Extending Battery Life ?

[rickr100]

Just Purchased the Tungsten T. Great unit.
What kind of rechargable battery is in the unit?
Some batterys have a memory effect. That is if you do not drain the battery to the lowest point before recharging them they do not retain their long life. My question is. Should I use the Palm until it is almost drained and then recharge?

[Mountain Man]

O.K., I'm going to give you the long answer:

Battery "memory" is a myth. Rechargable nickel cadnium batteries are the ones generally associated with this misconception but only because they are/were fairly easy to corrupt, at least in their early days. Shortened battery life for nicads almost always resulted from overcharging or over discharging which can damage the individual cells significantly decreasing the battery's life (sometimes reversering the polarity of individual cells in the case of over discharge). People who didn't know any better thought the battery was "remembering" the state to which it was discharged each time, but the main culprit was usually over charging a partially charged battery.

Most new electronic devices use lithium ion batteries which are more robust than their nicad counterparts (among other things) and seem to be able to take more abuse leading the uninformed to believe that li-ons fixed the "memory" problem.

New rechargable devices usually have voltage checkers and what-not that reduce the amount of power the batteries receive when they reach full charge (called "trickle charging"), thus reducing or eliminating the dangers of damaging a battery from over charging. Over discharging can still be a problem, but most electronic gadgets shut themselves down before the battery reaches an extreme state of discharge.

So your best bet is to recharge your Palm every night and recharge it immediately if you get a low battery warning.

[Take1]

Q&A on PocketPC Passion has an answer about charging a Lithium ion batteries:

Battery; When is it best to recharge the it?
Who better to ask then GSBattery who manufactures Li-Ion cells? I received this answer to my question;
Dear Dale,

Lithium ion does not suffer from any ill effects from constant charging. However, in general, it is best to keep the battery charged up when ever possible. You see, battery cycle life is shortened by deep discharging, meaning that if you discharge the battery fully, that has a greater long-term ill effect on the battery than if you discharged it only 50% and then recharged it. The best way to maximize the life of your cell is to avoid deep discharges in general. Best of luck,

David Sugrue
GS Battery (USA) Inc.

[Ally G]

I just charge mine whenever possible so it's always on full, and i know that it will last me a long time.