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Root Is it bad to leave the Vibrant plugged in for too long?

S

shaahinjjj

Well-Known Member
Hey guys,

I've heard that today's batteries' health depends on how many cycles they have gone through, and considering this it should be wise to leave the phone plugged in while fully charged and under heavy use. This way you will delay the cycle and get a "healthier" battery. This was just MY theory and I was not too sure about it. Please correct me if I am wrong.
 
I'm not so sure with this phone as when you get that unplug popup the battery doesn't show the charging icon. It might just be running off of main power. But that's just a guess.
 
i always follow it's directions, i mean the phone should know whats best for it right?? lol

Once fully charged it tells me to unplug it, so i do, whenever the battery is low again (25% or less) i just plug it back in.

No science to it really, and so what if the battery eventually dies. More than likely, another really cool device that "you simply must have" will come out before you reach your recharge limit with the battery. And if it's the case that you've found your soulmate smartphone. Then there will almost always be a spare battery somewhere that you can purchase.

Your device is suppose to be convienent for you, not the other way around. Dont sweat it and enjoy :)
 
shaahinjjj said:
Hey guys,

I've heard that today's batteries' health depends on how many cycles they have gone through, and considering this it should be wise to leave the phone plugged in while fully charged and under heavy use. This way you will delay the cycle and get a "healthier" battery. This was just MY theory and I was not too sure about it. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Click to expand...

Leaving it plugged in won't hurt anything. The phone has a regulating circuit for charging...when the battery is full, the charging circuit shuts off the current, perhaps leaving room for a "trickle" charge with minimal current.

As far as number of cycles is concerned, it's usually in the several hundreds for modern phone batteries. I leave my phone on the charger overnight and expect no problems for a good long time. Even if you plugged it in every day, it could be a year or more before you'd have to consider a new battery. LegionnaireZ has a good point for folks like me...by the time the battery wears out, there will likely be a new "must have" phone on the market!

Perhaps howetechnical will chime in with more information on batteries.
 
I have two batteries for my Vibrant, stock one plus a replacement from Tmo since I complained about the battery life. I drain them to completely zero percent/shutoff screen every time, and rotate between batteries.


At night while my phone is off I leave it plugged in for charge ALL NIGHT until morning.....I do this DAILY...absolutely no issues at all.



;)
 
w_bovine said:
Leaving it plugged in won't hurt anything. The phone has a regulating circuit for charging...when the battery is full, the charging circuit shuts off the current, perhaps leaving room for a "trickle" charge with minimal current.
Click to expand...

I can verify that this information is correct. No harm in leaving it plugged in. What WILL hurt the battery is leaving it at 0% for extended periods of time.
 
theicemonkey said:
I can verify that this information is correct. No harm in leaving it plugged in. What WILL hurt the battery is leaving it at 0% for extended periods of time.
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I concur with that. Batteries will deteriorate faster when left in a fully discharged state. My problem is that I have so many things that use rechargeable batteries that it's hard to keep up with all of them! :rolleyes:
 
elchingon666 said:
I have two batteries for my Vibrant, stock one plus a replacement from Tmo since I complained about the battery life. I drain them to completely zero percent/shutoff screen every time, and rotate between batteries.

At night while my phone is off I leave it plugged in for charge ALL NIGHT until morning.....I do this DAILY...absolutely no issues at all.
;)
Click to expand...

Keep doing this, and you'll end up with 2 bad batteries, as Li-ion batteries last longer when you do partial charges as opposed to deep cycle charges. Other than when you first get your device and perform 3 full charge/discharge cycles, after that, you shouldn't make it a habit of letting your battery discharge all the way. Basically, I just put my phone on charge every night when I hit the hay (if I haven't been too hard on it during the day requiring a charge mid-day that is... :eek: ), whether it needs it or not, so I start my day with a full charge.

I'm not overly concerned about the battery though....my bigger concern is the fact that Samsung chose to use a micro USB port as its charge port, as I have a bad feeling that it'll give out before the battery does.... :( Looks a little flimsy to me.....wish they would have provided a wireless charging solution instead....
 
shaahinjjj said:
Hey guys,

I've heard that today's batteries' health depends on how many cycles they have gone through, and considering this it should be wise to leave the phone plugged in while fully charged and under heavy use. This way you will delay the cycle and get a "healthier" battery. This was just MY theory and I was not too sure about it. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Click to expand...

Samsung has officially said, via their twitter, that the phone has built in features which prevents any damage to the phone or battery if you keep it on the charger, it is safe.
 
w_bovine said:
Perhaps howetechnical will chime in with more information on batteries.
Click to expand...

Aw, I'm flattered that you remembered me :p You're absolutely correct, there are components inside of the battery pack that slow the charging current to a bare minimum to keep it at fully charged. If this was not the case, the battery would end up getting extremely hot after about an hour (or less) of being fully charged and eventually fry out or start a fire, but battery packs have prevented this for quite a long time. As for the number of peak cycles, it's actually much higher than a few hundred. There are packs our there (such as the double cell inside of my Motorola S9-HD Bluetooth headset) that do only have a few hundred cycles, which makes it a strategy deciding when to actually charge it (every 4 workouts for me), but this is not the case with most consumer device battery packs. You should be able to get at least about 1,000 peak cycles before the battery stops charging reliably (it'll still charge, just not nearly as much. It'll say fully charged when in reality it only has maybe 30% stored up).

As a general statement, you should be able to get 2-3 years out of each battery. This number will probably drop drastically for the cheaper knock-off batteries, but OEM ones will be fine for that length of time.

It's really not that big of a deal anymore. Personally, I plug mine in whenever I'm in the car and whenever I'm at home on my computer, as well as all night while sleeping. I'm sure I use at least 2-3 peak cycles each day, but I'm really not planning on having my battery last more than a year and a half to two years. They're cheap enough to replace at that time.
 
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