Lithium Iron batteries for mobile devices

[OFSO]

I saw a report last night on keeping the 'long' in 'longevity' in Apple batteries - but I am sure the same applies to Andy & Win devices. It related to the question of charging your device every night - good or bad ?

The article asserted that LiFe cells have a limited number of complete charge cycles - for the device in question it was around 500 - before performance degenerates. But that is complete, empty-to-full cycles. It was said that if you plug your device in at the end of the day and typically you have only used 50% of the charge, what you do is reload the missing 50%, so you are only using half of one cycle. In other words do this every day and you have 1000 'half' charge cycles in total. Needless to say all LiFe cells will switch off when 100% charged (just as they will switch off long before reaching 0%) so the end advice was plug your whatsit in every night, regardless of the little green/yellow/red battery symbol on the screen.

Must say it sounds good, but is there anyone here a battery expert* who can comment on this ?

*Or a Dreamliner expert, perchance.

[Dushan]

My Mac instructions said that the battery should be allowed to discharge almost empty about once a month. Otherwise keep charged. Mine is always plugged in as it never leaves the desk. My wife's occassionally comes home from the office and discharges a bit, but is mostly plugged in. Seems to hold the charge quite well after three years of use.

[david1300]

That makes me wonder about the Lithium Ion batteries in my devices too. Mind you, the Ions in mine are quite a bit lighter than the Irons in yours

[Blacksheep]

I have an original iPod 'Touch' (bought in 2008) that must have been charged/half-charged at least two and a half thousand times now.
A full charge lasts a day in normal use, but I don't watch film clips on it just listen to music and use facebook/e-mail.

[rgbrock1]

I have an original iPod 'Touch' (bought in 2008) that must have been charged/half-charged at least two and a half thousand times now.
A full charge lasts a day in normal use, but I don't watch film clips on it just listen to music and use facebook/e-mail.

I have one of those too, Blacksheep. Unfortunately mine only holds a full charge for about 2 hours. And all I ever used it for was to listen to music. Proves the adage, I suppose, that 'your mileage may vary'.

[OFSO]

Ions in mine are quite a bit lighter

But how many ions do you have in the fire ?

[19downbubble]

Sometimes they suggest a full discharge from time to time not to recondition the cells themselves, but to reset the chip(s) that control charging and discharging: as far as the chip was concerned, "empty" would drift up and, to a lesser extent, "full" would drift down. It's been a few years since I messed with such things, so I'd expect chipper has improved. But certainly a decade ago, while cells certainly lost peak charge over time, the charging chip didn't help by gently raising the bottom end.