Greetings, Just seen this on the VicugL group and thought the tips here would be of use.
Batteries need to be cared for properly theyre a critical part of our mobile devices and battery technology hasnt advanced as fast as other technologies. Unfortunately, theres a lot of incorrect information about batteries out there. Some of the big myths come from old battery technologies and are actively harmful when applied to new battery technologies. For example, nickel-based batteries needed to be fully discharged, while modern lithium batteries shouldnt be fully discharged. Perform Shallow Discharges; Avoid Frequent Full Discharges Old NiMH and NiCd batteries had a memory effect and had to be completely discharged from 100% to 0% to keep their capacity. Modern devices use Lithium Ion batteries, which work differently and have no memory effect. In fact, completely discharging a Li-ion battery is bad for it. You should try to perform shallow discharges discharge the battery to something like 40-70% before recharging it, for example. Try to never let your battery go below 20% except in rare circumstances. If you were to discharge your battery to 50%, recharge it, and then discharge it to 50% again, that would count as a single cycle with modern Li-ion batteries. You dont need to worry about performing shallow charges. Theres only one problem that shallow discharges can cause. Laptops can get a bit confused by shallow discharges and may show you wrong estimates for how long your devices battery will last. Laptop manufacturers recommend you perform a full discharge about once per month to help calibrate the devices battery time estimate. Heat (and Cold) Can Damage Batteries Heat can reduce a batterys capacity. This affects all types of devices even smartphones heat up when performing demanding tasks but laptops can become hottest of all when under load. The battery is in the laptop, near the electronics that become hot while working heavily this contributes to battery wear. If you have a laptop that you use plugged in all of the time and it gets quite hot, removing the battery can increase the batterys life by limiting the batterys exposure to the heat of your laptop. This wont make too much of a difference in normal use, but if youre using a laptop to play a lot of demanding games and its heating up quite a bit, it may be helpful. Of course, this only applies to laptops with removable batteries. Your climate is also a concern. If it gets very hot where you live or you store your device somewhere that gets very hot say, a hot car left in the sun on a summer day your battery will wear down faster. Keep your devices near room temperature and avoid storing them in very hot places, such as hot cars on summer days. Extreme cold temperatures can decrease the lifespan of your battery, too. Dont put a spare battery in the freezer or expose any device with a battery to similarly cold temperatures if youre in a region with cold temperatures. Dont Leave the Battery At 0% You shouldnt leave the battery in a fully discharged state for very long. Ideally, the battery wouldnt discharge all the way to zero very often but if it does, you should recharge it as soon as possible. You dont have to race to a power outlet when your smartphone dies, but dont throw it in your drawer and leave it there for weeks without charging it. If you let the battery discharge completely and leave your device in a closet, the battery may become incapable of holding a charge at all, dying completely. Store Batteries at 50% Charge On the other hand, leaving the battery charged fully for an extended period of time could result in a loss of capacity and shorten its life. Ideally, youd store the battery at 50% charge if you werent going to use it for a while. Apple recommends you leave the battery at 50% if you intend on storing the device more than six months. If youre using it regularly, you shouldnt need to worry about its state although you never want to leave a battery at 0% for too long. Storing the battery while fully discharged could result in the battery dying completely, while storing the battery at full charge could result in the loss of some battery capacity and shorten your batterys life. This applies to both batteries in devices and spare batteries you may have lying around keep them at 50% if you wont be using them for some time. Leaving Your Laptop Plugged in All The Time Is Okay, But This one appears to be fairly controversial. Weve previously covered the eternal question of whether its okay to leave your laptop plugged in all the time. We concluded that its okay and the batterys temperature is the main thing you need to worry about. Apple disagrees, recommending against leaving its Macbook Air and Macbook Pro notebooks plugged in all the time. Ultimately, were both saying the same thing. Its fine to leave your laptop plugged in at your desk when youre using it, as the laptop wont overcharge the battery it will stop charging when it reaches capacity. However, just as you shouldnt store your laptops battery at full capacity in a closet, you shouldnt leave your laptop plugged in for months on end with the battery at full capacity. Allow your laptops battery to occasionally discharge somewhat before charging it back up that will keep the electrons flowing and keep the battery from losing capacity. Battery University says that the worst situation is keeping a fully charged battery at elevated temperatures. If your laptop produces a lot of heat, removing it might be a good idea. If you have a fairly cool laptop that you occasionally let discharge a reasonable amount, leaving it plugged in even for days on end shouldnt be a problem. If your laptop gets extremely hot, you may want to remove the battery, as we mentioned above. Batteries Will Always Wear Down Like all other types of batteries, Li-ion batteries will wear down over time, holding less and less charge. Apple says its laptop batteries will reach 80% of their original capacity after up to 1000 full discharge cycles. Other manufacturers commonly rate their batteries 300 to 500 cycles. The batteries can still be used after this point, but theyll hold less electricity and will power your devices for shorter and shorter periods of time. Theyll continue losing capacity the more you use them. Heat and aging will reduce the batterys life, too. Whatever you do, your devices batteries will slowly wear down over time. With proper care, you can make them hold a long charge for longer but theres no stopping entropy. Hopefully, your device will be due for an upgrade by the time its battery dies. To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank email to: pc-audio-unsubscr...@pc-audio.org
