Lithium Iron Batteries - Care & Charging

[KiNeL]

Apologies in advance if these links have been posted before but because battery life is so absolutely germain to the continued enjoyment of our toys I thought the subject deserved a thread of it's own.

Virtually all portable devices use Lithium Iron batteries these days but unfortunately a lot of people seem unaware of their peculiarities and how to care for and extract the best from them.

Some of this undoubtedly originates from past experiences with NiCad & NiMh batteries which, paradoxically, require almost the opposite treatment to that of L-ion although the one enemy they have in common is heat.

Equally worrying though is the fact that I've seen instructions for devices with L-ion batteries actually advocting regular deep discharging which, if you read the articles, is one of the worst things you can possibly do.

The articles in the links below give clear and concise information on the subject which hopefully may dispel some misconceptions and help you get the maximum from the battery in your device be it DAP/Phone/Why?

The table in the first article is particularly sobering showing as it does that using poor techniques you can "achieve" a 40% drop in battery capacity in only 3 months !

How to prolong lithium-based batteries
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/parttwo-34.htm

Charging lithium-ion batteries
http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-12.htm

 

[Cloysterpeteuk]

You are recommended to discharge them fully once a month, supposed to help keep the battery meter calibrated. What annoys me is when so many people say oh make sure you charge it for 24 hours (or some other daft figure) for it's first charge!, i'm like why?, once it says fully charged it means fully charged, it's not as it's gonna charge anymore than that. None of the manuals ever mention such behaviour so why do the shops still tell people to do this?, do they think they are dealing with mobile phone batteries from the last century or something?.

 

[shadowritten]

I usually run my HD5H's battery down to about 25%-30% before applying a partial charge - either using the AC adapator or while uploading more tracks to the player. I'm less concerned about the battery's overall lifespan, as I know it's replaceable. If I owned a DAP with a built-in battery, I'd probably take greater care to follow best practice advice a bit more stringently than I do at present!

 

[Sasso]

You are recommended to discharge them fully once a month, supposed to help keep the battery meter calibrated. What annoys me is when so many people say oh make sure you charge it for 24 hours (or some other daft figure) for it's first charge!, i'm like why?, once it says fully charged it means fully charged, it's not as it's gonna charge anymore than that. None of the manuals ever mention such behaviour so why do the shops still tell people to do this?, do they think they are dealing with mobile phone batteries from the last century or something?.

They are probably talking about other kinds of batteries. I think its the old NiCad batteries that you slow charge them overnight on the first time.

With lithium i think it said in that website that you just do a few full cycles the first time you get the battery. Then after that just peak it every day or whatever.

 

[Cloysterpeteuk]

I still got told to charge my lithium-ion battery in my Sony Ericsson K70i for 14 hours by the site I bought it from, so I asked them why the manual said 4 hour first charge and threy were like "oh it must be wrong". Pfft bloody morons.

 

[IanPM]

I've always found this battery thing to be a load of old arse. Some older Ni-Cad batteries certainly did need to be treated with kid gloves, but newer batteries seem much more immune.

I know over at Misticriver some H10 owners were saying they felt their battery perfomed much better if it was charged to 100% over 14 or so hours.

How true that is, I couldn't say.

The H10 does have a removable battery though, so having a spare isn't the end of the world.