This may sound like a crazy question, but does anyone know of a tool that can test the battery capacity (in mAh) of a given battery? There are many different ways to test Lithium-ion batteries of notebooks, I like Lenovo's Thinkpad utilities best.
I own an HTC Titan and I cycle through 3 different batteries so I don't have to remember to tether it to a charger every night. I know at least one of the batteries is getting close to EOL, but considering they all look identical, and my usage and power consumption of the device varies through a given battery's power cycle, it's hard to tell exactly what one to retire.
From http://www.wmskins.com/blog/how-to-increase-battery-life-of-windows-mobiles:
1. A Lithium Ion battery should never be charged to 100% or fully Discharged. The famous 80-20 rule is applicable here as well, though in a different way. Charging to 80% increases battery life.
2. Don’t wait for full discharge, charge it frequently. Keeping the battery near to 80% always, gives better life. This is also what many vendors claim as “memory effect”.
I followed that advice and then after a few weeks, when once I charged it to 100%, it dropped quickly to 80%! and has been like that since. now I don't give a damn to that rule and charge my phone to 100% instead.
At this point, I would advise you do a full charge and deep discharge of your phone. Just to allow the phone to calibrate itself to the battery again.
However, I would advise against running programs to intentionally drain it at a high draw. So instead of playing 5 hours of FPSECE to drain it flat, just let it sit on standby and use it as you normally would, until it dies. Then charge it back up in one continuous charge (refrain from unplugging until it goes back to 100%). Hopefully that will restore the accuracy of your battery meter by a bit.
And IMHO, the article you included discusses things about batteries that are no longer true....
2. Don’t wait for full discharge, charge it frequently. Keeping the battery near to 80% always, gives better life. This is also what many vendors claim as “memory effect”.
No. "Memory effect" is, in laymen terms, the battery not being able to hold above a certain charge after being repeatedly discharged from the same capacity. E.g. being discharged at 80%. It doesn't "give battery life" -- in fact it kills your battery's capacity.
This is a term more relevant for old NiCd batteries. LiONs and most NiMH batteries have very weak/no memory effect.
3. Every battery has limited Full charge-discharge cycles. Of the order of 300+. In other words a typical phone battery can be fully charged/discharged 300 times. Doing more frequent charges, as specified in point #2, will increase overall life.
Partially true. Every battery can be charged a number of times before its ability to hold a charge deteriorates. Usually this is around 300, though the exact number varies between individual batteries. However, the concept of a "cycle" isn't exact -- just because you charged from 60-80% (or whatever) doesn't mean you didn't use a cycle. It's really a continuum, and should only be conceptualized as the battery losing its ability to be charged and hold a charge, the more times you charge it.
4. During first time use (when the battery is new) don`t use it till its fully charged. This is why it is always written on manuals “let the device charge for 2-3 hours”.
The necessity of preconditioning is controversial now. There is little evidence to suggest that devices nowadays benefit from preconditioning, and likewise there is little evidence that not doing so harms battery longevity. Many manuals these days simply omit to mention preconditioning.
5. Best way to increase battery life is Not to use it. If you keep AC power plugged in on your phones, keeping the battery at 80% (as in #1), your battery will last longer. Though discharging it once in a month would be must in such cases.
Partially true. Not using your battery does indeed help its longevity, but not by plugging into the AC. Heat is a LiON battery's enemy, and plugging it into your wall will generate heat that is ultimately bad. This translates to laptop batteries as well -- if you want to store a laptop battery, the best bet is to discharge it to 40%, then put it somewhere cool (even the fridge if you want).
Also I would say doing a deep discharge once a month is too frequent. Once every 2 or even 3 months is more appropriate.
Finally, LiON batteries themselves have a shelf life. So even if you let them sit there, they will lose their function after a few years. Just so yo uknow.
6. Surrounding temperature contributes a lot. Colder weather gives better battery life. So make sure your cellphone doesn’t overheat, if it does, find ways to keep it cool.
True. And that's why you shouldn't leave it plugged in.
Learn more about batteries here: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/
felixdd said:
E.g. being discharged at 80%. It doesn't "give battery life" -- in fact it kills your battery's capacity.
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is that so? why? so i guess now my battery's capacity has lessened. damn the article.
have drained my battery to 1% and charged it to 100%. let's see how it goes from here..
good subject for discusion. WM user or not the battery life and the tricks of LION only a few knows.
1.i have two batteries for my HTC. he original battery and one with 2800mAh. Does my phone cofused if i change tha batteries aternately?
2. if ai want to work with my phone for hours is it better to connect it with the charger?
3. Wich kind of charging is better? with USB cable from pc or wall charger.
I have the option in my BIOS for my laptop which says an 80% charge will prolong the lifespan of the battery.
Batteries must undergo a fair bit of research (for environmental impact reasons if nothing else!) and to have such a bold statement to me indicates that its an obvious fact to battery researchers.
Given ive lay in bed this morning messing about on facebook and setting up rss feeds on my phone and emptied a full battery I dont think Id ever stop charging at 80%. Ill just buy another battery!
i really doubt cold weather improves battery life, numerous times my family and I brought electronic products to cold countries and the Battery life always drops at a much quicker rate
dan138zig said:
is that so? why? so i guess now my battery's capacity has lessened. damn the article.
have drained my battery to 1% and charged it to 100%. let's see how it goes from here..
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You are taking what i said out of context.
What I'm saying is that IF your battery had a memory effect as the original article claimed, then charging the battery to only 80 will create a memory at 80, which would be worse for your battery. I'm merely trying to point out an inconsistency in there article.
However, I went on to say that li ON batteries do not have a memory effect. So more relevant to the real world is the fact that our batteries will not experience memory as claimed by the article.
Two main things kill lithium batteries, heat and time as they promote deposits forming in the electrolyte, which reduces the capacity of the battery.
So, buying a "spare" battery at the time you buy a phone with a plan on using it when the original battery starts to fail is a bad idea as the spare battery would be slowly deterorating on the shelf.
Deep charges rather than top up charges are bad as they produce more heat inside the battery, although doing it if your battery doesn't seem to be holding it's chage is a good idea as it should recalibrate the phone's battery level software.
To paraphrase the old saying, " blogs and opinions are like a##holes, everyone has one "
I have followed the links in this thread and so far I have just read unsubstantiated opinion.
I have used " cordless " electronics for most of my life and have used all kinds of batteries extensively as well as talked to company reps and battery " experts ".
Nickel Cadmium batteries had memories. The batteries had to be conditioned and fully charged and discharged. The new Lithium Ion batteries were advantageous , not only because they held a bigger charge and lasted longer, but also because they have NO memory. The latest example being, I regularly charged my Tilt battery to all levels of charge. Mostly 100% everyday and ran it down to 5% most times before charging it again. I used it a lot and charged it a lot. and it lasted 2 yrs.
The only difference I have really noticed in batteries has nothing to do with the way you charge it. It has to do with " getting what you pay for " I have had quality batteries really show their quality and $ 12 batteries give me up to and only my $12 worth.
Charging Lithium Ion Batteries to 80%
denco7 said:
To paraphrase the old saying, " blogs and opinions are like a##holes, everyone has one "
I have followed the links in this thread and so far I have just read unsubstantiated opinion.
I have used " cordless " electronics for most of my life and have used all kinds of batteries extensively as well as talked to company reps and battery " experts ".
Nickel Cadmium batteries had memories. The batteries had to be conditioned and fully charged and discharged. The new Lithium Ion batteries were advantageous , not only because they held a bigger charge and lasted longer, but also because they have NO memory. The latest example being, I regularly charged my Tilt battery to all levels of charge. Mostly 100% everyday and ran it down to 5% most times before charging it again. I used it a lot and charged it a lot. and it lasted 2 yrs.
The only difference I have really noticed in batteries has nothing to do with the way you charge it. It has to do with " getting what you pay for " I have had quality batteries really show their quality and $ 12 batteries give me up to and only my $12 worth.
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I have a Nissan Leaf. It is clear that the engineers have spent a LOT of time thinking about how to maximize the life of the battery in the car. One of the options the car come with is to ALWAYS charge the batteries to 80%. In fact, they've gone as far as to add a button on the dashboard to override that setting in cases where a 100% charge is needed. According to the documentation that comes with the car, this is the single most important step to prolonging battery life. Next is frequent charges. Next is monitoring battery temperature which is constantly shown in a BIG display on the dashboard. In general, a good way to think about a lithium ion battery is that over its life you're trying to maximize the amount of power stored and then subsequently removed from the device. From the research I've done, if the "charging/discharging life" of the battery were cycles that swung from 100% to 0% you might get X kwHrs of power "moved" through the battery, yet if you were to limit charges to 80% and constantly charge it after each use, you could expect at least 2X! So it's a big deal. I live in Bellevue, Washington which has a very mild climate and have put 26,000 miles on this car in the last 2 years, making mostly small 3-to-20 mile trips, and I routinely charge the car when I pull into the garage, and would estimate that the battery has been charged well over 1000 times. To date, there is no detectable loss in battery capacity; the first indication of which would appear on the car's instrumentation when just over 4% of the charging capacity of the car has been lost.
My Sony VAIO Pro 13 actually offers the 80/20 option in Power Settings. However, I do not use it.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2X-2300mAh-...ccessories&hash=item43aedc12f9#ht_3183wt_1037
has anyone tried this battery?
what about the ANKER batter?
is any better than stock?
I've heard it's capacity isn't what's advertised and that it's best to go for the Anker battery.
bstylz911 said:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2X-2300mAh-...ccessories&hash=item43aedc12f9#ht_3183wt_1037
has anyone tried this battery?
what about the ANKER batter?
is any better than stock?
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That looks suspiciously a lot like Chichitec charger/battery with a different sticker. Almost definitely not 2300mah, it would have to be way thicker for that.
I'd go with Anker if you want cheap but OK. If you want even cheaper and OK, than go for Chichitec
Both are a little better than stock, and it's always great to have a spare battery at hand.
After reading this
"Please Note:
The battery must be fully recharged before use.
A temporary short capacity of new battery will be resulted from not used for a long time, it is normal, the total capacity will be reinstated via used for 3-5 times.
When first get the battery, use it out, charge for 10 hours for the first three times, use it out again, then it only need to charge about 5 hours for normal use.
The best storage temperature is 20°C--5°C"
I would stay away
I often read about memory effects on old phone batteries, sometimes after a half year with daily charging at 50 percent or lower. So in the past I did have to change my batteries 1-2 times per year. Today memory effects a theoretical history, I'm in doubt about it - when do you change your phone batteries?
TT from LE
i can't change my phone's battery.
but with my HD2 i never had to, li-ion /li-po batteries does not have any memory effect as much as i know, and it's even better to charge them when they're not low on power
max full charges is still 1000 times i guess?
D4rkSoRRoW said:
i can't change my phone's battery.
and it's even better to charge them when they're not low on power
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What do you mean? 70-90 %??? I charge my battery at 5-10 percent, mostly daily in the night - '1000 times' are < 3 years life - I think I have to change the battery earlier than 2 years.
Best regards
TT
TitanTyrion said:
What do you mean? 70-90 %??? I charge my battery at 5-10 percent, mostly daily in the night - '1000 times' are < 3 years life - I think I have to change the battery earlier than 2 years.
Best regards
TT
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in the end, with this battery technology, you can't do anything wrong.
Li-Po / Li-Ion doesn't have any memory effect, and you should definitely be able to use it for more than 2 years
i just read somewhere that it doesn't matter when you charge it, it doesn't degrade if you partial charge it often, it's even good for the battery..
Li-Po / Li-Ion seems to be a very nice technology of batteries xP
i used my HD2 for 30Months, and i really didn't felt like i should change the battery
ZeroLemon suggests "conditioning" the battery to get proper calibration and maximum capability when you first receive your battery. This is opposite of what other sources about Lithium battery technology say to do. They say "deep discharge" cycles actually damage Lithium Ion batteries. Is this an "urban myth" that keeps getting promoted in the Lithium Ion battery world?
Myself, I tried to do the ZeroLemon recommended full discharge followed by a full charge cycle for several cycles. I did this once on another battery but gave up, it was too much trouble. I needed to use my phone, not be worried it would die when I needed it while trying to completely discharge the battery. If "battery conditioning" is such a requirement then why doesn't ZeroLemon do this at the factory where they would have access to equipment that could easily automate this deep cycling.
References that discredit the need to "condition" the battery upon initial receipt by doing full deep cycle discharges and charges.
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/do_and_dont_battery_table
http://www.rightnowintech.com/2010/12/top-5-lithium-ion-battery-myths.html
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1169979
What's your opinion? I'm more apt to follow the hard data from independent sources. I've read plenty of people who "believe" that it works, but I'm a skeptic.
jd14771 said:
i've had 3 batteries from them, and i inspected one that i got- its not A battery, its THREE batteries chained together(note 2 version). I can only assume they still do the same method for out phone, and if they do, it makes sense to do a deep discharge. Mainly to get all 3 batteries to the same % so they can charge equally. I can definitely say that not doing the discharge cycle greatly reduced the battery performance on my old note 2 (compared to 3 days usage, i was only getting one and a half). with that being said, follow the instructions to the T for the first battery you recieve, and if it doesnt meet your expectations, get a replacement and do the opposite.
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Thanks for your response.
Are you saying:
1. First you did NOT "charge/fully discharge" your battery and got only 1.5 days performance on that battery in the Note 2
2. and on another different (new) battery you DID follow the instructions and get 3 days usage on the same Note 2? 2 different batteries?
Or are you saying:
1. You tried this on the same battery but after you did the deep cycle program you did get your 3 days of usage. On the same battery, same Note 2?
Thanks in advance.
I'm a skeptic as well. I never conditioned my Note 2 ZL and it had fantastic battery life.
Ideally, someone with the money and time would conduct a scientific study with 2 sets of ZL batteries. Until then, we are probably left with people vouching for conditioning when in fact they may be experiencing a placebo effect or even varying their phone usage when drawing comparisons.