Batteries: what exactly should we be doing to extend their life?

 

More often than not, our smartphone batteries die long before our devices do.

As more and more smart phones are moving away from having a removable and replaceable battery, I’ve found myself more concerned with how the usage of my phone and my charging habits will affect it in the long term. With my older laptop and cameras, it was never an issue. Battery no longer holding a charge? Buy a replacement and slap it in. 

All I need to do is plug it in, right?

Unfortunately, I was never well versed in proper maintenance and care of battery life until I started noticing a decline in my overall life of my cellphone. From being able to hold a charge for an entire day to having to plug in the phone halfway through the day even with minimal usage, it got me wondering if my charging habits had anything to do with it. 

As with most of my older devices, I was under the assumption that I should always drain the battery, keep the device plugged in to charge, and then rinse and repeat over and over again. Older batteries, such as Nickel Cadium (Ni-Cad) and Nickel Metal Hybride (Ni-MH) batteries required “training” on the battery, charging and discharging to keep them optimal and so, in respect, I thought the same applied universally for new devices currently using Lithion-Ion (Li-ion) batteries. 

Conflicting Reports

And so, I began some research on the internet to see what I could come up with for the care and proper maintenance of li-ion batteries. Soon though, my frustration was solidified in a Popular Mechanics article: “And yet, consumer electronics companies offers no true consensus …. the Internet only deepens the confusion. One article claims that li-ion packs should be drained on a weekly basis; another recommends to drain them once a month; others say they should never be drained.” Amid this quagmire of confusing information and statements, there was however some constants that kept popping up over and over again.

Depending on charging habits, the life cycle of a battery can vary.

Problems and Solutions

One of the most general worrying facts was finding out the damaging properties of completely draining your battery or letting your device run dry as I had previously done. As Wikipedia states: “Deep discharge may short-circuit the cell, in which case recharging would be unsafe. …. This may drain the battery below its shut down voltage; normal chargers are then ineffective.“ Combined with problematic issues arising when temperatures dip below and above certain thresholds (who hasn’t forgotten their phone in their car?) can shorten and damage battery life on your device.

An interesting tib-bit though, is finding out about li-ion safety circuits, internal hardware that is integrated into the battery that helps prevent overcharging, say if you were to leave your device plugged in for overnight. These circuits allows the devices the charge the battery up to 100% before turning themselves "off" and allowing the battery to drain down to a certain percentage before turning back on again. This explains sometimes why you might see the percentage of a battery drop from a full charge to somewhere near 90% of a charge upon unplugging your phone from the charger.

And so, through a bit of wading through conflicting reports about what is best for Li-ion batteries, this is what seems to be the general consensus:

Don’t drain your battery completely on your device and make sure to charge it often. The longer a battery remains drained without being charged, the harder it is to try and recharge it. There are methods to "revive" batteries that are considered dead, but it requires a little knowhow.

Do not worry about over-charging due to built in safe guards in your Li-on battery.

Don’t expose your phone and battery to extreme temperature changes.

While this article has to do with charging and discharging habits for your smart-phone and how it affects your battery, there are other tips and tricks to get more usage out of your battery through apps and usage.

As for now, these are some pretty straight forward guidelines to keep the batteries going on your devices through the entirety of your contract. Keep in mind though, some providers and carriers do offer battery replacements under warranty, so always make sure to check this out with them. 

What's your personal charging habit for your smart-phone?

Top 15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life

Laptops tend to lose their charm quickly when you’re constantly looking for the nearest power outlet to charge up.  How do you keep your battery going for as long as possible?  Here are 15 easy ways to do so.

1. Defrag regularly -  The faster your hard drive does its work – less demand you are going to put on the hard drive and your battery.  Make your hard drive as efficient as possible by defragging it regularly. (but not while it’s on battery of course!) Mac OSX is better built to handle fragmentation so it may not be very applicable for Apple systems.

2. Dim your screen – Most laptops come with the ability to dim your laptop screen.  Some even come with ways to modify CPU and cooling performance.  Cut them down to the lowest level you can tolerate to squeeze out some extra battery juice.

3. Cut down on programs running in the background.  Itunes, Desktop Search, etc.  All these add to the CPU load and cut down battery life.  Shut down everything that isn’t crucial when you’re on battery.

4. Cut down external devices – USB devices (including your mouse) & WiFi drain down your laptop battery.  Remove or shut them down when not in use.  It goes without saying that charging other devices (like your iPod) with your laptop when on battery is a surefire way of quickly wiping out the charge on your laptop  battery.

5. Add more RAM - This will allow you to process more with the memory your laptop has, rather than relying on virtual memory.  Virtual memory results in hard drive use, and is much less power efficient. Note that adding more RAM will consume more energy, so this is most applicable if you do need to run memory intensive programs which actually require heavy usage of virtual memory.

6. Run off a hard drive rather than CD/DVD - As power consuming as hard drives are, CD and DVD drives are worse.  Even having one in the drive can be power consuming.  They spin, taking power, even when they?re not actively being used.  Wherever possible, try to run on virtual drives using programs like Alcohol 120% rather than optical ones.

7.  Keep the battery contacts clean:  Clean your battery’s metal contacts every couple of months with a cloth moistened with rubbing alcohol.  This keeps the transfer of power from your battery more efficient.

8. Take care of your battery – Exercise the Battery.  Do not leave a charged battery dormant for long periods of time.  Once charged, you should at least use the battery at least once every two to three weeks. Also, do not let a Li-On battery completely discharge. (Discharing is only for older batteries with memory effects)

9. Hibernate not standby – Although placing a laptop in standby mode saves some power and you can instantly resume where you left off, it doesn’t save anywhere as much power as the hibernate function does.  Hibernating a PC will actually save your PC’s state as it is, and completely shut itself down.

10. Keep operating temperature down - Your laptop operates more efficiently when it’s cooler.  Clean out your air vents with a cloth or keyboard cleaner, or refer to some extra tips by LapTopMag.com.

11. Set up and optimize your power options – Go to ‘Power Options’ in your windows control panel and set it up so that power usage is optimized (Select the ‘max battery’ for maximum effect).

12. Don’t multitask – Do one thing at a time when you’re on battery.  Rather than working on a spreadsheet, letting your email client run in the background and listening to your latest set of MP3's, set your mind to one thing only.  If you don’t you’ll only drain out your batteries before anything gets completed!

13. Go easy on the PC demands – The more you demand from your PC.  Passive activities like email and word processing consume much less power than gaming or playing a DVD.  If you’ve got a single battery charge – pick your priorities wisely.

14. Get yourself a more efficient laptop -  Laptops are getting more and more efficient in nature to the point where some manufacturers are talking about all day long batteries.  Picking up a newer more efficient laptop to replace an aging one is usually a quick fix.

15. Prevent the Memory Effect - If you’re using a very old laptop, you’ll want to prevent the ‘memory effect’ – Keep the battery healthy by fully charging and then fully discharging it at least once every two to three weeks. Exceptions to the rule are Li-Ion batteries (which most laptops have) which do not suffer from the memory effect.


Bonus Tip #1: Turn off the autosave function.  MS-Word’s and Excel’s autosave functions are great but because they keep saving regular intervals, they work your hard driver harder than it may have to. If you plan to do this, you may want to turn it back on as the battery runs low. While it saves battery life in the beginning,  you will want to make sure your work is saved when your battery dies.

Bonus Tip #2: Lower the graphics use. You can do this by changing the screen resolution and shutting off fancy graphic drivers. Graphics cards (video cards) use as much or more power today as hard disk.