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Hello friends,
Intro:
The information I'm about to post about your battery is universal to all lithium batteries and in no way is your case special as they're operation is complex but simple to break down for all of you to digest and decide if you are in fact having a problem or not. I will cover the various circumstances playbook users experience and what it actually means.
FAQ:
1.)"My playbook has a funny bump or bulge on the back and Its warm/hot around that area"
*quick edit - it was pointed out to me that the battery is offset from the swollen area invalidating most of question #1. and a quick thanks to "SumthinNew" for pointing this out. Although unrelated to the battery i was looking at the teardown and it appears this is simply the result of the processor getting hot enough to disfigure the plastic. I would assume this would frequently occur with those who have cases for their playbooks as that would help insulate the heat increasing the internal temperature
This is normal and likely an attribute of excellent design. "How can that be"? you ask, well you playbook uses a battery type called a Lithium Polymer. Its a rectangular tightly wrapped air free series of small lithium cells. When a battery is in use in the playbook; charging, On, being used; it build up heat through resistances which causes the battery to expand from pressure. "But why some and not others?" this happens because the battery pack has a tiny pocket of air inside some times and because of that the pressure builds up and the casing expands.
So in a nutshell, your battery has a small air pocket in the battery which due to heat buildup from the battery being used, build pressure and revels a little swell after a good charge or using your playbook for a while. The reason I said this is the result of a good design is because RIM choose to make the playbook back plate flexible is accomidate the swelling to provide all end users a healthy long lived battery.
2.)
"My battery is not charging! Is it dying?"
I will let you determine the answer to your question. There are only 3 things that ware down lithium batteries within reasonably controlled environments (being your playbook). The first is time, the second is usage, the third is heat. Infact they all stack against each other multiplying the ware.
*Time - Simply speaking, all lithium batteries have and expiry date. Hypotheticly with some variables aside, even if it was never used it would still ware out within 5 years or so.
*Usage - the more the battery operates the faster the decay. The amount of charges is irrelevant to popular belief within a batteries life. Infact the decay is simply measured in total Amp hours. Simply put, you cant measure a vehicles life time in gas station fill ups but rather the ware and tare of its usage right?
*Heat - This is the only thing you can actually control. Heat builds pressure in the battery which produces ware and tare similar to my analogy above. Heat is also a product of energy transfer, that of which travels through the battery to power the tablet or charge the battery. The more energy involved, the more heat is produced which has diminished returns on chemical structure of the battery. simply put, if you have a piece of metal and don't want it to rust then you obviously would not expose it to water right? You can ultimately reduce the heat by lowering the power consumption or you can be nerdy like be and build a cooling station for it while it charges
3.) "My battery dies very quickly whats going on!"
If you have ready everything above then this should be quiet clear. There is 1 way to discharge a battery and that is through power consumption. Thinking in a way that your battery circumstances are changing is false but rather the truth its either your device sucking up the power through regular usage or a fault in the programming causing redundant processing or you have a physical power leak.
A physical power leak will never occur over time by its self. These are subject to faulty circuitry and such symptoms can determined after a physical accident such as dropping it, water damage, or anything that could cause a circuit to be crossed to allow the energy to not flow the way intended.
4.) AND THE MONEY QUESTION "How do I preserve my battery?"
- Simple use less power where possible! know it sounds stupid but you have features on your device to reduce power consumption whiles its not being used or simply keeping the the screen lamp dim even while using it. Here are some more examples is excessive power usage; using the speakers on the device or the volume level, running multiple apps, WIFI, Bluetooth, physically charging your battery uses energy.
-A great way to preserve your battery and still enjoy the maximum benefits of your playbook is to mitigate the power consumption to other devices where possible. like using an seperately powered amplifier for sound rather than the built in speakers or head phones. Or taking advantage of the Mini HDMI port on your TV while running the lowest brightness on the tablet
- Another great way to preserve the battery is to physically turn it off when ever your not going to be using it for a while instead of using standby mode all the time. This should be obvious but restarting the tablet fresh and restarting it will ensure any memory leaks invisible to you causing extra power consumption will be stopped temporarily.
5.) And finally "how often should I charge my battery?" or "can I leave my charger in all the time?"
First let me tell that lithium batteries do not diminish with memory like the old Nickel cadmium did that you would stick in your old camera, as a matter of a fact lithium batteries are nothing like any other battery what so ever aside from retaining power. The most notable difference is that it is the LAW everywhere that lithium batteries power levels and consumption must be regulated by circuitry. Why? well its because lithium batteries are extremely unstable unregulated and EXTREMELY dangerous without the proper measure set in place! Im not trying to rant but instead paint the picture of the complexity behind these batteries. This means that they charge much differently than any other battery. The battery charges very rapidly until it reaches a certain point close to its completion, after this stage the power slows down that is charging it eventually to a trickle charge. and then when fully charged the power automaticly stops. All of which is a good example of how these batteries are different.
So leaving the charger in is good and bad. The good is that it doesn't have to so frequently endure the ware of a rapid charge which produces alot of heat BUT its bad to have a fully charged battery! WHATs THAT YOU SAY? BAD? yes a fully charged battery is not good at all! Lithium Batteries being made of chemicals actually expand with respect to the charge level. This is due to pressure from the preserved energy of which is stressful for the chemical structure of the battery. This leads me to what the most efficient charge level is. Keeping your battery around %50 is good. You still need to once in a while fully charge your battery and also fully discharge your battery (let it run out on its own). The reason why is because remember how i was mentioning the battery is electronically maintained? Well the electronics are actually smart enough to understand the batteries thresholds and adjust how it charges it. This is commonly referred to as Lithium Battery Conditioning.
So in conclusion I'm very tired and im going to bed. Please read around the grammar and spelling since ill fix it up later should this topic grow.Last edited by A1C-James; 01-07-12 at 12:44 PM.
01-07-12 07:53 AM - very nice write-up. good info. but may i ask to add that 100% discharge of Lithium batteries is not good for them either. the high current draw at full discharge is what caused battery problems with early Lithium batteries. things have changed with the charging practices in regard to this. infact if a Lithium battery is so low in charge that a high current draw is nessary to recharge it. it will not charge to prevent over-heating of the battery. so try to not let it get too low in charge level. my android phone warns if the charge is nearing 15% that immeadate charging is nessary.
i enjoyed your post keep up the good work.
cheers01-07-12 02:47 PM - Please get the full picture before scaring people with this sort of thing, or before being scared by it.
"Full" discharge... "high current draw"... care to quantify those so we can apply the information in context?
The PlayBook is designed never to discharge the batteries "fully". In fact it shuts itself off when the batteries reach 3.4V, which is well above any level generally considered to be "not good" for the batteries. The charging subsystem is design never to overcharge the batteries, either in terms of voltage or current.
You can discharge the PlayBook to 0% without concern for the battery, as far as all my research indicates. I'd be more than happy for someone to prove me wrong about that, provided they can offer references and hard facts, rather than merely repeating phrases out of context in ways that simply scare regular users into doing silly things that unnecessarily limits their PlayBook experience.
Sorry to jump on you bluezone1, but while what you say is technically true, I think you'll agree that it simply doesn't apply when the product's design prevents anyone from getting their battery to the state you're talking about. If you can show that 3.4V is a level at which these batteries will be significantly damaged, or that the batteries can ever take a "high current draw" from the charger, I'll eat my hat (and that's a figure of speech: I hate the taste of wool!).01-07-12 03:00 PM - i am not offended by what u are saying nor do i feel jumped on at all. communication is always good.Please get the full picture before scaring people with this sort of thing, or before being scared by it.
"Full" discharge... "high current draw"... care to quantify those so we can apply the information in context?
The PlayBook is designed never to discharge the batteries "fully". In fact it shuts itself off when the batteries reach 3.4V, which is well above any level generally considered to be "not good" for the batteries. The charging subsystem is design never to overcharge the batteries, either in terms of voltage or current.
You can discharge the PlayBook to 0% without concern for the battery, as far as all my research indicates. I'd be more than happy for someone to prove me wrong about that, provided they can offer references and hard facts, rather than merely repeating phrases out of context in ways that simply scare regular users into doing silly things that unnecessarily limits their PlayBook experience.
Sorry to jump on you bluezone1, but while what you say is technically true, I think you'll agree that it simply doesn't apply when the product's design prevents anyone from getting their battery to the state you're talking about. If you can show that 3.4V is a level at which these batteries will be significantly damaged, or that the batteries can ever take a "high current draw" from the charger, I'll eat my hat (and that's a figure of speech: I hate the taste of wool!). no hat eating will be needed.
i will explain myself if u would like to private message me.i understand the point about not scaring people.01-07-12 08:51 PM
