Can we add to this that charging with power OFF will also extend long term life span of the battery?
I feel like a new battery thread aimed at users who used their last upgrade to grandfather unlimited and therefore want to extend the life span of their batteries would be awesome!
Thanks for your help tonight
1 Thessalonians 5:18
Well, the evidence suggests that charging with power off will assure a completely saturated 100% charge. This is why they suggest charging to 100% with power off during the meter training. This is the only way the meter can recognize the battery's true maximum capacity. There is good and bad in this...
- It will give you the most power that the battery can hold, so if you're going to be away from any power sources for an extended period of time, you may wish to charge with power off prior to your outing, since it will extend the run-time of the phone for that one charge.
- However it will stress the battery by pushing the voltage to the maximum recommended charge level (usually set to 4.2V, but I've actually seen higher voltages on my battery from a saturation charge), so it's actually detrimental to the "lifespan" of the battery, meaning it will actually result in an acceleration of the aging process, or in other words shorten the "lifespan".
So you need to balance the need with the want. You may need a battery that will last the expected life of the phone (and for you it could be 4 years, whereas it's targeted for 2), and yet you may also want it to last at least the entire day with only one charge. There has to be a compromise. So if you charge more frequently but in shorter charge cycles, and avoid charging to 100%, you will both extend the life of the battery and will still get through a day - just not without having to charge more than once.
The 100% electric automobile industry is dealing with this very problem right now and has all along. Due to demands of the public they have to compete with cars that have gas tanks which can take you 350 miles on a tank full, are relatively cheap to fill, fill very quickly, and can be filled just about anywhere, So they have to provide long power cycles, keep weight down, shorten the time to charge, and extend the life of the batteries all at the same time. It's like trying to be in all four corners of a room at the same time. You can only be close to one or two corners, but will be farther away from the other two or three. They have to find a comfort zone somewhere between all 4 objectives that results in an effective and efficient use of weight (and space), time (for charging), distance and cost.
Everyone wants the maximum number of miles per car charge, just like we want the maximum number of hours of use per phone charge, but at the same time nobody wants to pay the huge cost of replacing those batteries (which can be 25% of the cost of the car) if they should fail too soon (again, just like battery replacement of the phone is $150, phone cost $600), and furthermore nobody wants to have even larger batteries due to added weight in the auto industry which will reduce efficiency and bulk taking up space, and for bulk and weight in the case of phones. It's a delicate balance of what's enough versus what's too much or too little.
So car manufacturers are telling their electric car owners that if they can limit their charges to 85% of capacity, they will extend the usable lifespan of the +/- $7,000 battery modules from what is expected to be 3-4 years for 100% charges, to as much as 7 or more years with 85% charges. Also, just as with cell phone batteries, the car batteries are set to alert a charge is needed at somewhere around 15%, and just like cell phones, it will shut down completely at a relative usable charge level of 0%, to protect the ungodly expensive batteries from permanently shutting down.
Cell phone manufacturers know this too, so they try to both squeeze as much capacity out of the battery that is smallest, while both limiting the charge time needed and preventing the user from doing damage to the battery by overcharging. They know the greatest percentage of users are going to plug in at bedtime and unplug in the morning so the batteries will be sitting at high voltages for a long time. In order to deal with that, some set their maximum voltage level at 4.2V to get the longer run times, while getting a relatively long lifespan, some may set it higher (4.25 to 4.3V) to get even longer run-times but lifespan will suffer, while still others may set it lower (4.1V or 4V) to extend the life of the battery, but at the cost of shorter run-times per charge.
Unfortunately until batteries become infinite in their capacity, weigh nothing, are tiny comparatively speaking, and charge in 15 minutes (i.e. the Holy Grail), we'll be dealing with these issues in one form or another. I commend Motorola for having found a tremendous battery technology and merging it with their incredible engineering to come to a phone such as the Droid Razr MAXX which for just a few more millimeters in thickness and a few more grams of weight versus the already incredible Droid RAZR, has a run-time that leaves every other smartphone out there dead in the dust long before it's even close to being ready for a charge.
