The French ended up forgetting it, but the bitter cold is indeed back this winter with negative temperatures and the arrival of snow in certain departments. While the “severe cold” plan has just been deployed, good actions must be taken to avoid damaging your everyday devices. Among them, it is essential to pay attention to your smartphone, which rarely supports extreme temperatures. Here are some simple tips to implement.

If the sensation of cold is one of the most difficult to experience for humans, it is also for electrical devices, which struggle to adapt to harsh climatic conditions. So, with the current and sudden drop in temperatures, your smartphone may suddenly seem slower and above all experience unprecedented battery life problems. This is, in fact, a reality due to a battery built on less and less frequent chemical reactions with the cold. While the actual effects on your device may not be as great as expected, it is still necessary to protect it from them.

As reported by our colleagues at BFMTV, according to Kent Griffith, a chemist specializing in energy storage at the University of San Diego, the effects of cold are “less damaging in the long term than those of extreme heat”. The consequences of the cold on your smartphone are therefore considered light and temporary. Manufacturers are also reassuring on this issue, notably Apple, which explains the possible observation of a “decrease in battery life” remaining a “temporary […] situation”. To remedy this, it is still advisable to “limit the use of your mobile outdoors as much as possible” and “store it in an inside pocket, close to your body”.