at 80 percent keeps the voltage much lower and minimizes that physical stress.

​Research shows that keeping a battery out of that high stress zone can effectively double or quadruple its lifespan before it starts losing its ability to hold a charge. The irony of turning this feature off is that after a year or two of constantly forcing it to 100 percent your battery will have degraded so much that its maximum physical capacity might only be 80 percent of what it was on day one. People who use adaptive charging will actually have phones that hold a charge significantly longer.

​The feature is designed to give you the best of both worlds by holding at 80 percent overnight and finishing the charge right before you wake up. Advising people to permanently damage their hardware over time just to avoid the rare inconvenience of waking up early to an 80 percent charge is terrible advice.