Lithium Ion battery first time charge

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saguran

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Hi guys,

I'm getting a new batter for my S2 and I'm wondering about the first charge. Mos of the research I've done says:

1) Charge it for about 6 hours when you get it, even if it says fully charged. Only one charge is needed for preconditioning.

2) Never let it fully discharge, this reduces the overall battery life

3) Charge often.

Any thoughts?
 
Yup that sounds about right to me based on what I have read on the internet.
 
No, no, no! Ignore point number 1. It's just completely wrong. There are numerous threads on this already. Li ion is not like the old batteries that need to be charged for an excessive amount of hours. Just charge it until it's full and take it out. You're going to damage your battery.
 
+1 on charge till full.
Lithium Ion batteries can get overcharged so generally the chargers (or phones) will disconnect the charging circuit to avoid this.
Just charge it until it's full and then have at it. But yes, don't discharge the battery too far, it does damage the battery in the long run.
 
The over-discharge thing would be true if 0% charge was 0V, or low enough to cause damage. The phone will shut off way before then.

RC Li-Po batteries where there aren't protection circuits in place are a different story, but consumer devices like phones are engineered with the battery specifications in mind. As long as you don't take the battery out and short the terminals or something I wouldn't give it a second thought.
 
mercurial said:
No, no, no! Ignore point number 1. It's just completely wrong. There are numerous threads on this already. Li ion is not like the old batteries that need to be charged for an excessive amount of hours. Just charge it until it's full and take it out. You're going to damage your battery.
Click to expand...

froot said:
+1 on charge till full.
Lithium Ion batteries can get overcharged so generally the chargers (or phones) will disconnect the charging circuit to avoid this.
Just charge it until it's full and then have at it. But yes, don't discharge the battery too far, it does damage the battery in the long run.
Click to expand...

^^This
Never trinkle charge Li-ion! And don't let it run down to 0% either
 
saguran said:
Trinkle charge?
Click to expand...

Some charger/battery combinations will switch off charging when full and the moment they register battery drain, it will start charging to full again (if charger remains connected to the device say overnight)
 
Batteries have changed a lot over the years.
Initially cellphones used nickel camdium(ni-cad), next came nickel metal-hydride(ni-mh), then came lithium ion(li-ion) and a fairly short lived stint on lithium poylmer(li-ph)
ni-cad and ni-mh developed "memory" from being charged before they were completely flat, although ni-mh had less of a problem with it. Those old batteries liked to have an initial charge of around 12hours(5 odd hours of real charge and then the remainder as trickle charge)
li-ion and polymer are quite different in that they are very sensitive to overcharge, you just need to charge it until it is full and then should try to avoid letting it get to 0% as they sometimes flatspot which they dont always recover from.

So short answer is let it charge until its full and then carry on normally but avoid charging for longer than 6 hours.
 
Rocket-Boy said:
So short answer is let it charge until its full and then carry on normally but avoid charging for longer than 6 hours.
Click to expand...

The 6 hour limit kinda negates the usefulness of a dock which I imagine is typically used overnight. Surely the newer phones have circuitry to prevent overcharge?
 
Rocket-Boy said:
Batteries have changed a lot over the years.
Initially cellphones used nickel camdium(ni-cad), next came nickel metal-hydride(ni-mh), then came lithium ion(li-ion) and a fairly short lived stint on lithium poylmer(li-ph)
ni-cad and ni-mh developed "memory" from being charged before they were completely flat, although ni-mh had less of a problem with it. Those old batteries liked to have an initial charge of around 12hours(5 odd hours of real charge and then the remainder as trickle charge)
li-ion and polymer are quite different in that they are very sensitive to overcharge, you just need to charge it until it is full and then should try to avoid letting it get to 0% as they sometimes flatspot which they dont always recover from.

So short answer is let it charge until its full and then carry on normally but avoid charging for longer than 6 hours.
Click to expand...

Thanks, nice post.

OGroteKoning said:
Some charger/battery combinations will switch off charging when full and the moment they register battery drain, it will start charging to full again (if charger remains connected to the device say overnight)
Click to expand...

Mine does this, kinda worries me. Sometimes my battery is low and I have to keep it ons charge overnight. I'm going to have to avoid this in the future.
 
The charging circuit in the phone is set to cut off supply to the battery when the current drops under 20mA. This will ensure that the battery is not over-charged. Likewise, if for instance it is a 3.8V battery, when the voltage drops to below 2.4 volts, the phone will disconnect, telling you it is time to recharge it.

This type of circuitry has been in use for at least 10 years and enhances the life of the battery. Included in the charging circuit is a timer that periodically releases the battery from the charge in order to measure it for 1-2 seconds, and replaces it. This will cause a flat battery to recover more rapidly than just applying voltage all the time
 
iJasper said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrcbcm11830
Click to expand...

Cool thanks, will have a look at it.

chrisc4290 said:
The charging circuit in the phone is set to cut off supply to the battery when the current drops under 20mA. This will ensure that the battery is not over-charged. Likewise, if for instance it is a 3.8V battery, when the voltage drops to below 2.4 volts, the phone will disconnect, telling you it is time to recharge it.

This type of circuitry has been in use for at least 10 years and enhances the life of the battery. Included in the charging circuit is a timer that periodically releases the battery from the charge in order to measure it for 1-2 seconds, and replaces it. This will cause a flat battery to recover more rapidly than just applying voltage all the time
Click to expand...

Thanks, interesting read :)
 
Have been charging an iPhone 4S overnight for two years now and an iPhone 3GS before that and both are still working perfectly.

People worry way too much about this stuff.
 
Charge your battery whenever you like. A partial discharge to 50% or above before charging is supposed to be better than letting it fully discharge and will result in longer battery life.

This isn't required, but you probably want to do a full discharge/recharge cycle every few months to calibrate your battery gauge. To be clear, the physical battery cells themselves do not need a full cycle (in fact this is less than ideal for them), but because of how the battery level is measured by the 'smart' component of the battery or phone/charger (it cannot be measured directly, and so needs to be estimated based on 'full charge' and 'full discharge' of the battery), this measurement becomes more and more inaccurate over time if you only do partial charge/discharge cycles. Your battery will still last as long if you don't calibrate it, but how full your battery seems will be different from how full it really is.
 
Rudimental said:
Charge your battery whenever you like. A partial discharge to 50% or above before charging is supposed to be better than letting it fully discharge and will result in longer battery life.

This isn't required, but you probably want to do a full discharge/recharge cycle every few months to calibrate your battery gauge. To be clear, the physical battery cells themselves do not need a full cycle (in fact this is less than ideal for them), but because of how the battery level is measured by the 'smart' component of the battery or phone/charger (it cannot be measured directly, and so needs to be estimated based on 'full charge' and 'full discharge' of the battery), this measurement becomes more and more inaccurate over time if you only do partial charge/discharge cycles. Your battery will still last as long if you don't calibrate it, but how full your battery seems will be different from how full it really is.
Click to expand...
+1. Don't worry about overcharging, as complex charging cicuit in your phone will stop charging when battery is full.
When we talk about fully discharging, it is also not exactly "full discharge" what you read on university Web pages. Phone will cut off automatically when voltage drops below certain level and protect battery from fully discharging.

In summary, use phone as needed, just switch off unnecessary options which draw your battery quicker like bluetooth, WiFi and 3G/4G when not used. This will really prolong your battery life. When you see that battery performance is deteriorated, do full charge, then use phone till phone is switching off automatically. It will help to reset counters.
For the same reason your first time charge should be full. Don't worry to leave it overnight. :)
 
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