The Initial Charge "Myth"

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Manifesto

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I have a very good question, if it has not been asked before. Is it really necessary to charge a phone for 8-12 hours before first use.

In my experience the phone says it is fully charged after and hour or so. Does this not mean that current is no longer flowing to the battery and charging for an additional 6 or more hours will do nothing ?

I think its an old wives tale and can go alongside ;chewing gum, if swallowed, remains inside your body for seven years
 
dude, about a week ago i pooped out some gum, then thought very hard and remembered a time about 7 years ago where i was like "gulp...... oh crap, i swallowed it"
 
Manifesto said:
I have a very good question, if it has not been asked before. Is it really necessary to charge a phone for 8-12 hours before first use.

In my experience the phone says it is fully charged after and hour or so. Does this not mean that current is no longer flowing to the battery and charging for an additional 6 or more hours will do nothing ?

I think its an old wives tale and can go alongside ;chewing gum, if swallowed, remains inside your body for seven years
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Indeed it is now an old wives tale but perpetuated in an effort to get the user of any new cellphone to RTFM (Read The Friggin Manual) while he or she waits the prescribed 16 hours or thereabouts for said battery to charge!

Almost all new cellphones are supplied with Li-ion ot Li-Poly batteries and all that is recommended with these batteries is that the first three charge cycles are completed from almost flat. I'm not even convinced that this is indeed necessary but its not a hardship to carry out!

There is a folklore tale that the "remember to charge your cellphone battery for 16 hours before use" stems from the fact that the shop will be closed (usually for the weekend if you got your new handset on a Saturday) by the time you are able to comprehend that you've been sold a faulty handset! :p
 
Lithium batteries dont need it.
But I still do it anyway... whether it makes a difference or not, just leave it on charge for the night, not a biggy.
 
I'm thinking perhaps the first big long charge is important for a healthy battery and then you can 1/2 charge and top up.
 
Phones with NiCad batteries required you to keep the phone on charge for 16 hours in order to ensure all the "cells" in the battery were activated and would/could be used later on. They would also work better if you completely discharged them and then recharged them.

With Lithium batteries, which is standard on most phones these days, you don't require either steps to be carried out.
 
catweasel said:
Phones with NiCad batteries required you to keep the phone on charge for 16 hours in order to ensure all the "cells" in the battery were activated and would/could be used later on. They would also work better if you completely discharged them and then recharged them.

With Lithium batteries, which is standard on most phones these days, you don't require either steps to be carried out.
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Wow! Ni-Cad I don't think any cellular handset in South Africa would have used Ni-Cad batteries! Circa 1993 in old analogue phone in Europe may be, I think that SA handsets would have started out with Ni-Mh batteries as a minimum.

Ni-Cad batteries should never be part charged as they start to pick up "memory" and if you only half charge, eventually the battery will only accept half a charge.

Ni-Mh batteries exhibited less memory effects.

Li-ion & Li-Poly have effectively zero "memory" effect but they do have a finite amount of charge cycles. No one claims exact figures but its thought to be around 500 charge cycles. So each time you just "top up" your cell phone for 20 minutes you've technically used up a charge cycle!

Of course Nokia BL-5C batteries should only be charged for three minutes in an air raid shelter and with the user wearing a tin hat and fire proof gloves! :D
 
I've been pondering about this question for the past few days as I never did this 16 hour charge thing, and my battery life is not that great.

Sales person never told me how long to charge it and I couldn't find anything in the manual.
 
I think most phones today will be completely charged within 15 min, so I doubt that 12 hours has much benefit.

Plus the last phone I got had a pre-charged battery anyway.
 
JimM said:
Li-ion & Li-Poly have effectively zero "memory" effect but they do have a finite amount of charge cycles. No one claims exact figures but its thought to be around 500 charge cycles. So each time you just "top up" your cell phone for 20 minutes you've technically used up a charge cycle!
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I think that most companies define a charge cycle differently - see http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/t...885f88a153049&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss for an example - but it usually refers to discharge of power. It tallies with my experience, because my iPaq hx4700 battery is still going strong after more than 500 "plug-ins".

Love the comment about the Nokia batteries, though!
 
A charge cycle in most cases refers to a full charge cycle.

It is in fact better not to fully discharge the batteries. It is recommended that they be discharged periodically so that the phone charge meter stays accurate.

Another thing is if the cells are completely completely discharged they stop working. Lucky for us all the phones are programmed not to allow this to happen. For this reason it's a good idea to charge the battery before storage as the battery always loses some of its charge. So if a flat battery is stored you run the risk of the cells becoming completely discharged and the battery being rendered useless.
 
bullfrog said:
It is in fact better not to fully discharge the batteries. It is recommended that they be discharged periodically so that the phone charge meter stays accurate.
Click to expand...

Please explain what you meant by this... just the last eight words...

All phones are programmed with various parameters minimum voltage, temperature and current so that the handset warns and/or switches off at the correct time but there is no "memory" for charging statistics!
 
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Just charge it for 16 hours from outta the box, been doing this with all my phones and the battery lasts longer, for a week and over all of them are smart phones. And run the battery flat then charge over night for another two times. Don't play games and such to get it flat just let it go on its own. It's a shlep in the beginning but worth it for the two years you gonna have the phone for.

My girl on the other hand does not have patience, all her phones batteries only last about 2-3 days cause she only charges it for 4 hours in the beginning.
 
with my early nokia smartphones, i did the 16 hour charge thing.. with the newer phones the battery usually has some charge in it, i use it till it dies, and charge it up again.
 
Most of my manuals (including my HP laptop) state that full discharges with li-ion batteries are bad for the battery long term, and that top-up charges have no side-effects.
 
You only deplete the battery two or three times in the beginning after that you charge as you please
 
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