• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

How often to charge

B

bugger

Well-Known Member
How often can you charge your phone? Can I charge overnight and then say on my ride to and from work throw it on the car charger? I had a full battery this morning, but I am going to have to charge on my way home or I most likely won't make it until bedtime to charge.
I am worried about overcharging i guess, if that's possible.
I just don't want to be on a dead phone at 6 or 7 at night.

Thanks
 
Pretty much all new devices have power control chips that stop the charge automatically when battery is full so it shouldn't be a big problem
 
Gotcha! Now I am not going to damage anything or kill my battery by charging so much in one day without the battery completely draining first? Say I charge when phone is at 30%on my way home from work and it charges to 70%, then before bed it's at 50% or so and I put on the charger overnight. Is that ok?
If I repeat something like this daily, what kind of damage will i cause?
 
bugger said:
Gotcha! Now I am not going to damage anything or kill my battery by charging so much in one day without the battery completely draining first? Say I charge when phone is at 30%on my way home from work and it charges to 70%, then before bed it's at 50% or so and I put on the charger overnight. Is that ok?
If I repeat something like this daily, what kind of damage will i cause?
Click to expand...

Li-ion batteries don't have "memory"... a full battery cycle every once in a while just resets the meter that shows you how much battery is left.

A top off in the afternoon won't hurt the battery at all to my knowledge. I do much the same. charge before I go to sleep at night, take it off the charge. Then use it during the day, on way home, plug it in for a quick juice. start the cycle over again. Every once in a while let it die almost all the way or all the way if you feel frisky... then charge it back up (to keep your meter true)

For what it's worth, some believe that your battery will last longer if kept between 30% and 70% charged instead of full all the time... never tested it so I can't say for sure though...
 
Excellent! To do a full battery cycle, I should let the battery literally die before recharging as opposed to recharging at 20-30%. I will be sure and do that once a week minimum.
 
Is there a way to find out how much battery is left? I thought i recalled seeing somewhere that it said a percentage of how much of the battery was left as opposed to the green bar. I know when I reach 30% it says 30%, but I would like to see the percentage as well as the bar.
 
bugger said:
Is there a way to find out how much battery is left? I thought i recalled seeing somewhere that it said a percentage of how much of the battery was left as opposed to the green bar. I know when I reach 30% it says 30%, but I would like to see the percentage as well as the bar.
Click to expand...

You should be able to go Menu>Settings>About Phone>Battery and see it in ten percent increments...

(This may only work on Verizon) dial *#*#4636#*#* and it should auto dial... then click "battery info". It tells you status, level, scale, health voltage, temp... all the good stuff.
 
It's actually better for Li-ion to keep them topped up as opposed to Ni-Cd batteries which require a full charge/discharge.

If you are going to store a Li-ion battery for a while then it's best to have it about 40% charged.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom