Rechargeable batteries a key component that can be found in
many parts of all electronic devices now here's a view we sort of have some
kind of an idea of you know what's the best way to take care of a battery but
when it comes down to a lot of advice that we hear these days well some of it
is outdated some of it is just plain wrong sometimes a lot of this knowledge
may even be contradictory and then of course isn't good for anyone that's
extremely confusing and how do we know what is right well all we're gonna do
today is I'm gonna actually attempt to you know address some of these common
misconceptions that I've been hearing a lot as well I'll of course try to find
as many sources as I possibly can plus my own experience so hopefully well this
will be a credible attempt at setting the straight rechargeable batteries are not all me to see even though they may all look the
same in fact the key technology that drives them has changed over the past 10
to 15 years you see a lot of the battery advice that we hear today that I out
dates it actually came from the days where we actually used nickel metal
hydride batteries now if you actually took a chargeable battery and sort of
spun it around you might see these words n i M H this tells us that the
chemical inside the battery is in fact nickel metal hydride the thing is today
most of the batteries we use a lithium ion batteries and that is indicated by
the LI dash I on symbol on a battery itself these are obviously two completely
different chemical compositions and of course that is why that works the way
you actually use them properly a completely different nickel-base batteries
enrich their actually two kinds not just one the other being nickel cadmium
these were most popular around the 90s and the early 2000s now they haven't
been completely eliminated these days but they are more commonly seen in areas
like car batteries for electronic devices we've moved on to lithium based
methods which could be lithium ion or lithium polymer for a very quick
comparison of these two technologies well nickel-based batteries are actually
cheaper and as somewhat more durable however on the flip side lithium
base
batteries a lighter charge faster and most importantly a fall easier to use and
that is why we can actually debunk some of these sort of old myths that still surround
batteries today let's take a look at some of these starting from number one we
should keep batteries fully charged all the time now I admit this isn't so much
of a myth as just something we feel like yo is something we should do you know
it makes sense to have a battery as full as possible but as it turns out
batteries actually deteriorate the fastest when they're fully charged in an
ideal case you actually want to star batteries at around half charge or so
because that is what has been shown to actually maximize the life span of the
battery you also want to avoid actually starring a battery app you know
completely depleted charges because well for lithium batteries if you do
actually let it run all the way down well that's it you can't actually recover
it you can actually recharge it back luckily a lot of the times when our
electronic devices actually shut off for low battery that doesn't mean the
battery is completely depleted there is still a little bit of juice left so you
don't have to worry about the battery being dead from that point on but of
course you should
Actually charge it as soon as you can so that it doesn't
actually fall into that state of permanent damage misconception number 2 we
should drain batteries fully before I usually recharging them now this
particular myth comes directly from the nickel battery days you see nickel
batteries actually face that issue called the memory effects the memory effects
is a phenomena in which if you actually discharge the battery to you know some
kind of consistent but not complete this charge what's going to happen is the
remaining amount of trash in a battery sort of disappears your battery sort of
remembers where it was last discharged to and that sort of becomes the new
capacity of the battery this does not happen to live your batteries and in fact
in many cases for nickel batteries what some may consider the memory effect
isn't really permanent either for lithium batteries of today you do not have to
and in fact should not be completely discharging the battery before charging it
back up the reason for this is vikas well this is called a deep cycle and deep
cycles actually tend to hurt the battery more than if you sort of let it
deplete a little and topped it back up this sort of goes back to our previous
point where you know we talked about keeping a battery at about half charge
well this is sort of doing the see you want it around half charge and topping
it back up and that works the best for your battery in the long run there is
only one disadvantage to this method and that is the possibility of you know
confusing the calibration of the battery in a long run calibration is the
process that you know a device actually needs to do to find out how much juice
is actually left in your battery fully this Jing and then recharging your
battery sort of shows your device wet is zero and one hundred percent points up
and that will allow it to figure out you know where all the in between points
will like if you shallow discharge a battery enough times the previous
calibration might get thrown off which is why one possible thing you could do
is you could do a deep discharge of your battery save once a month doing it
more often than that really does more harm than good so don't bother all right
let's move on to misconception number three and that is when you actually buy a
device its first charge should happen over a long time this is another one of
those myths that have carried over from the nickel battery type in this day and
age with lithium batteries this is no longer a must in fact a lot of the time
you'll find that you know when you buy a new device if it has to live your
battery it's probably about fifty percent full and as we now know that is the
optimal way to actually you know leave a battery in storage for new devices you
can in fact start using it right away though of course if you do want to give
it a full charge you may do so but the moment you've reached full charge well
that's good enough you don't actually have to leave it on the charger for more
time because that's not actually helping anything the only drawback you have to
look out for is of course the issue of keeping a battery fully charged
misconception number four batteries should not be left on a charger for long
periods because that will over charge the battery now this is actually one of
those that are kind of on the line well not the overcharging part because
overcharging is no longer an issue with lithium batteries in fact even in a
nickel battery days this wasn't so huge of an issue you see unless all the
charger does is it takes power and just tries to feed it to the battery
constantly there is really no risk of overcharging a battery more charges
nowadays actually know when to you know shut off the charging when the battery
is full and as a result overcharging isn't an issue however you may still want
to take note of leaving your battery in the charger for an extended period of
time for one battery charges especially if they are actually connected to a
device that is in use well they tend to generate quite a bit of heat heat
doesn't play well with batteries that causes them to deteriorate faster and
that is why if you say have a laptop that you're using with the power in all
the time what some people do is they take out the battery by keeping it away
from the heat and of course from the constant charging up to a hundred percent
you can actually extend its life by a little
These are the two issues
you want to look out for now some laptops actually have some built-in
capability to prevent this from happening what it does is it allows the battery
to charge all the way up to one hundred percent and basically doesn't top up
the charge until it falls below say sixty percent this is great because of
course these are shallow discharges as we know that's good for a battery so
yeah if you have that capability built into your computer take advantage of it
it's not too hard to do it yourself when your battery actually hits one hundred
percent take it off the charger and don't plug it back in until it's fallen to
about half capacity misconception number five always use the charges produced
by the manufacturer of your product No yes you many sauces actually say this is
completely untrue but I do believe it is slightly modern once than that kisses
you generally it is untrue for a very simple reason that this is just a
marketing thing to lock you into the ecosystem now in some cases some
manufacturers do actually lock you in by actually giving you some proprietary
charger or sub proprietary cable in such cases manufacturers may introduce some
kind of electronics into either the charger or the cable itself preventing you
from actually using something produced by a third party of course that sucks if
your manufacturer has done that to you then unfortunately you have no choice
however in other cases there is one other consideration you need to make buying
a third PI charger is ok but buying a cheap knockoff charger is not and that is
for a safety reason cheap no brand charges may be produced in places where you
know safety guidelines are not being observed and that of course makes it
dangerous for you as the end user to actually be using it if you want to buy a
third-party charger that's completely okay but look for a reputable brand new
look for one that has you know sufficient reviews and yeah stay safe basically
that's it that's all the risk...
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