Nov 10 2011

Look After Your Lithium Ion Batteries

These days, nearly all of our portable devices like mobile phones, tablets, laptops and music players contain a lithium ion or lithium polymer battery which have largely superseded the old NiCad (nickel cadmium) or NiMH (nickel metal hydroxide) batteries.

If you can remember back far enough, NiCad batteries suffered from “memory effect” which occurred as a result partially discharging a battery followed by a recharge. The side effect of this was the battery increasingly lost its maximum charging capacity. The best practice for these types of batteries was to fully discharge them before recharging (i.e. run them dry and then fully recharge them).

However, lithium based batteries are different. Under regular usage, lithium batteries like to remain charged and don’t mind being recharged (either partially or fully) after being partially discharged – there is no memory effect with these batteries. What is worse for lithium batteries is to fully discharge them before recharging them as this accelerates the rate of capacity loss.

In general, you can prolong the life of your lithium batteries by doing the following:

  • charge your phone at your desk at work in between meetings, in the car while you drive or at home when not in use,
  • if you are out and about using your laptop and there is available power then plug it in,
  • avoid running batteries flat (the further away you can stay from 0% charge before recharging the better).
These are some simple ways to get the most of your batteries and avoid unnecessary degradation of charging capacity.

Boydo

My name is Boyd and I’m a Service Management Specialist with a knack for operational data gathering, transformation, analysis and reporting.

In 2012, I obtained my Masters of Science in Information Technology through the University of New South Wales @ The Australia Defence Force Academy (UNSW@ADFA).

I was also part of an online community known as the Panasonic Insider Crew in the capacity of “Insider Guru” for Panasonic Australia where I interacted with other tech enthusiasts and find out more about Panasonic's latest gadgets.

I love technology, gadgets, and the Internet and maintain a keen interest in these areas locally, nationally, and globally. I hope by sharing my views on these topics that people will receive an honest point of view from someone with a genuine interest in these topics.

I have also written and edited articles for Neowin - you can check out my articles over @ https://www.neowin.net/news/poster/boyd_chan

I hope you enjoy reading my blog!

2 pings

  1. […] under Batteries, Power, Technology by Boydo I’ve covered batteries a bit lately including how to look after lithium ion batteries as well as how to replace a battery in a MacBook Pro but I haven’t covered how to […]

  2. […] innards, specifically its batteries, eventually wear out and can do no more to protect us. This occurs naturally with any sort of battery and eventually you’ll have to replace […]

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