One of the new features of Galaxy S22 is Protect Battery, which lets you limit the maximum charge to 85% to minimize the charging wear to the battery.
It is actually a new feature in Samsung’s One UI 4 (Android 12). So, you can find the Protect Battery option on Galaxy S21, S20, and S10 after you update the phone to Android 12.
This Galaxy S22 new feature guide explains how the Protect Battery work on Samsung phones, how to enable and disable it, the pros and cons of enabling Protect Battery, and whether you should enable it and limit the maximum battery charge to 85% on Galaxy S22, S21, S20, and S10.
On Protect Battery
- How does Protect Battery work on Galaxy S22, S21, S20, and S10?
- What’s the difference between the Protect Battery and Optimized Battery Charging in iOS?
- Pros and cons of enabling Protect Battery
- How to enable or disable Protect Battery on Galaxy S22, S21, S20, and S10?
- Should I enable the Protect Battery on Galaxy S22, S21, S20, and S10?
- Do you have any questions on the Protect Battery to limit the maximum battery charge to 85% on Galaxy S22, S21, S20, and S10?
How does Protect Battery work on Galaxy S22, S21, S20, and S10?
When charging a lithium battery, charging efficiency reduces significantly, usually after it reaches about 80-90% of its design capacity. You probably already notice that you need less than 20 minutes to charge Galaxy S22 battery from 0-50%. But you need 40 mins or more to charge it from 50% to 100%.
This is common for almost all lithium batteries.
In other words, the resistance to charging increases after 80-90%. Therefore, there will be more charging wear after this level.
For example, charging the Galaxy S22 battery from 10-20% will cause far less battery wear than charging the same battery from 90% to 100%, although the battery level increase is identical (10%).
Of course, there are no quantitative and scientific parameters to measure such differences. But the trend is real and proven.
So, limiting the battery charging to 85% will surely reduce the battery wear. But nobody can tell you “how much” reduction yet.
When you enable this option, Galaxy S22 (or S21, S20, and S10) will stop charging once the battery reaches this level, regardless of the charging method used (USB cable charging or wireless charging).
As most lithium batteries will lose about 20% of the designed capacity after about 500 full charging cycles (from 0-100%) under normal conditions, the Protect Battery may slow down the ageing process of the battery by avoiding charging the battery from 85% to 100%.
What’s the difference between the Protect Battery and Optimized Battery Charging in iOS?
Apple introduced a similar feature, Optimized Battery Charging, in iOS 13.
The differences between Protect Battery and Optimized Battery Charging in iOS are:
- Protect Battery, if enabled, will stop the charging completely once the battery level reaches 85%. It is a hard brake for charging.
- Optimized Battery Charging in iOS, if enabled and activated, will delay charging past 80% in certain situations. But it will try to ensure that the iPhone is still fully charged when unplugged, based on learning your daily charging routines.
- Protect Battery, if enabled, will work all the time. No exceptions.
- Optimized Battery Charging in iOS, if enabled, will be activated only when you are in some frequently stayed locations (e..g, home, office) and your usage habits are regular.
Anyway, the purpose of these two features is identical: to reduce the wear on the battery. But the Protect Battery achieves this by avoiding charging the battery above 85%. Optimized Battery Charging tries to reduce the time the iPhone spends fully charged.
Pros and cons of enabling Protect Battery
Once enabled, you effectively get a “smaller” battery.
For example, the Galaxy S22 Ultra battery has a design capacity of 5000mAh. The Protect Battery makes the usable capacity to 4250mAh.
So, you need to consider:
- Does it affect your usage? You bought Galaxy S22 because you expected it to increase your productivity or enjoyment. Prolonging battery lifespan should be secondary.
- Will you often drain the battery below 20%?
When the battery level is lower than 20-30%, the discharging wear increases, you may hit this range more often if you do not fully charge the battery.
So, the advantage of limiting the maximum charging capacity to 85% is reduced charging wear.
But it may increase the discharging wear if you often drain the battery below 20% because of the reduced charging capacity.
How to enable or disable Protect Battery on Galaxy S22, S21, S20, and S10?
By default, the Protect Battery feature is NOT enabled on Galaxy S22, S21, S20, and S10. You need to manually enable it to limit the maximum battery charging to 85%.
As shown in the screenshot below, in Galaxy S22 Settings, you can tap the Battery and device care.
On the Device care page, you can:
- One tap to optimize battery and storage.
- Check battery usage and manage battery settings.
- Check storage usage and mange storge (e.g., USB thumb drive)
- Check memory usage and free up memory.
- Enable antivirus and spyware scan (it is not necessary for most Galaxy S22 owners).
To manage battery settings, tap the Battery field, as shown in the screenshot above.
Now, you can enable some battery options on the battery settings page, as shown in the screenshot below.
Tap More battery settings to proceed.
On the More battery settings page, you can tweak some related to battery charging.
Tap the switch next to Protect Battery, as shown above, to enable this feature to limit the maximum charging level to 85%.
Once this feature is enabled, the phone will stop charging immediately once the battery level reaches 85%.
You will see the following notification on the lock screen once the battery level reaches 85%, as shown below.
Update: now there is a quick setting button for Protect Battery. You can use it to quickly enable or disable Protect Battery from the quick settings panel, as shown in the screenshot below.
You may check this guide on how to manage the buttons in the quick settings panel.
Should I enable the Protect Battery on Galaxy S22, S21, S20, and S10?
As mentioned earlier, the Protect Battery effectively reduce the usable battery capacity by 15%. This may lead to more discharging wear if you often drain the battery below 20% because of the reduced usable capacity.
Therefore, our recommendation is:
- If you are a light user, you may enable this option to minimize the charging wear. Remember, you should also try to minimize the period of draining the battery below 15%.
- If you are a heavy user and already complain about the battery life (e.g., short screen-on time), it does not make sense to enable this option. Just prepare to replace the battery after one or two years.
So, it depends on the usage. If you can keep the battery level above 20% most of the time after enabling the Protect Battery, then this feature may considerably extend the life span of the battery on Galaxy S10, S20, S21, and S22.
If you want to extend the screen-on time for Galaxy S22, S21, S20 or S10, you may try to re-enable Suspend Execution for Cached Apps.
Do you have any questions on the Protect Battery to limit the maximum battery charge to 85% on Galaxy S22, S21, S20, and S10?
If you have any questions about using this feature to extend the lifespan of the battery on Galaxy S10, S20, S21, and S22, please let us know in the comment box below.
The community will help you solve the issues.
You may check other Galaxy S22 guides:
- Galaxy S22 new features guides.
- Galaxy S22 how-to guides.
- Galaxy S22 camera guides.
- Galaxy S22 accessories guide.
- Official Galaxy S22 user manuals (in PDF).
If you want to discuss any issues privately, you can reach us through:
- Facebook page.
- WhatsApp (coming soon).
- Contact form.
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How can I turn protect battery off? It won’t let me.
In Settings — Battery and device care –Battery — More battery settings — Protect battery. The screenshots can be found in the post.
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Actually, this is in tandem with the minor progress in the Li-ion battery technology and the design of the charging circuit (mainly the current regulator). Old batteries are usually recommended to be charged to 100% periodically. The latest design trend in the charging controller prefers charging to about 85% of the capacity.
Anyway, you need not care too much about it. Do not sacrifice your productivity/experiences. It depends on your usage. You enable the Protect Battery if it is convenient for you (e.g., you do not need to charge it to 100% before you can access the charger again).
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Technically, it is not difficult to implement a customizable limit level (e.g., 90%). The issue is whether or when Samsung will work on it. I guess it will depend on the usage and feedback.
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If you want to charge the battery to 100%, you do not need the Protect Battery. It should not turn on automatically if you turn it off before charging.
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Once the battery level reaches 85%, the charge will stop. So, the battery level in the morning will not be exactly at 85% (should be higher than 83%). The tricking current may help the battery level close to 85%.
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Yes, you can leave it plugged and it is safe for the phone and battery. This is one of the major problems that Protect Battery addresses. The charging will stop and will not resume once the battery level reaches 85%. The battery will be kept at around at 85% (may be slightly lower if you plug it overnight).
When plugged, if battery usage exceeds certain watts, it will get the power from the charger, not the battery. For lower usage, it may draw from the battery. This results in a battery level slightly lower than 85% (but normally it should be above 83%) because charging will not be resumed until you disconnect and reconnect the charger.
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No, it is NOT necessary, and you should try to avoid it. The situation is quite different from a few years ago. For a modern smartphone battery, it will shut itself off before you can actually drain it completely if you are using the phone.
Anyway, you should try to avoid such scenarios to minimize the possible damage to some components of the phone.
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Modern batteries can prevent overcharging. But when the battery is close to full, charging will be slow due to higher “resistance”. This usually translates to more wear. By limiting the maximum battery level (what Protect Battery does), you can skip this high-resistance stage when charging the battery (at the price of a lower effective battery capacity).
Discharging wear is part of the life of the battery. You cannot avoid it. But you should not drain the battery completely (in fact most batteries will cut off the power output before it is empty. But it usually is only reliable for new batteries).
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