Thursday, April 02, 2009

Is Sprint misinformed about Lithium batteries?


An article I just received from Sprint in an e-mail claims that the Lithium batteries in their phones degrade after only 80 charge cycles and that I should "only charge it when the battery is almost empty."

That goes against everything I've ever heard/read about Lithium based rechargeable batteries. Here are two sources I grabbed quickly:

From BatteryUniversity.com:

The battery prefers a partial rather than a full discharge. Frequent full discharges should be avoided when possible.
From the Laptop Battery blog:
it is better to recharge more often; avoid frequent full discharges.
Perhaps their marketing folks were reading from old spec sheets on Nickel-Cadmium based batteries which would actually benefit from this advice.

If anyone sees other resources to substantiate or refute this claim from Sprint, please post a comment.

4-3-2009: I found another couple of references to good discussions:

http://spicygadget.com/2006/12/24/guide-getting-the-most-out-of-your-lithium-battery/

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lithium-ion-battery2.htm