It's hard to say what "most people" will do.

My wife plugs her phone in every night as a matter of habit --- just to be sure, whether it really needs charging or not. I know from experience that this degrades the battery lifetime.

iPhones do have logic in software now to hold off on charging above 80% until the user is expected to take it off the charger [1]. Probably still not as good as personally optimizing your charge time based on battery level, but it's at least not quite as bad to be plugging it in every night as it used to be.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210512

Samsung phones on Android 12 have a toggle for "charge to 85%" now. Not as "smart", but a great way to extend battery life if that's your focus. That last 15-20% charge is apparently a killer.

I would say its even smarter. I don't want to charge my phone to 100% every day, and I don't want to babysit it.

Smart charging would be: "start charging now and finish at time my alarm is set, while reaching 80% battery." Slow charging to 80% and your battery can last multiple times what it would "normally". I don't understand the craze for 40-60-100 watt phone chargers...

My four year old Sony phone does this, and the battery still lasts around two days, just like when it was new.

Sony you say.. now that's a brand that haven't p*ssed me off so far, or I don't remember.. Maybe I should consider them when Ill be searching for new phone, thanks.

It'd work for me. I'd absolutely trade long battery life to only ever using 80% of the battery for pretty much all my electronics.

Yeah, I was happy to toggle that option on.

I babied my iPhone 12 Pro by using an automation to turn off a smart-outlet at 76% charge. After a year I'm at 95% health, basically on par with everyone else.

I've discontinued the automation and will just buy a new battery in another year or two instead. /shrug

Charging the phone from 60% to 100% is 0.4 cycles. So your wife is putting less than 3 cycles per week on the phone battery. Sitting at 100% does degrade the battery, especially since the phones all charge to 4.4V these days. I root my phones so I can set a 4.1V charge limit.

Any battery that has an even moderately intelligent chip moderating its charge will round-robin the individual cells so that it’s not the same cells being charged/discharged all the time.

If you’re always topping off the charge at night, the cells in the battery pack are still experiencing full discharge cycles eventually. (Cells will end up staying at 100% charge for a while though, which is probably ultimately bad for them, but they should still be fully discharged/charged eventually…)

A phone doesn't have a thermal management system that can cool and heat the battery if required. Charging your car every day is not an issue.