To sip or chug? (best battery practices?) #cameronning
So, we’ve all seen the “s**t Androiders say” video right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM2MDtJnsAU
Well, the one comment (stream of comments) about battery life … well it didn’t irk me, but close to it. I don’t really notice my battery life all that much as I tend to have a charger always near me (3 in the house, 1 at the office, 1 in the car). I don’t often go long without being near a charger.
But that’s made me wonder… is all the charging I’m doing detrimental to the battery? Back when I worked at ‘the shack’ we always gave people the big warning about over charging… but that was in the NiCd days… when NiMH came out it was less of an issue. Now that we have Li-Ion … how much is over charging an issue.
Is it better to let your battery sip? Or should you drain it then drench it? (personally I let it sip here and there during the day, then it sits on the charger over night)
There’s several of you on Google+ that have been #cameronning out there, so what makes those batteries last so long? Is it the ROM, is it the battery, is it your practices?
So, I’ve done some digging to try to find out some of the best practices for the battery (keeping the ROM issue for another writer). And wow… there is a lot of myths and tips and tricks out there. There’s also MANY tips about background data usage or app usage you could play with to reduce what’s drawing ON the battery, but I want to look at just charging cycles only.
What’s the summary? Tons of anecdotal evidences. Almost too much for me to actually get 1 answer.
Best site I found after a couple hundred was: http://www.buchmann.ca/article23-page1.asp
There they suggest that FULLY charge, then FULLY dis-charge can be harmful to your battery. However, you should still do that at least once a month (or about 30 charges). That seems to be repeated no matter what site I go to.
They also suggest that too frequent ‘small’ discharge with ‘small’ chargings can also be harmful, as well as not allowing the battery to properly ‘gauge’. This could explain how suddenly my phone can drop from 100% to 90%, but then hover around that 80% mark forever. Is the actual %’ge listing
I’ve yet to see any definitive proving tests (however, I’m sure somebody will provide some in the comments) showing some quantitative results, but the consensus:
- Don’t do FULL charge/discharge too often (but do do it occasionally… i.e. every 30 cycles)
- Don’t rapid charge, or frequently charge for small amounts
- Charge usually around the 20-40% range
What’re your tips on battery usage (and let’s steer clear of the ROM issue, and any app tweaking). How often do you charge? When do you charge?