Quick Charges Kill Battery?

[Therealeinn]

Hello!

I charge my battery probably 4-5 times a day. When I'm in the car for short trips, when I'm at home on my wireless charging pad, when I'm at school - I charge my phone a lot during the day. The thing is, I don't charge my phone to 100% each of these times. I charge it for as long as I'm doing my activity, what-have-you. Does anyone know if each of these 5-10% charges count towards a "full cycle" that people talk about? Or does it need to charge all the way to 100%, regardless of how many times it is plugged in, to count as a "full cycle"?

Thank you!

 

[gpobernardo]

Charging the phone to 100% isn't actually the best practice for prolonging battery longevity (for Li-ion and Li polymer batteries, that is). In fact, what you're doing (several 5-10% incremental charges, but 10-20% is also alright) is the recommended method for maximizing battery longevity.

But to answer your question, a full cycle technically is fully charging the battery to its rated 100%, discharging it to its rated 0% (not true zero) and the charging it back up to 100% - this is normally done only to re-calibrate the battery circuitry but should not be done often (perhaps once or twice only in the entire life time of the battery).

To further maximize the life of your battery, keep on with your 5-10% incremental charges, but try to maintain the battery level between 60-80%.

You could once in a while allow it to drop to 20%, but the key here is that you should not allow a continuous drop in charge or a continuous increase in charge larger than 40%. Hence, from 100%, you could go as low as 60% then charge it up to 80%, then drop to 40%, charge to 60% and finally drop to 20%. Once you're in 20%, charge back up to 60% (note the 40% difference), drop to 50%, charge to 80% drop to 60% charge to 80% and so on...

 

[Therealeinn]

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[gpobernardo]

You're welcome, Therealeinn!

The battery life in my L1020 hasn't really been "good" ever since, but after 14 months of owning it I can safely say that the battery performance is similar to how it was brand new - I've kept my charge above 60% as much as I can, even bought a mobile battery pack for those short charge bursts.

Based on what I've heard, future batteries would be capable of being charged in under 5 minutes (or even seconds), would have larger energy capacities and would perform better with each charge cycle(unlike our "modern" batteries which deteriorate with each charge cycle). Unfortunately, that's only as far as I can share right now with respect to the technology behind it. Nonetheless, by then, if it pushes through, quick charges would definitely not kill the battery. :wink: