Normally I leave my MS Surface plugged in all the time and my cell phone and Kindle charging overnight. Is this practice negatively affecting the lifespan of the batteries? Is there a better way to lengthen a lithium battery’s lifespan?
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A cycle happens when you take a battery from discharged to a charged state. This can only be done so many times as the cells lose a little capacity every time. To prolong the life of lithium cells, avoid deeply discharging them. Connect the device to a charger before it is empty. Usually the device will shut down before too much damage occurs. You can keep the battery topped up if the charger works correctly and cuts the power at the voltage that represents full. For prolonged storage, charge batteries to about 60 percent. They will slowly discharge on their own.
For best longevity, you want to keep batteries around room temperature and avoid charging them over 90% or less than 10%.
Things to specifically avoid are charging batteries when they’re very cold, and continuing to discharge batteries all the way to 0%
Also worth noting that many devices put some sort of buffer in the battery, where it will tell you 100% and stop charging when the battery is only actually at 95-97%, and will display 0% and shut off when the battery is only actually at 5-10% This buffer is to prevent excess wear and tear on it. It’s usually *not* a reserve that gets opened up later in the devices lifecycle to improve battery life, as people often think.
At work we see that charge at slower rates prolongs cyclability (“battery life”). Same can be said on discharge rates
So if you run at low C’s, a term used to indicate charge transfer speed, you get a longer battery life. On the chemical level, it makes the redox (chemical reaction) more reversible
Look up thermodynamic reversibility for more detail on why that all is. Its based on entropy
As other have said, a charge cycle is going from one charge state (0 or 100%), to the opposite state, and back
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