What Is mAh? (Milliamp Hours)

mAh means milliampere/hour, which represents how long a battery can sustain a constant discharge of electric energy in milliampere. If you increase the power draw, it will affect the mAh value, so it’s best to know how much power is discharged in the mAh context.

Yes, it does. Whether it is for smartphones, powerbanks or any other battery-powered device, the mAh number often defines how much power you have in reserves and how long you can use your device.

For a given battery form-factor (size), the higher mAh means higher battery capacity, so yes, it does matter.

mAh does not affect the battery power output, but it does represent how much energy is stored in the battery.

If you stack multiple batteries, it should increase the total mAh of the stacked ensemble. For example, devices using multiple standard batteries to increase the overall mAh.

Typically, yes. The mAh of a battery will determine how much power is stored and how long it can run.

It depends on your requirements. If size and weight are not important, the higher the mAh, and the more energy you have in reserves. Typically, most people have limited tolerance for size and weight, so 10000 mAh or 20000mAh powerbanks tend to be popular for their size/capacity ratio.

If you can find a battery of the same type, form-factor, voltage, but with a higher mAh, then yes, you could replace a battery with a higher-capacity one.

Not necessarily. The charge speed of a battery is a function of the power it can take during charging, measured in Watt or Amps. As a percentage, it is more likely that a big battery would take more time to charge given the same power input. However, the actual speed of charge should be measured in capacity/time. It is similar to thinking of fueling a car’s tank in Gallons/mn instead of percentage.

If you can find a battery of the same type, form-factor, voltage, but with a lower mAh, then yes, you could drop-replace the battery. It might be to lower the cost, for example.

Typically the laptop industry uses Wh or Watt-hours to measure battery capacity. If you find the voltage information, you could use the following formula to compute the milliamp-hours (mAh) value: milliamp-hours = 1000 × watt-hours / volts

In theory, that’s possible, but in practice, it is challenging to find higher-mAh batteries for smartphones, especially some that would be approved by the manufacturer.