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How did you condition your battery?

R

r1chard

Lurker
I've been browsing and reading through this forum for the past couple weeks... Needless to say, this site has been the best thing for my love affair with my phone (sad, I know).

I remember reading through a thread where someone provided clear and descriptive instructions on how they conditioned their battery. I've been searching for the past 20 minutes using keywords but I can't find that particular post, so here's my cry for help.

How exactly has everyone conditioned their battery, if at all?

Thanks :]
 
To add to my question... did you let the battery run out, try booting it up several times while letting it shut down in the process (to REALLY run out the battery), and then charge it completely without turning it on? Please be specific :]
 
Li-ion batteries don't need conditioning but I did it anyways to make myself feel better. I let it completely drain. Then I let it charge..did that for 5 days. My battery pretty much goes for a day with heavy(for me) use amd two or one and half days with light to medium use.
 
I'm not sure they need conditioning but I do think letting it completely run out once makes a difference at least in having it calibrated with the battery meter.

I recently did a manual update where all my data was wiped and now the battery indicator seems to be off a bit like when I first got the phone so I am actually in the process of killing the battery now. I am guessing once I do it will be back to working good again.
 
You don't condition the battery, you run it all the way down to recalibrate the battery meter but thats it.
 
yes they don't NEED conditioning, BUT, it seems to help.

i ran my down to nothing, tried to turn it back on, to make sure it's dead.

then plugged it into the wall charger till fully charged.

repeat process 3 times.

good to go.
 
The reason is seemed to help was the battery meter is now really accurate. Of course you use three of your ~300 cycles doing so.
 
nah when i got my phone, first day, from full charge it lasted 6 hours maybe. now i can easily get a day with LOTS of use, i can get 2 days if i take it easy....that's more then meter trickery
 
Yes, because you calibrated your battery meter. The batteries are stored at a partial charge so when its first put in the phone the meter gets a bad reference point so charge fully to set the top end then discharge fully to set the bottom end. Since you did it a couple more times your meter is a little more accure.
 
does the meter affect shut down?

lets say actually you have 50% charge and the meter say 5%, will the phone then shut down although it still has a half charge?
 
Yes.
Basically you can't tell how much power a battery has left in it except by measuring voltage, as the battery drains the voltage will drop slightly so say it starts at 3.74v and at 5% is goes down to 3.65v. The battery meter is a simple table that stores like this
100% 3.74v
90% 3.73v
.
.
.
10% 3.65v

Now Lithium Ion batteries are stored at 60% (IIRC) so the voltage may be 3.71v at that poing so you plug it in to the phone and it gets full set to 3.71v so you charge fully and it then goes above 3.71v and when it reaches a certain voltage where it stops increasing for a certain amount of time then that gets set at 100%.
 
yep, so the phone knows at 3.65v you onlt have 10% left so it may send the shutdown message at 3.64v and the low voltage drop out circuit is set at 3.62v or such, going by my example above. I can;t remember the exact numbers, its osmething around those voltages.
What happens is batteries don't have a straight discharge curve.
lithium ion discharge curve - Google Search
notice the voltage drops off pretty fast at the top then is gradual in the middle then at the bottom drops fast. So its difficult to predict the end accuratly which is why the need to calibrate. That should be done every 30-60 days depending on use. I used to set a reminder at the first of the month to discharge/recharge and do the *228 to get all verizons tower updates.

The other issue is lithium ion has a MTBF of ~300 cycles so your battery is going to be worn out in a couple years anyway.
 
Anthough I'm not a big fan of it there is a site called batteryuniversity that explains it better than I. Just have to remember when they say 300-500 cycles for lithium ion, its 300 for consumer grade like in our phones, 500 cycles are the super expensive grade of cells. And their info on NiMH is way out of date.
80% is generally considered the worn out number for betteries, so thats why your 4-5 year old laptop still works on battery despite it going way past 300 cycles, if you tested it new and at a few years old you would find that its way less than 80% of the new capacity.
I have a lot of gadgets so I keep track of batteries, prefer NiMH AA's where I can, have some of those 10years old just getting below the 80% mark so they go in kids toys. Just ordered 8 packs of 4 for some of the new kids stuff, they each have a digicam now and my son has a leapester2 each take 4 AA's, have one of the nice MAHA chargers where I can test the capacity.
 
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