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Proper Charging Habits with new phone

AZSobo

AZSobo

Lurker
With the Samsung S6 and it's hunger for juice I want to get the most out of its battery. Whenever we get a new device, which usually isn't as often as most people, I look up battery care and see many different tips and generally go with what seems to be the consensus in general, with that device in mind. Last weekend when I brought home 2 new S6's I started looking around and found an article that referenced batteryuniversity dot com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries (I'm too new to post actual links). That site preaches to get the most cycles not to let the battery get too low (charging at 50% more than doubles the life potentially) with a full discharge once a month. Also says not to charge to 100% but I haven't done that.

I didn't see (unless I overlooked it but I just skimmed it again to see if I missed it) anything about new devices and any special care that should be taken, so I started right off with both charging when at or about 50%.
I was just looking at portable battery charge packs on Amazon and one of the reviews stated to allow the pack to fully discharge 5 or 6 times at first and that many people screw up their cell phones by not doing that.
My question is, did I do more harm that good by not fully discharging during initial discharge/charges?
 
Advice to discharge repeatedly, or at all, as part of new battery conditioning is complete nonsense and an old wives tale. It's hogwash.

You misunderstood a little from Battery University.

If a battery has 1000 full charges available, then it has 2000 charges from 50% because 2000 * 1/2 = 1000.

So no, you're not going to double your lifetime by not going below 50%.

Neither are you going to overcharge your battery and damage it, the safety circuit here prevents the saturation that Battery University was referring to.

What you care about is heat - that's what causes metal structure deformation in the battery and that's what kills lifetime.

Heating at lower percentages is worse and forcing the phone to stay on when it's low and wants to shut down is worst of all.

Use your phone.

Charge it when it needs it or you feel like it.

Don't worry about overcharging it.

Don't baby it and don't abuse it.
 
EarlyMon said:
Advice to discharge repeatedly, or at all, as part of new battery conditioning is complete nonsense and an old wives tale. It's hogwash.

You misunderstood a little from Battery University.

If a battery has 1000 full charges available, then it has 2000 charges from 50% because 2000 * 1/2 = 1000.

So no, you're not going to double your lifetime by not going below 50%.

Neither are you going to overcharge your battery and damage it, the safety circuit here prevents the saturation that Battery University was referring to.

What you care about is heat - that's what causes metal structure deformation in the battery and that's what kills lifetime.

Heating at lower percentages is worse and forcing the phone to stay on when it's low and wants to shut down is worst of all.

Use your phone.

Charge it when it needs it or you feel like it.

Don't worry about overcharging it.

Don't baby it and don't abuse it.
Click to expand...

I gave the wrong address but knew what I was referring to - just in case someone else is looking for the page the correct address is:
batteryuniversity dot com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

But in any event, you answered my question about conditioning the battery - I hadn't read anything about that in some years so I didn't even think about it when I started out with these new phones, then when I was reminded about it in that review it didn't sit well, I'm already getting pretty bad daily battery life and didn't want to be the cause of something worse! So thanks, I can breath again...

Other than the battery, my wife and I both really like the S6's and Android ecosystem - we had iphones before, not having any allegiance to Apple I decided to switch. Plus, I don't like the way Apple pushes their iOS updates, I mean you can live without updating but eventually if you don't, it's hard to get any apps because nothing new or updated is backwards compatible, we bought 4S's shortly after the 5 came out so I was behind to begin with. From what I read anyway Android isn't like that - but since we have the newest phones and latest version of OS it shouldn't be a problem anyway.
 
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