Rechargable Battery! What an incorrect name? In this world there are no real 100% rechargable batteries. Are you saying I am wrong and you are using them every day in almost in every electronic gadget like your Cell phone, Cordless Phone, MP3 Player, Digital Camera? I bet you, they are not really 100% rechargable. Surprised to know why? Keep reading.....
When so called rechargable batteries are charged, most reversible chemical reaction takes place and a minute portion of irreversible chemical reaction also happens. If a battery is rechargable 1000 times, the lost efficiency is 1/1000 time and this happens during every cycle. That is how they will be become unusable after several months or few years or several cycles of charge/recharge.
Some people return the Cordless phone back to the base station after using it every time. Some others plug in the cell phone or the Digital camera or the MP3/iPod every night to top up to the maximum level and feel so happy to see all bars after full charge. This gives an impression that it keeps full charge and you can use it to get most talk time. This is completely wrong!
Here is why !!!!
As we discussed above, there is little loss every time you charge and discharge, this loss happens usually at the one side/end of the electrode. In a complete charge/re-charge cycle, this happens uniformly and the battery gives long life with less number of complete cycles instead of shorter number of too many cycles. So you should always let the charge happens to the full level and let it dry out to 80 or 90% of it instead of recharging it after using it for 10 or 20%.
So is it good to let it discharge/use completely and and then re-charge from 0% to 100%? This is also not correct. Some times deep discharge may kill the battery and and you may not be able to charge again. So it is always best to charge it while it still has 10-20% of charge. If you have 5 bars in your battery indicator, you should charge so soon as you see it is having the last bar.
@ X PM in the night you are thinking before you are to bed: Tomorrow I have a 2 hour conference call and I see my battery is showing half of its charge and it may not last for 2 hours, shall I charge or not?
It is OK to charge occassionally to skip a complete charge-recharge cycle and do a top-off as long as it do not become a habit.
