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Hi
Sorry if this is repeated request. However I am a bit anal about battery life and like to charge my devices to get maximum battery life between charges. When I first got my phone I was advised to charge for 10 hrs. Should I do this every charge or just until the battery says full? Also I always wait until <10% before charging. Is this correct?
Many thanks.
When I first got my PB, after the first setup, I put it on the charger for 4 hours before I played with it.
I charge my PB overnight, so I am ready for a full day on the go.
The charge will be full when the plug shows on the battery icon (lighting bolt when still charging).
I don't wait till it's so low as your's. The PB starts to do funny things when it gets below the 20-30%.
Check out the User Guide in the RED link below for more great info..
How you charge has very little effect on the battery life. It's more about how you USE it. Mind the screen brightness and what apps and services you have running.
My playbook went from 20% to 96% in 2 hours with the rapid charger.
LiOn batteries don't suffer from memory issues. DO NOT discharge the battery completely. It will, in the long run, dimish its lifetime.
Charge the PB till you see the blot turn into a plug.
funny u always hear that u should discharge it before charging it again...
That was the rule years ago for Ni-Cad type batteries. The PB uses the newer Li-Ion type battery that is better served by charging frequently and by NOT discharging completely.
And if you do discharge it completly, you have to do the Stack Charge on the PB to get it to even start charging.. PITA.
So rule of thumb.... put it on the charger BEFORE it gets down to 10%.
2 cents... :D
Would it be harmful to leave the PB in the charger ALL night EVERY night even if it's at like 40-60% on some days?
Nope these batteries like to be charged, it keeps the ions bouncing about and happy :)
ive no idea what an ion is lol :D
No, it stops charging when it's done :)
Never timed mine but it takes about 3 hours from about 10-15% to fully charged.
As for the rapid charger, it should not decrease your charging time (may be just marginally).
I have never timed my PB during the charge as I put it on the charger every night, no matter what state of charge the battery is in.
Picked up my Rapid Charger two days ago - it is AWESOME!
My charging dock seems to work the fastest for me. It's a huge difference from the factory charger that it comes with.
I have to say the one app that I use all the time is Battery Guru. You should get it. The dev is a small company and its really useful to see the PB battery status.
Really worth the 1 or 2 bux it cost me.
Hands down the single app that has the most hours on it in my playbook!!
PS The next best purchase was the charging pod - that really sped up the charging process compared to the one that came with the PB. I got mine from Walmart for under $20 if i remember correctly.
High thanks for the info; when you say the pb starts to do funny things when it gets below 20-30%, could you give me an example so that I know what to look for. Many thanks
I run mine down to 10% all the time(well not all the time, just on several occasions, like 2 to 3 times a week, just cant put the damn thing down some days :D) and have 0 issues with it. I get no "funny things" happening at all. Only thing it does is beep and show me the battery has only 10% left, and blink the LED.
Only time I ran into a problem was when I kept using it and let the battery run down so far as the PB shut itself off. Needed a stack charge after that. Still didn't have any "funny things" happening though, worked fine up until it shut off.
The "funny things" mentioned is when running games that use alot of memory. I've had the game freeze and lockup when the battery is down to 10%.
I did not mean that it happens ALL the time.
Sorry I was not clear in my prior post.
Thanks for your feedback
Detailed charging data ....
12:02 put on charge 8%
13:02 @ 64%
14:08 @ 93%
14:30 @ 98%
14:39 @ 99%
14:44 @ 100%
An ion is a negative charge particle within the nucleus of an atom. Electrons are negatively charged and flow from the negative charge material to the positive charged material inside the battery.
Charge time equals the battery capacity in mah devided by the output of the charger in mah. Of course that is a completely dead battery so that will vary depending on the state of the battery but at least you have a rule of thumb to go by. It will not hurt Lion battery to leave it on charge or to charge it anytime it is convenient.
The regular charger takes about 3.5h to charge an empty battery, with PlayBook in standby.
The rapid charger takes about 3.2h under the same conditions.
If the PlayBook screen is on (or using significant power for some other reason) the regular charger will take longer, while the rapid charger will always take the same amount of time. (That's why it can be "2x faster" but generally is not.)
It's completely safe to leave the charger on it all the time: the PlayBook stops charging when it's full, and will simply use power straight from the charger instead of draining the battery. I've had mine on the charger for 3-4 weeks straight and it never put more juice into the battery during that time (once it was charged).
While draining the battery completely is quite safe (since RIM set the "0%" level so high that it's well above the voltage where this type of battery can be seriously damaged), there are a few people who have encountered problems with recharging it afterwards (very rare, but that "stack charge" thing mentioned above has come up from time to time, proving it can happen). For that reason alone it's not recommended in general that people drain fully all the time. I do frequently, and have no problems and don't see any decrease in max battery capacity (yet) as a result.
As others have said, it is NOT important how often you charge, or how low (or high) you let the battery get when discharging or charging. In theory, doing a full discharge then full charge will assist the OS in "recalibrating" its calculations of the battery capacity, thereby increasing the accuracy of the % remaining indicator. In practice, other than for brand new units (less than, say, 30 recharges) this doesn't seem to have a significant effect. (Battery Guru shows the OS-reported "health" reading and, generally, you can only affect it by a few percent by altering your charge/discharge patterns. There's also no evidence this effect is "real", so I wouldn't waste time trying.)