e815 battery conditioning

I have a new e815 and I want to ask about Li-Ion battery care. I've read
that it's best to fully discharge/charge the battery a few times to maximize
battery life. Is this correct?

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Swingman wrote:
> I have a new e815 and I want to ask about Li-Ion battery
> care. I've read that it's best to fully discharge/charge
> the battery a few times to maximize battery life. Is
> this correct?

Only if you believe in it. You will feel better. It won't do
anything for the battery other than use up a couple of
it's 1000 or so charge cycles which you won't notice.

As for ongoing care. Li-Ions like to be topped up as
often as possible. Putting it on the charger every night
is just about optimum. It will probably last a few months
longer that way rather than discharging it all the way and
then charging.

Note for Larry's sake: You can't completely dischage a
Li-Ion because there is an integrated IC in there to prevent
that. It's the same IC that controls charging to prevent
thermal runaway which would almost certainly happen
without it.

-Quick

"Swingman" <visaccoNoSpamPlease@yahoo.com> wrote in
news:yjTdf.3691$p37.3046@newssvr17.news.prodigy.com:

> I have a new e815 and I want to ask about Li-Ion battery care. I've
> read that it's best to fully discharge/charge the battery a few times
> to maximize battery life. Is this correct?
>
>

Once after the first time you charge it. The new Li-Ion needs to be cycled
just ONE time to excite its chemistry.

Then, for the rest of its life, you should treat it like a lead-acid car
battery....never running it "down" again. The quicker and more often you
recharge it to full capacity, the longer it will last. Like lead-acid
batteries, deep cycling it causes loss of the ions that make the juice in a
permanent fashion. UNLIKE Ni-Cd batteries of old, it NEVER needs to be
"CONDITIONED". That was for Ni-Cd batteries (not Nickel-Metal Hydrides
either, which don't have the memory problems).

Getting 3 or 4 years out of a daily-recharged-while-you-sleep Li-Ion
battery isn't really unusual. The brag experts have this fixation, for
some reason that must me psychological in nature, about how long their
phone will run on standby....days and days...without putting it in the
charger SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO IT ALL NIGHT! How stupid...??

References:
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-5.htm
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

As you read in the text, the "fuel guage", a custom IC used to monitor Li-
Ion and prevent distructive deep cycling by shutting it down, gets
inaccurate. This site recommends running it down to reset the "fuel
guage", not save the battery, every 30 recharges. As I don't run the
battery down any further than is absolutely necessary in a day's usage, I
don't do this step that often. Maybe once a year?? Sounds good and works
great.

All this may be moot very soon. Toshiba's engineers have created a NEW,
vastly-improved Li-Ion battery using nanotube technologies. It recharges
from shutdown voltage in SIXTY SECONDS to 80% of full capacity...ONE
MINUTE! Full charge from shutdown requires charging for 3 minutes. Of
course, this is going to be a BIGGER charger than that little wall
brick...(c; Charging a 1AH battery in 3 minutes would require over 20 amps
charging current for that 3 minutes to get 1AH of power in 3 minutes time.
The new battery also is FAR superior in retention than today's cells.
Toshiba says after 1000 full discharge/recharge cycles, it loses only 1% of
capacity! It's some kind of battery miracle! Here's the press from
Toshiba and a little look:
http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2005_03/pr2901.htm
The damned thing is a virtual megaFarad capacitor!

--
Larry