Questions about charging lithium batteries (to prolong battery life)

[samaaa]

Hi, I want to know what is the proper methods to prolong lithium battery life:

When Should I recharge the battery(at any level 90%, 70 or 40 etc)?
Should I charging it fully at 100%?

is true that discharging battery below 20% once each month is useful to boost battery life?

 

[.Scott]

Try this link:
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-tips-for-extending-lithium-ion-battery-life/

Discharging the battery to below 20% each month will not boost Lithium batteries - but it will recalibrate your battery charge indicator.

 

[samaaa]

thank you

 

[Office_Shredder]

There are a lot of myths about recharging batteries which are holdovers from previous technologies. Nickel-Cadmium batteries and other similar ones would experience capacity degradation if you did partial charges/recharges, but lithium batteries will not.

Your charge indicator is based on the voltage of the battery, which decreases slowly as the battery empties. Near 0% and 100% it sharply drops/rises, so it is only around those areas that your battery indicator is very accurate. From my experience working with lithium batteries it is easier calibrate the charge indicator by charging it up to 100% than it is to discharge it to 0 because there are other effects that kick in near 0% that make it difficult to tell how much charge is really left. It is possible that on consumer electronics they don't actually let you charge/discharge all the way to the top and bottom though, so this advice may not be suitable for your laptop (and in that case it would be easier to tell by discharging it all the way). At any rate I wouldn't worry about trying to calibrate your charge indicator by doing a special charge or discharge unless you are planning on working with your laptop on battery in a situation where it is very critical that you know how much battery life is left; it's not like it will be reporting that you have 80% battery when you really have 20%, just things like reporting you have 40% when you really have 30%.