Guest CrArC Posted March 28, 2011 Report Share Posted March 28, 2011 Sorry to ask so many questions in such a short time, but I can't find any threads on them already. :D Okay, so I was wondering whether the procedure for a new Vega would be to fully charge, discharge and then charge the battery before beginning normal usage pattens. I know this is typically recommended for li-ion powered devices of the past, laptops, phones etc but my recent devices have not come with this recommendation in the manual. Is this no longer a necessary step with the latest portable devices? This used to be done to calibrate the charge circuitry and ensure maximum battery capacity. Furthermore, does the traditional monthly/bi-monthly discharge/charge cycle still apply? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest simonta Posted March 28, 2011 Report Share Posted March 28, 2011 The Vega has a polymer battery. You should avoid draining it. For first use, just charge it normally. Calibration is an OS thing, not the battery! It simply lets the OS know what full and empty means and how much there is in between :D If you really want to calibrate Android you can (as part of a ROM flash) but for whatever reason, the Vega indicator is so flaky that it's not worth it. It's something you just learn to live with. Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest CrArC Posted March 28, 2011 Report Share Posted March 28, 2011 The Vega has a polymer battery. You should avoid draining it. For first use, just charge it normally. Calibration is an OS thing, not the battery! It simply lets the OS know what full and empty means and how much there is in between :D If you really want to calibrate Android you can (as part of a ROM flash) but for whatever reason, the Vega indicator is so flaky that it's not worth it. It's something you just learn to live with. Cheers Thanks for the response. I know they deep cycling is to be avoided in normal use (in particular, I know quite a lot about lithium pollymer cells, as I must handle packs of them when indulging in my RC aircraft hobby!) But what I'm surprised by is the lack of any recommendations for proper care of the Vega's batteries. I'm positive the charge circuit for them operates at a hardware level too, (in soft cells like these, they're not normally embedded in the battery but operate in the same way) so I'd be surprised if it wouldn't benefit from the occasional cycle so it can re-learn what 'full' and 'empty' is! But as you said, it doesn't seem glaringly accurate to begin with (and doesn't report current consumption that I can tell either, which would be necessary for reliable measurement of capacity) so maybe it's a lost cause. Even your average iPad is recommended a deep discharge and full recharge on a regular basis; it's got to be the same for us, surely? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest warriorscot Posted March 29, 2011 Report Share Posted March 29, 2011 If apple is recommending a full discharge and recharge then I wouldn't listen to them it's not doing the battery any good. It will only calibrate the OS power levels for the battery so it can stay up to date as performance varies with time and really in the course of events most people will run it flat now and again in normal use for it not to be intentionally necessary. As battery technology and our understanding of it varies the advice changes the batteries themselves also undergo a lot of changes even on a monthly basis as manufacturers make incremental improvements. And battery meters are not very reliable in the first place they are at best an warning when its about to die its better just to estimate it yourself based on usage. There really isn't anything in particular anything to be done in terms of care. You want to avoid fully discharging them regularly but that happens for most people so rarely its going to be largely useless advice and if you do for some reason fully discharge then you should fully recharge it afterward. And it isn't really in a manufacturers best interest for you to keep your batteries in good condition. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest blcollier Posted March 29, 2011 Report Share Posted March 29, 2011 (edited) I'm pretty sure I remember reading somewhere that the best form of battery care is to avoid letting it drain completely and just use and recharge it regularly; this keeps electrons flowing through the battery cells to help prolong it. That doesn't mean you should plug it in every five minutes, just don't leave it lying round for months on end without charging. Of course, I could be talking out of my back end here. Advice on battery care has changed so much since I got my first NiCads all those years ago... Edited March 29, 2011 by blcollier Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest CrArC Posted March 29, 2011 Report Share Posted March 29, 2011 Thanks for all the replies! I'll just treat it like any other modern cells, then. Warriorscot raises a particularly good point about the occasional deep cycle happening by accident anyway. Thinking about it, this holds true for all my portable devices! :D I'd say for the record though, in everday cells (be they li-ion, lipo, li-ion polymer) while you'd want to avoid a full discarge on a regular basis, there's no need to panic if it happens on occasion. The charge circuits governing these cells do not allow the system to drain the batteries to the point of damage. In fact I've had to repair packs before where dormant devices have been allowed to discharge over a long time, years even. Typically the charge circuit locks the battery out, refusing to charge what might be a dangerous cell. When your portable device 'dies', the battery is anything but flat. In fact, it may be only a few dozen millivolts lower than when at full capacity! What we're probably being asked to avoid is the extended unnecessary use of our batteries when we have the opporunity to recharge them. So draining it flat doesn't do that much by itself; rather, we're hurting battery capacity by happily using far more of the 'cycles' our batteries can survive (before losing capacity) than we would if we thought "uh oh, 30% left - time to charge!" :D That would then be 30% of a cycle we didn't use in between running off the mains, which means 30% less cycles used over a long time period - extending the useful life of our batteries by a similar percentage! Incidentally, does anyone know the specifications of our Vegas' battery? Or the individual cells? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest warriorscot Posted March 29, 2011 Report Share Posted March 29, 2011 (edited) Can't remember off the top of my head but it is definately mentioned on here either in the dismantling images or another thread but I have a feeling it was one of the earlier threads. Life used to be easier in the Ni-Cad days especially since interchangable batteries were more common. I used to always barter myself a spare when I bought anything and rotated them and always got amazing battery life with little degradation. But the little and often rule of lithium batteries isn't too bad it's just a shame they are often so difficult to replace. Edited March 29, 2011 by warriorscot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest CrArC Posted March 29, 2011 Report Share Posted March 29, 2011 (edited) Can't remember off the top of my head but it is definately mentioned on here either in the dismantling images or another thread but I have a feeling it was one of the earlier threads. Life used to be easier in the Ni-Cad days especially since interchangable batteries were more common. I used to always barter myself a spare when I bought anything and rotated them and always got amazing battery life with little degradation. But the little and often rule of lithium batteries isn't too bad it's just a shame they are often so difficult to replace. Haha, those were the days :D The Vega's wouldnt be too hard to replace, surely? Aren't they right there under the case? Can't help but wonder what the battery life would be if I switched them outt with some high-capacity lipos :D EDIT: found it - 7.4VDC 3300mAh 24.42Wh. Edited March 30, 2011 by CrArC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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