How Rechargeable Batteries Work

three player. That's the rechargeable battery. Yes, the the the device to which we are all slaves. How many times, Chris, have you been out and about and you were about to rely upon your favorite mobile gadget only to discover your battery had completely drained away and you couldn't get it to work no matter what. That's thousands of times, Jonathan. It's a real source of frustration. Yeah, it is for me to um. And so we wanted to talk about kind of what you need to do in order to

keep your battery in the best possible working order. There's a lot of conflicting information out there, as it turns out, in fact, there was there was one thing that both Chris and I believed was you know, that was the right thing to do all the time. That turned out

to not necessarily be true. Right, Yeah, that's true. And just as a little bit of background, the thing that prompted me to suggest this topic for a podcast is I get complaints all the time about people who say their cell phonwner MP three player dies and I asked them, have you ever conditioned your battery or or calibrated your battery?

And they go, what? And the thing is that I don't think a lot of people know, and I don't think a lot of manufacturers include information that says, hey, look, every once in a while, your machine is not going to understand how much juice is left on that battery because they decompose over time. And Jonathan and I both knew of a way to do it, but it turns out it's not exactly right. No. It for one thing, it might actually harm your battery or at least decrease

it's useful lifespan. And we're talking lifespan. We're not necessarily talking how long it will hold a charge. We're talking about how many times you can recharge it before that battery is just a big lump of you know, it's just a paper weight and you you need to get a new battery. That's what we're really talking about when

we're talking about lifespan here. Now. The the the tactic that we thought originally was the best to use was that you use your mobile devices until the battery essentially drains down to zero before you connect it back and recharge it all the way back up to rather than say, using it and it just dropped to maybe, you know, or six, and then you you know, charge it up to eighty and then you let it go down to forty and then you charge it back up to maybe

eighty again or whatever. We were thinking, well, that's that's not a good idea because eventually your battery is going to think that eight is the new one hundred, sort of like pink is the new black. Yeah. Yeah, And honestly, that's uh most of the time, that's how you're going to use these things. But as your let's face it, your cell phone, you don't want to go, uh, driving around long distance, especially in a um car that may or may not make it to the destination with a

half a bar left of battery life. You're gonna say, look, I need my cell phone charge all the way. I can't let it drain all the way and I you know, gotta get it charged right now. So this is not how most people do things. This is you know, they just get as much energy as they can on it and go back out. But that's another charging cycle, that's your battery uses, so charging cycles. This is a good

time to address that that issue. Now. A charging cycle, a full cycle is essentially one of that battery's capacity. A charging cycle is when you have reached the point where you have used of that battery's capacity and recharged it to That doesn't have to be all at once, So in other words, you don't have to have used all one of your battery and recharged it all the way up. Yes, that will, that will mean one full cycle.

But you could also do it, say the use of your battery every day of the week and you recharge it at the end of the day, so Monday through Friday, that equals and that's a full cycle as well. It doesn't matter if it's all at once or in bits and pieces, and batteries have a limited number of charge cycles. That's true. Um, every time you do this, it it's just that a little bit more wear and tear on the battery. And in general, um a lithium ion battery

has thousands of charge cycles. Sure, so you know your laptop battery will last several years in general before you have to worry about replacing it. Yeah, usually at least three or four. And another issue that you have to keep in mind is that it will last, but it may not hold as much of a charge as it

used to. That it'll it'll begin to degrade in quality, so you'll have maybe charge now the battery, the meter is still gonna say because it's holding a percent of the energy it's capable of holding, but that isn't equal to the hundred percent you got when you bought it in the store. And that's where the uh, that's where the electronics onboard whatever device that you're powering with a

rechargeable battery come in. See, the battery is going through a natural chemical process um and storing the energy, and it basically at some point can't hold quite as much as it used to. Is Jonathan was just saying, But your computer doesn't know that. It still thinks it can hold, you know, as much as it did two cycles ago. Well, the thing is over time, your computer is gonna say, hey, look you you've got this much time left and you don't um. And that's why, after a while, your laptop

is gonna say, you're gonna unplug your laptop. In twenty seconds later, it's going to give you an alert telling you you gotta plug in your computer or it's gonna die. And you're gonna go, wait a minute, Just a second ago it said I had nothing exactly. And then that's where conditioning or calibrating your battery comes in. You have

to get them if you will in sync with one another. Now, the best advice we can give you is that whenever you buy a new device with a new battery in it is charge that battery all the way up as soon as you get home. Don't don't start using it. Like if you've got a new cell phone it's got a little bit of a charge on it, don't start. Don't give in to temptation like I have done on many occasions, and start using that that device. Immediately, go and charge it all the way up to This will

calibrate your battery. It will tell your device, hey, I'm at a full charge. This is what a full charge looks like. Um, this is what I should shoot for every single time I am charging up to Otherwise, your your device maybe reading your batteries life incorrectly, and as Chris pointed out, it might tell you you have a dred percent, but in reality you're closer to maybe seventy or eight, and you're not getting as much out of

your mobile devices as you would otherwise. Yeah, and it's it's hard, you know, here, we here again, this is not how we use things. We're gonna want to get into the temptation to go ahead and turn on your new cell phone and start playing HTCG one, which I did that with and immediately needed to recalibrate. Yeah, exactly. Um, but yeah, all of us are excited about having the new gadget and want to go ahead and start using it. But you have to and and that's fine, it's gonna

be fine. But the thing is your battery is not going to be fully calibrated and it's not going to give you the maximum life out of the battery. And you know, these things are expensive. If you've had to replace a computer battery on your laptop, you go, you know, a hundred and fifty dollars and five dollars. That's that's pretty expensive. It's not you want to try to get as much life as you can out of it. So it's it's a good idea to do this, and you

need to do it every so often. Um, not every week or anything like that, but I think the experience experts recommend that it, you know, once every month or a couple of months, you should go through it again. Now, it does take a charging cycle to do that, but it's worth it to to do that. Yeah, And here's some other tips that you can use to help keep

your battery life lasting as long as possible. If you're not using a device regularly, if it's just in a once in a blue moon, it's a good idea to to to take the device out every now and then and let it run for a little while. Uh uh. Apple actually calls this encouraging the flow of electrons. Uh So if you have electron right exactly, you can do it. And uh yeah, if you don't do that, then it's

the battery life can actually degrade over time. So even if you're not using it often, it's good to take it out once in a while, you know, like if it's an old cell phone or any other device like

a gaming device. If you have a gaming device as a rechargeable battery, um, you're gonna want to at least, you know, let it run for a little well, you know, let's let your little cousin who never gets to play it give a world on legend of Zelda or something, and that way it will uh with the electrons flowing, it keeps everything uh more prepared for the whole charging

and draining cycle. Um. Also, when you store batteries storm in a cool but not cold place, you don't want it to get too hot, um because that will will definitely shorten your batteries useful life. You don't want to get too cold because that can also kill a battery. Also, it takes longer for the battery to warm up and actually you know, start providing juice to whatever device you have.

So you want a nice medium, something nice and cool. Um. You know, you don't want to keep a whole bunch of extra batteries on hand either, they will degrade on

their own, even if you don't have them attached to anything. Uh, it's better to you know, you have maybe maybe an extra one if it's a device where you know there's a problem where it's just sucking down battery life so fast that you needed an extra but I would, um, I would recommend actually finding a like an extra charging device for that, something that can hold a charge and uh and and charge your device, usually through a USB cord.

I've got one of those, um where it will hold probably about of my my g one's battery life on this device. So if if I were to hit a really low level, I could just plug it in and keep it going for another couple of hours before I needed to find a a more permanent solution. That's true.

And if you know, if you're to the point where you're not using something that has a rechargeable battery in it, and you realize you're probably not going to use it again, it's probably best to go ahead and remove that battery before it starts to corrode and you know, just to recycle that sucker or you know, you know, recycled the hold darn thing. If you have an old cell phone battery, acid is no joke. It can ruin lots and lots

of cool stuff. Well details details, um So, essentially, there are a lot of different theories on how you should do this. Um, if you're going to calibrate your computer battery, Apple has some suggestions from their website that I got. Different manufacturers have different ways of doing that. But um, the first thing you need to do, according to Apple, is to plug your computer in and and let it go until it's fully charged. Now you can actually run

your computer during this time. UM, but you're supposed to let the battery rest for two hours. Don't unplug the computer while you're using it. UM, that's really important. Um. And then basically you need to unplug it and let it run. You know, you can use it or just let it sit until it goes to sleep on its own, and then go ahead and plug it back in. Actually wait a minute, sorry, check in my notes. This just in. Once you do let it go to sleep, you need

to let it sit for about five hours. Wow. And uh. And then once you do that, you can plug it in until the battery is fully charged and you can use it as normal. Uh. There's no mention of whether or not you have to draw a circle on the floor or sacrifice alive chicken. Uh. Yeah, it does seem See. I had to write it down because I didn't have it all memorized. UM. Some manufacturers, although Apple is not one of them, actually have software that they include with

their laptops that help you calibrate your battery UM. A lot of PC manufacturers will do that to help you go through the steps and you don't have to read a long list of things that you might get lost in the middle of like I did right and well

and and the encouraging the flow of electrons. Part of that also is if you use your your laptop and you plug it in a lot like like we do here, it's a good idea every now and then to just let run on battery life and and use it on battery life for a while, and then you know, you

plug it back in and you know that's fine. You can work on it, but but vary it so that sometimes you're using it on battery, sometimes you're using it under you know, a cable power and UM and that can also help extend your batteries life and all of them.

You know, again, you don't have to do this, it's not something that's required, but it is going to help you get the maximum life out of the battery, which is a sizeable investment if you have to go have have it replaced especially if it's something that you have to have somebody else replaced for you, and in different electronics that have to be eervis by the manufacturer. So I can think of one manufacturer right off the top

of my head where that as a common problem. Yes, my wife, this is a good segue into that my wife had battery replaced. My wife has a popular MP three brand player. Um that what she couldn't have. She it wouldn't hold a charge, it would, you know, She try and turn it on and it would stay on for a couple of seconds, it wouldn't necessarily play a song or would start playing. It would immediately just go black and she wouldn't be able to do anything with it.

And it turned out it was this problem where the software was not recognizing how much power was left in the battery, and all it really took was resetting the the device back to its original settings, charging it all the way up and everything's fine now. Unfortunately, in the process that means losing all the stuff that was on there,

so we had to reload it. But that's still even though that's annoying and frustrating, that's not nearly as annoying and frustrating as buying a new device when you think that you've broken your old one. The old one wasn't broken, it just needed to be recalibrated. Yeah, and it's certainly an inexpensive thing to try. I mean, recalibrating the battery doesn't cost you anything except maybe a battery cycle. So

you know it might be worth it to try. And next time you have something some weird behavior go on, at least before you go and drop three more dollars on a new something. Very true, Very true. That was a good discussion, I think. Are you you know? I got a real charge out of it. Oh geez, hopefully our listeners did too. I find it revolting nice. Well, before we go with this shocking podcast, I would like to once again visit our favorite segment, Plug your Ears Pillette.

It's listener mail. Can I plug my ears? And So? Today's listener mail comes from Chris Besquez of St. Thomas, Ontario, Canada. So hello a and for Chris writes. He says, Hey guys from Tech Stuff that be Us. You have a great podcast, Thanks Chris, but you have did have an error. In one of your latest podcasts, you said that you would never see a virus in your task bar. But that's not true. You see plenty of viruses in your

task bar if they're designed to be there. There's tons of viruses that say you have a virus on your computer, so you install their anti virus software, which is actually a virus. There are other ones as well. Now, Chris, I see what you're saying here. Um, I agree. There are programs out there that are a viruses out there that are masquerading as legitimate programs. They try and trick you into downloading a virus by saying, hey, your computer is at risk. You need our software so that you

won't be attacked by viruses. And many of us think, hey, that's a good idea because I don't want to get attacked by virus. So you download it, not knowing that you're actually installing a virus on your own computer. And you might see that in the system trade and and you would go, hey, look my virus protection software. There

it is, it's workings running. Now, what we were saying is you would not see a blately obvious virus in your task bar because that would give away the whole, the whole uh point that there was a virus on your computer. Um, so that was that was the point we were making, Chris, was that we don't think you would see a little skull and crossbones in your task bar saying ha ha, I got you you have a virus, because that would mean that you would take the steps

necessary to remove it. But you are right. If you install a virus that is masquerading as a legitimate program, it could show up in your task bar. So thank you very much for the email, and if any of you want to email us, you can do so at our email address, which is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. If you want to learn more about lithium ion batteries and portable mobile devices, we have information in dozens of articles on how stuff works dot com.

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