OnePlus Optimized Charging Feature Announced, Aimed at Protecting Your Phone From Overcharging

OnePlus has announced a new feature called "Optimized Charging" which is designed to maintain the battery health of your phone. First seen in beta at the end of last year, this feature stops the phone from charging above 80 per cent and starts charging 100 minutes before you expect to unplug it. This essentially helps you limit the overcharging effect of your OnePlus phone overnight. The optimized charging feature uses the "User Sleep Cycle Detection" function of OnePlus to temporarily suspend battery charge.

Users will get optimized charging as an opt-in feature that will be provided within the battery settings menu. OnePlus says that it will keep the battery charging levels up to 80 per cent for most of the night - no matter whether you've connected your phone to an all-night charger. However, just 100 minutes before your daily wake-up time - when your first alarm is sounded, the phone will complete the charging process and affect the charge 100 per cent.

"After a few weeks, it will learn that you constantly wake up and turn off your OnePlus at 8 am, for example, in a forum post detailing the OnePlus Note's customized charging feature."

Initially, the feature is a part of last month's OxygenOS beta build that was released for OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro users. However, it is not clear whether this feature will reach other OnePlus phones in the coming future. The company has also not clarified whether it will offer a new offering for the OnePlus 7-series model through the next stable OxygenOS update.

That being said, if you are using the beta version on your OnePlus 7 or OnePlus 7 Pro, you can enable the customized charging feature by going through Settings> Battery. OnePlus says that once the feature is enabled, you will see its activation on the battery icon and a silent notification will appear in the drop-down notification, which will help you understand its presence.

A toggle will also be available for you to disable the feature directly from the notification screen. With this, you will be able to charge your phone instantly up to 100 per cent without any delay.

Companies like Asus have offered similar customization for their Android smartphones in recent times. Apple has also provided a similar optimized battery charging on the iPhone model since the release of iOS 13 in September last year.

By postponing charging, smartphone users will be able to preserve battery performance and its longevity. Some forum posts on the OnePlus community forum suggest that the optimized charging feature is one of the long-sought features by OnePlus users.