battery care

[zetroc]

Any tips on best practices for battery management to get the most out of it?

 

[Big Calhoun]

The tips I usually give are:

1. Turn off standalone GPS
2. Manually set your screen brightness
3. Check any apps that auto-update. If it's non-essential, change the update time to an hour or more.
4. Don't use a task killer. If you absolutely must close something, go into the settings and do it manually.
5. Don't leave Bluetooth turned on all the time.

That's pretty much it. Most of those I've always followed. I never realized the difference manually setting my brightness would make until I started fooling around with the setting. Nowadays my interests are in whether WiFi or 3G is better. Today I'm running the Xoom completely off of WiFi. Tomorrow, I'll be running it completely off of 3G.

 

[zetroc]

I meant more in the sense of charging habits to get the best out of my battery. Should I not let it fall Below a certain percent? Stuff like that. Sorry I wasn't very clear.

 

[Big Calhoun]

No worries.

There's many different schools of thought. Personally, I never let my battery fully discharge, only use OEM chargers, and keep my device on a charger when not using for prolonged periods. Over the years, those steps have never failed me with any device.

 

[ckeegan]

No worries.

There's many different schools of thought. Personally, I never let my battery fully discharge, only use OEM chargers, and keep my device on a charger when not using for prolonged periods. Over the years, those steps have never failed me with any device.

It's funny, I actually do the exact opposite. I always try to let my phone (Droid2) fully discharge once a week or so, and I've already let my XOOM fully discharge once since last Thursday.

I also never put either on a charger until it's absolutely necessary (less than 20% when going to bed, etc).

 

[androidguy65]

I leave it to charge all night, every night. Seems to keep all my batteries healthy.

 

[ehasley]

It doesn't really matter what you do with a li-ion battery. I heard fully discharging could be detrimental though.

 

[Hexadecimus]

Just FYI, there is no such thing as battery memory problems anymore. Modern batteries don't need to be discharged, and yes if they were it could degrade or damage them. Fortunately, modern devices prevent a complete discharge. There is one thing to note though, and that is that I've found that my clients' li-ion laptop batteries degrade much faster when kept at 100% on the charger.

Just charge when it needs it, unplug when it's full and you'll be fine.

 

[gixxer_751]

yay.. i keep mine docked (usually off) unless using it... but read that a full discharge is not good for these batteries..