4 Myth and Facts about Lithium-ion Polymer Batteries

March 20, 2009 at 00:42 9 comments

Two more days!

Two more days!

Two more days till I get my very own iPhone… Wee~ Now I’m starting to think of all the possibilities, like Facebook anywhere, email anywhere, checking blog status anywhere, Instant Message anywhere, Google anywhere… So many things to do, so little battery! Specs from Apple’s official iPhone page suggests that the iPhone could last about 5 hours of intensive use, and up to 300 hours on standby. Currently for my iPod Touch (2nd Gen), I use about 60% of the battery per day. If the iPhone arrives, I think I might use up the battery even faster.

Now that thought is really starting to worry me as you can’t replace iPhone’s battery (at least not by yourself). You’d have to send it back to the Apple service center to get the battery replaced, and that, is definitely going to cost a bomb. Time to start to learn how to conserve some battery life!

The Li-ion Polymer on my HTC P3600i

The Li-ion Polymer on my HTC P3600i

While I was digging over some tech specs of iPhone’s and iPod’s battery, I’ve found some rather interesting new facts about the batteries they use – Lithium-ion Polymers (or Li-ion Polymer, for short). Lithium-ion batteries are one of the most common rechargeable batteries out there. It is found on most portable consumer electronics like the iPod, iPhone, laptops, cellphone, digital cameras… you name it. With that comes loads of myths and question regarding rechargeable batteries and how to best use them. These are some of the most common ones I’ve heard:

Myth 1: Rechargeable batteries needs priming (you need to charge X hours / overnight before you can use it for the first time)

Fact 1: While some older rechargeable battery types like Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) and Nickel Metal Hydrate (NiMH) needs priming, Lithium-ions in general (including Li-ion Polymers) do not need priming. You can use them out of the box. In fact nowadays, some, if not most, NiCd and NiMH batteries comes factory primed, so you can also use and charge them as normal out of the box. Just to be safe, please do read the manual.

Myth 2: Unplug it from the charger once it is fully charged. Leaving the charger connected will blow up the battery / reduce the battery’s life (times you can charge it)

Fact 2: One of the most common one I’ve heard so far. Neh… you can neither over-charge it, nor can you reduce the battery’s life by keeping it plugged in. They have built in circuits to cut power to it once it’s fully charged. However, it is still a good idea to remove the battery (if removable, like laptops) or unplug it once it’s charged. Reason? Although the batteries will not over-charge, the heat from charging or due to poor heat ventilation will still cause it to blow up, not something you want happening. Second, batteries tend to discharge faster when heated, so yes… keeping it plugged in and awfully warm will reduce its lifespan; but so does normal operation under extra warm conditions!

Myth 3: Thou shall drain every last watt of it before recharging it (because they suffer from ‘memory effect’)

Fact 3: Okay, you might now first ask what’s ‘memory effect’. Here’s the quick answer: Some types of rechargeable batteries will gradually lose their maximum capacity if you do not discharge it completely before recharging. If you often use it till the 40% mark and recharge from there, the battery will “think” that the 40% mark is the new 0%, thus you get less capacity. Again, they apply to older battery technologies, but Lithium-ions do NOT suffer from memory effect, at all. On the contrary, if you completely use up a Lithium-ion battery too often, it might just fall into deep discharge state and fail to recharge far faster than you recharge from partial usage. Click here for more info on memory effect.

Myth 4: Don’t re-charge it too often, one time charged is one time less you can charge it. Ex: 100 “charge cycles” = can only charge for 100 times

Fact 4: Well, the actual math is a little different than what is written up there, and most of us have little idea of what charge cycle actually means. So, in plain, short English, one charge cycle means one full 100% charge, regardless of how many times you charge in between. Still confused? I am. Okay… here’s another example: let’s say you use only 20% per day and charge it, it will take you 5 days / 5 charges to consume one charge cycle, 5 x 20% = 100%. In the same light, if you use to 50% everytime and charge it to full, you will consume one charge cycle for every 2 times you charge it (Simple maths: 50% x 2 = 100%). However, regardless of the charge cycle, the capacity will still decline with the battery’s age. In that sense, older batteries will have less capacity even if it has never been charged before (Thanks to Hae Gunso for the information).

Conclusion

Well, these tips will not make your batteries last forever, but it does help to know what helps prolong it, and what doesn’t.

Disclaimer! The facts presented are subjected to the best understanding of the author, and might not be entirely accurate. For most accurate information, please consult your device’s manual.

Links

General Lithium-ion Polymer battery information on Apple’s website

FAQ on iPod’s batteries

Entry filed under: Misc. Tags: , , , , , , , .

iPhone Launching in Malaysia with Maxis Maxis iPhone Launch Fiasco

9 Comments Add your own

  • 1. Hae_gunso  |  March 24, 2009 at 13:36

    Regarding your Fact 4, I got a different story from wikipedia:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ion_battery#Disadvantages_of_traditional_Li-ion_technology
    “regardless of whether it was charged or the number of charge/discharge cycles, the battery will decline slowly”

    Reply
  • 2. Kazuki  |  March 24, 2009 at 18:51

    Thanks for pointing that out, have to include that too. Anyways, fact 4 is explaining the term “charge cycle”. Post updated.

    Reply
  • 3. doom_shades  |  August 25, 2010 at 15:40

    you’ve based fact number 4’s correction from wikipedia which was in turn was based from a link tagged as an unreliable source.

    Reply
  • 4. tyia brown  |  February 17, 2011 at 01:09

    this is a nice lukn website

    Reply
  • 5. Battery Myth | WengKhin.com  |  May 30, 2011 at 00:06

    […] here] 4 myth and facts about lithium ion polymer batteries from kipre.wordpress.com <<Miss […]

    Reply
  • 6. BRIGHT ADIRIEJE  |  December 2, 2011 at 06:37

    I think you did a nice work I’m really impressed and i like having people that discovers as friends. From Bright.

    Reply
  • 7. Kyllikki Anderson  |  December 4, 2012 at 15:39

    For me those are really need to take in mind most of the time those batteries that made in Lithium ion polymer batteries are broken because of un proper charging in Helsinki Finland many of batteries are really has an quality but it is depend on how they charge it because we all know that over charging make the battery heat and cause different kind of things.

    Reply
  • 8. Emily  |  December 11, 2012 at 02:22

    Sure

    Reply
  • 9. Trista  |  January 4, 2013 at 06:46

    Just desire to say your article is as astonishing.
    The clearness in your post is simply great and i can assume you’re an expert on this subject. Well with your permission allow me to grab your RSS feed to keep updated with forthcoming post. Thanks a million and please carry on the gratifying work.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

Trackback this post  |  Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed


Archives


%d bloggers like this: