Battery Charging questions

[Sirius-C]

I'm just wondering how you guys charge your battery.

In my o2 XDA exec quick start guide is states that initially the battery should be charged for 8 hours before use.
(I've done that)

My questions are:
How far do you let the battery go down before charging it?
If I let the device run down until there is no juice left will I lose all my data? (ie. is it volitile memory?)

How long do you charge it for?, another 8 hours from flat or eg. 20%,
or do you charge until the green light comes on?

Im asking these questions because my battery life seems a bit naff, Ive turned off all forms of battery monitoring on the today screen, infact there really is nothing running apart from a 2gb MMC thats permantly in the unit, and nothing accesses the mmc until i run a program.

BTW all options are set, ie. turn off after 1 min, backlight is at minimum, etc etc

[neilm]

I use a combinbation of trickle charge from the PC USB, or full charge from the mains, depending on where I am.

I use my Exec extensively on 1 day a week, when I'm in London- phone calls diverted from office, note taking, Exchange Server outlook communication and music playing. On that day, I often get down to about 10% charge, following which a mains charge takes about 2hours to fully complete.

One advantage of (genuine) WM5 devices is that a flat battery won't result in lost data, as everything is held in persistent memory. This is why WM5 allows batteries to run down further than the older OS's which always had to reserve enough battery charge to maintain volatile memory till the next charge. (this need to be considered by people upgrading older devices to WM5- the lack of persisten storage and the lower residual battery charge could result in loss of data or a hard reset)

All XDA devices have intelligent charging circuits, so once the green light comes on, theres no further point in keeping it on charge.

Li Ion batteries perform better if topped up frequently, rather than the full discharge/recharge cyles which older battery types preferred. My Exec certainly took a few days to optimise performance and battery life.

This also seems to occur after a hard reset, so I suspect there may some form of dynamic power optimisation built in.

[lightman]

I also use a mix of a sync'n'charge cable with a full charge every now and then.

Back when I had my Asus a730w (in which the battery emptied in the blink of an eye), I made a little research and it seemed to be a general best practice that these Li-Ion batteries that our pdas have should be "trained" to stay charged, i.e., charge it often and try to avoid big charge/discharge cycles.

So, I usually charge my Loox while sync'ing which means that generally I only let it discharge to 60% or 70%.
Every now and then, I force a bigger cycle (to have the best of both worlds, just in case ) and let it discharge to about 30% and then charge it in the cradle.

Of course, like on all battery discussions, this is somewhat subjective, but as I said, from what I've read, "training" your battery to remain topped while every now and then mixing it with a higher discharge cycle seems to produce good results.

Having said that, from my tests, my Loox's battery still performs extremelly close now to what it did when I purchased it about 8 months ago.

[dmr54]

For me charging is something that happens as often as possible, thus when I am away from a power outlet I have loads of juice. So in the car on the way to work and agin on the way home, possibly during the evening depending on how low it is and then overnight whilst I'm sleeping.

I have no set level that I wait for and you really shouldn't let it run right down as they don't like it.

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[Sirius-C]

aha, then my problem (naff battery life) is probably all the tweaking (hard resets) & full discharges I've been doing.

Thank you for the information guys much appreciated

[BUMP THAT]

Theoretically one should charge their Lithium-Ion as often as possible. Keep it from extreame temperatures and not to fully drain and then charge all the time.

It actually better to charge here and there then to charge all at once from a full discharge. This puts the battery under less stress. However is is good to run the battery to 10~20% every 25~30 charges to sync the battery and the PDA/device up. If you dont nothing bad happens, your readings may just be off a litlle.

This only applies Lithium-Ion and not Nickel. Lithium-Ion does not have a memory to worry about, unlike nickel.

If you dont beleive go read around. I think SPB's Tips and Tricks has it in there somewhere.

[windows]

Indeed - charge as often as you can that is the motto with Lions.