Galaxy S6 die completely before charging it in order to prolong the battery's life

It's all a myth, at least for lithium batteries. Old nickel batteries used to require a complete discharge, and you won't cause damage to current batteries by charging them on and off. For the best battery life, you're supposed to keep the device charged between 30% and 80% without letting it discharge completely at any point. You're not going to notice a huge difference in life with a complete discharge here and there. However, regular 0% discharges will kill the battery and cause it to hold less and less of a charge. Lithium batteries are quite efficient these days, nonetheless.

 

To be fair, that 30-80% range can be difficult to maintain while you're busy. It's far easier to top the phone off at 100% and then let it drain to 30% or lower. That won't make a huge difference in battery life, but it still matters. I've had my device on about 15% battery for a few days because of daily tasks, and it's just now at a full charge once again!

 

What really drains a device's battery is screen-on time. Most smartphones with small to midsize batteries will only last for two to three hours of screen-on time with the brightness passed 50%. On the other hand, devices with 3,000 mAh batteries and above can sometimes manage four-plus hours of screen-on time no matter the brightness setting. A lot of video streaming, game playing, or other intensive tasks will increase the drainage of the battery, too, though.

 

As what's already been posted, it's a total myth these days. New batteries are made now to be able to take a top up charge as much as you want and it won't have any detrimental effect on the life spam.

While a phones battery will decrease in power over a period of use, usually 2 years and over, that is solely to do with the age and use of the battery And not your charging habits.

 

I think letting it die out completely may harm your phone's battery and even your OS, which is the software and not related to the hardware. I'd recommend you to let it get up to 5% and then charge it so that it's not fully dead. To extend your battery's life you need to make sure that it never turns off by it emptying completely, and if it did empty it's okay. Just charge it back normally without using it. I would really hope that you all take care of your battery well, and not listen to myths out there. It's just a simple concept, a phone needs a battery to run because it needs electricity, the charger's job is to fill your battery with the material that can provide electricity to all your phone in order to run through the circuits and run the software that you see on the screen.

 

While the battery is obviously a key part of your phone (obviously) the modern day battery is significantly more advanced than what they used to be and top up charging is ok.

As for letting your phone completely die then I'm not too sure if this can affect the software. I'm sure others on the forum may be able to comment further on this?

 

It might affect the coordination of the battery percentage. The software can change in terms of the battery detection and would have a wrong estimation of how much power the battery actually has. For example, if it says 5% on your phone, it could turn off any moment because it's not really 5%, because it has been calibrated and detecting wrongly, due to a faulty battery that has been ruined by letting the phone die out and then charge it. Hope that makes sense.

 

That's pretty much how I was thinking, it's not like you suddenly pull the power, like if you would do that on a PC then that may cause damage, on the smartphone though, it's the OS that decides to shut down, I'd imagine that's to prevent any damage from occurring.

 

The percentage figure of the battery you see on the phone, as far as I'm aware, has never really been an accurate representation of how much battery you have left anyway. I think it's there just as a rough guide only.

 

I think it's a very close estimation as I've said. It's not completely accurate and truly can't be, but it's a very close estimation. But it matters a lot because as I've said, it affects the estimation of the percentage through the software, which will in fact affect your phone turning off at times when it shouldn't be. It also could say that you have 1% battery when you actually have something like 18%, and then people would start experiencing that their phone turns off and turns on again with a different percentage and they're surprised and how it increased, when in reality it didn't increase, it just was messed up to begin with.