Charging my iPhone for the first time

It is not necessary, and is actually a bad idea for a Lithium Ion battery. Just charge when convenient, but the best practice is to charge overnight, every night, with Optimized Charging enabled. Also enable automatic backup and the phone will back up overnight, every night. Just go to Settings/[your name]/iCloud and turn on iCloud Backup.

Here’s the long answer→When to charge your iPhone or iPad | Communities

Try NOT to discharge it so low that the device automatically shuts down to preserve minimal charge state (a truly 100% discharged lithium cell will never recover and take a charge again). Deep cycle discharges will hasten the normal battery aging/decay processes.

Charge whenever convenient and don’t worry about partial charges either. Just try to avoid those really deep discharges into single digit percentage remaining.

Charging overnight reduces the number of charging cycles long term, because the energy the phone uses at night comes from the external source rather than the battery.

Batteries are consumables; they lose a little capacity every time they are discharged, then recharged. On average this works out to about a 1% loss for every 25 “full charge cycles” ( some will be a little more, others a little less). As one example, if you charge the phone overnight, every night (and that is what you should do; it is a best practice), it starts the day at 100%. If it drops to 20% by the end of the day before you charge it again overnight that counts as 0.8 full charge cycles (20% to 100%), or about 24 full charge cycles per month of use. For this example your battery capacity will lose about 1% per month. Of course, if the end-of-day level is higher than 20% the capacity loss will be a little less, and if it is lower than 20%, or you charge it during the day, the capacity loss will be higher.

The absolute best way to slow the decline of battery capacity long term is to enable Optimized Battery Charging (Settings/Battery/Battery Health) and charge the device overnight, every night. The battery will fast charge to 80%, then pause. During the nighttime pause the phone will use mains power instead of battery power, allowing the battery to “rest”, and thus reducing the need to charge the battery quite as often. The phone will resume charging to reach 100% when you are ready to use your phone; it will “learn” your usage pattern. If you enable iCloud Backup (Settings/[your name]/iCloud - iCloud Backup) the phone will back up overnight also, assuring that you can never lose more than the current day’s updates.

You are worrying too much. Charge the battery when it is convenient. You have been given many suggestions, but most of us charge our phones while we are sleeping. An Apple battery usually lasts about 2 years and is easily replaced at any Apple Store. Stop the worrying and enjoy using the phone!

Since it is actually an international engineering standard, no SMART technology LiOH battery can be over charged. That goes for electric tooth brushes, an iPad pencil, a hybrid car, an LiOH powered hedge trimmer or any other name brand LiOH battery powered device using quality name brand built LiOH battery. The device and its battery regulate their own charging and they simply stop charging when the battery is at capacity. That has been an industry standard for LiOH powered batteries for decades now.

You will also find you cannot fully deplete the battery as the phone will automatically power off when the battery reaches a very low charge level. As Lawrence mentions, this is to ensure it does not fully discharge and ruin itself. But you should charge it a.s.a.p. if it does auto-shut down to ensure it does not further deplete charge.

But it is best to not often or frequently push the charge so low the phone shuts down by itself. Those deep cycles are not good.

Other than that, ignore the charge level when you plug it in. If you’re somewhere where it is convenient to plug it in, just go ahead and do so. And don’t worry about the charge state when you do later need to unplug it and go. Partial discharges or charges don’t matter.

A charge cycle is the battery going to full depletion (the point it’s own firmware shuts off the device) and then being charged back to 100% of current capacity. But a cycle is a cycle, whether all that happens in one sequence, or incrementally over multiple partial discharges and charges. So the cycles will count up, no matter how you use it. They are an inevitable consequence of using any chemical battery.

Unfortunately, there is no way to use a battery powered device without using “battery cycles”. However, if you charge it from 40% to 90% twice you will also use one cycle.

Trying to micromanage the charging process is a pointless waste of your time.

Do whatever is convenient. There is never a need to discharge it to any level and it cannot be overcharged.

Another advantage of leaving it plugged in or on a magnetic charger overnight is if you enable iCloud automatic backups, then every night it will perform an incremental backup and your backups will always be up to date.

You cannot overcharge an iPhone -- no matter what you do.

There is no reason to wait until the phone gets below 50% (or any other number) before you overcharge it.

There is nothing you can do to ruin an iPhone by how you charge it.

The “charger” is built into the phone (technically, it is a “U2 Tristar” microcircuit if you want to look it up). It stops charging at 100%, so you can’t overcharge. Once the phone reaches 100% power for the phone’s processes that run overnight (or other times) use external power until you unplug it, so there’s a real advantage to leaving it plugged in.

About the only thing you should not do is let the battery go all the way to zero; doing that repeatedly will shorten the life of the battery. Thus, it’s good practice to charge it when it reaches 20% just to prevent it going to zero if there is an unexpected power demand. And even if it goes to zero accidentally that would not cause an immediate problem because “zero” is not fully discharged; the phone leaves some reserve precisely to prevent the battery going totally flat (which will kill it). So if it reaches zero charge it “soon” (within a few hours).

There is no requirement to charge for any specific amount of time.

There is no requirement to discharge the battery to any specific level.

When to charge your iPhone or iPad - Apple Community

Avoid discharging it clear to zero as that might damage the battery. Otherwise, as Fox Firth suggests, charge whenever convenient.