“You may have noticed, however, that your mobile phone seems to spend an awful lot of time with its battery gauge saying it’s full, or at least almost full. Then, once you get to the half-full mark, the battery seems to go flat surprisingly quickly. This phenomenon isn’t as obvious with today’s low-power-consumption phones than it was back in the days of 20-hour standby times, but it’s still pretty hard to find a phone that doesn’t do it. There are two reasons for this. They are both bad. Reason one: A battery that stays (apparently) full for a long time makes a phone look good. Even if it doesn’t actually deserve to. Reason two: When your phone still (apparently) has lots of charge left, you’re more likely to use it. People who think their phone’s going flat will make fewer, and shorter, calls. And that makes phone companies sad.”
