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Hey folks,
I got my black NC10 for a week now, and am totally happy with it – screen’s bright, the keyboard’s good, performance wise I haven’t had problems yet. But the most amazing thing to me is the long lasting battery. I really don’t need to take the AC adapter with me, as I never drain the battery completely. That’s totally different for me, since with my old notebooks I would always run out of battery power sooner or earlier, and then I would recharge it when I get home or search for a place with AC supply and plug it in.
Now I have those situations: My netbook has still between 30% – 60% charge when I come home, and I will probably use it over the rest of the day.
My questions are:
Should I start recharging the battery as soon as I have access to AC power, even tho there’s let’s say 50% charge left – or should I use the battery until ~25% and then plug it in?
When I know that I’ll use the netbook before the charging will complete (eg. the battery is at 50%, and I will use it in 20 minutes), is it better to charge it in the meantime or not?I tried gooling that questions but have not found satisfying answers. All I know is that the battery should ideally always be charged before it runs low, ie. at ~20% or more.
From what I’ve been reading, around 20% is when you should charge. With that said, I’m still confused because everyone seems to have a different opinion.
Lipo battery’s arn’t like the past rechargeable’s we know. they don’t have any memory ( the milk bottle effect ) this means you can charge them at any point and it won’t decrease the battery life, you don’t need to cycle ( run flat before charging ( in fact its better not to run them down, see below ).
A down side to lipo’s is that they have balanced cells which are connected in series ( 6 cells in the sammy ) if one or more these cells drop below a certain voltage the whole battery will be un-chargeable ( dead ).
this is where the “charge at 20%” come into play. in other uses for lipo batteries ( like radio controlled vehicles ) the battery use is not controlled ( ie uses in a device that is capable of continuing to use the battery below its critical voltage.
with computers some people think that at around the lower percent as reported by the pc, a cell ( or all ) may hit the voltage limit.
However Samsung will have tested the battery to destruction and will not allow the machine to run when the voltage hits a level above the critical point.Ie 0% on the sammy might be 5v per cell where as the critical voltage might be 3v per cell.
lipos do like to be trickle charged however, so if you want to increase the life keep the machine plugged in when possible and recharge when you can rather than cycling it ( running it down ). ie at home / work
so in conclusion i wouldn’t really worry about when you recharge it. use the fullness of the battery when you need to. recharge it as soon as you can, when you can and keep it plugged in when you can.
yer it does sorry. but same principles stand.
more detailed info here: http://www.batteryuniversity.com/partone-12.htm
also don’t ever try to take one apart if the lithium contacts O2 ( in air ) it will explode.
[quote1233669483=Jonny Blond]also don’t ever try to take one apart if the lithium contacts O2 ( in air ) it will explode.[/quote1233669483]
It should be fine to take apart the battery itself, just not the individual cells inside the battery.
Though you still need to be a bit careful.as far as chemistry teaches me, i think lithium is the most reactive substance on earth. that is why it’s stored in paraffin oil in labs. i remember throwing one small portion into a sink full of water back in high school. it boils the water almost instantly and there were violet flames. good old days…
ok thanks for the replies, so I guess my first question has been answered quite clearly, charge as soon as AC is availble.
second question tho was if I should charge when I can’t complete the “cycle”, meaning it won’t reach 100%. is this also preferrable to waiting for having enough time to finish the charging?yep like i said, there is no memory effect at all. so use plugged in whenever possible.
However don’t worry about this too much. the battery is there so you can use this portable pc where / when ever you want. its not expensive to replace.
I am not an expert on this at all, but I’ve read from official apple support page some time ago that it really doesn’t matter when you recharge the battery. The battery certainly has a limited life. Let’s say it can be charged and discharged 1000 times.
If you use 50% of the battery and recharge it, according to the apple, it doesn’t count as 1 charge and discharge. You would need to repeat it once more to make it count as 1 cycle.
If you use 20% of battery and recharge, you need to do that 5 times to have an equivalent effect of 1 full charge/discharge.
However, the webpage also warned not to go too low on battery (critical level) and said it wasn’t recommended. They didn’t go on and explain why though.
[quote1233771813=asitmc]
I am not an expert on this at all, but I’ve read from official apple support page some time ago that it really doesn’t matter when you recharge the battery. The battery certainly has a limited life. Let’s say it can be charged and discharged 1000 times.If you use 50% of the battery and recharge it, according to the apple, it doesn’t count as 1 charge and discharge. You would need to repeat it once more to make it count as 1 cycle.
If you use 20% of battery and recharge, you need to do that 5 times to have an equivalent effect of 1 full charge/discharge.
[/quote1233771813]
I always took that the other way. If a charge from 0-100% is a cycle, then from 50-100% would be half of a cycle. 20-100% would be .8 of a cycle and so on.
berfles – you are both saying the same thing 😉 He said ‘if you use 20%’ i.e. charge from 80% to 100%, so you are both on the same page…
Another issue that wasn’t raised is that the battery will decrease in storage capacity over time. There is nothing you can do abbout it except know that in 2-3 years it will hold a small fraction of the charge it does today, regardless of what you do. It’s just the way they are deisgned…
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