I’ve been a car charger person since I first got my phone, and it seems like a strange thing to me that I never once considered the effect of charging my phone on my car battery. Sitting listening to the radio with the engine off? Driving down the interstate? Pretty much anywhere or any time, I am more than willing to plug my phone in if I feel like I’m going to need a little extra juice from the battery. It’s not often that I really do this, mind you, but from time to time I’ll plug in without the car running, just because. Turns out, that actually does run your car battery down.
Score one for my father, who hates when you leave anything plugged in or otherwise drawing power with the engine off. However, while it does work down the battery, modern phones only charge when they need to or when they’re in use, which means that if you walk away and leave your phone plugged in, it’ll draw some off your battery, but not so much that you’ll run down your car’s battery. Unless of course your alternator is bad and your car battery is already close to dead, in which case your charged phone might be doing you a favor because better to have a dead car and a life phone than a dead car and a deader phone, right?
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