So this is my first smartphone. I was told that with my laptop since its a lithium ion battery to keep it charged as much as possible, if its at 100% to keep it plugged in as long as you can until you dont have the option of keeping it plugged in and have no outlet. You are supposed to do this because with lithium ion batteries the more often they get below 30% they use one cycle of the battery and the battery only has so many cycles until it is dead, so by keeping it plugged in as often as possible it will prevent the battery form dying. And i was told that keeping it in while it is at 100% is ok, and actually good for the phone so its not using battery if you have an outlet where you can charge it.
Is it the same with smartphones since they also have lithium ion batteries? Someone just told me its bad to keep your phone charging all the time and it can just overheat it. is this true?? Ive had this phone for a couple weeks and i charge it whenever i can if i have an outlet around me because i dont want the battery to get too low and use a cycle.
I don't think any of that is correct but only because I've heard different stuff. I'm certainly no battery expert, but, my understanding is that it isn't a discreet number of charges and then your battery self-destructs. Instead they just do laboratory tests where they drain and fill probably a sample of batteries coming off the line and give some statistics on how many cycles until they found the battery unusable.
I would think that what you are doing would actually be worse for the battery than letting it drain down. I always try to drain my battery down really low periodically so that it gets a "full charge". But...like I said, I'm not an expert. Most lithium ion makers and self-proclaimed "experts" will say that it really doesn't matter when you charge your battery and a lot of things that people think about NiMH batteries doesn't apply to Lithium ion batteries. The most important things are:
(1) Never let the battery drain fully. Once it has drained completely it may never come back.
(2) Do not charge if the device is hot or in a warm to hot environment. Leaving your phone charging in your vehicle on a hot summer day would do bad things.
(3) If you are going to store it I think it is something like 60-80% full is ideal for longer life. Just don't let it drop to 0 and realize that it will slowly drain to 0 so you actually have to periodically recharge batteries that are in storage (think, old phones) or else they will die out completely. I haven't been so good with my iPhone 3GS but it is still working fine.
