Cell phone battery...what gives?

Kato

My wife and I both got new cellphones this past weekend. They are the Alltel LG phones with the slide out keyboard. Nifty stuff and we like our phones. Our previous phones were a good 3 or 4 years old...

Have cellphone battery technologies improved that much? Or is there just something wrong with my phone? I took the phone home on Saturday and used it that day. That night, I put it on the charger for the first time and charged it overnight. Today is Thursday and I have not charged it since. I have used it on a daily basis...even taking pictures, setting up the bluetooth to my netbook and transferring some songs over to the microSD card, receiving and sending texts with pictures and everything. Yet the bars that measure how much battery strength I have left have not moved once. Not at all and the phone appears to be working just fine from what I can tell. I just got a text message about anhour ago...I replied and have yet to get a response, but he is probably at work so he just has not had time to send out a reply yet.

Do I have super battery in my cellphone that I should know about or is there just something wrong with my phone as it is and that is why it has not moved?

wunderbar

on a simple dumbphone, batteries last for a long time. I have an LG phone as well, and I usually get 4-5 days off of it if I leave the battery until empty. as many as 6 when I don't make many calls.

illig

your old phone battery probably lasted about that long when new as well... it just slowly lost some of its "stamina" over the years.... rechargeables do have a finite number of cycles, and most tend to lose their charge faster and faster as they age

Bushi

Yeah, it's just one of the benefits of having a newer phone. Mine's two years old, and it still takes a few days before it says it no longer has a full charge.

Kato

Man...then our old phones must have really really sucked. They were the 10 dollar specials at the time. For a few years at least...we would barely get a day out of the old phones. I just can't believe this phone though...I have used it quite a bit I thought and figured it would have died out by now...

wunderbar

well, you also have to remember that batteries eventually lose their life over time. My last phone before this one was a razr, and when I first got it the battery would last me 3-4 days, but at the end it was barely making it through the day.

It's just the nature of battery technology.

Barrakketh

illig wrote: »

your old phone battery probably lasted about that long when new as well... it just slowly lost some of its "stamina" over the years.... rechargeables do have a finite number of cycles, and most tend to lose their charge faster and faster as they age

Lithium ion batteries actually have a shorter service life when kept charged. The more charged it is (current capacity versus maximum capacity) the faster the battery is going to go south on you. That's independent of the act of charging it. If you're one of those people that charges your phone every night even though it really doesn't need it you're just killing your battery faster.

Gihgehls

Barrakketh wrote: »

illig wrote: »

your old phone battery probably lasted about that long when new as well... it just slowly lost some of its "stamina" over the years.... rechargeables do have a finite number of cycles, and most tend to lose their charge faster and faster as they age

Lithium ion batteries actually have a shorter service life when kept charged. The more charged it is (current capacity versus maximum capacity) the faster the battery is going to go south on you. That's independent of the act of charging it. If you're one of those people that charges your phone every night even though it really doesn't need it you're just killing your battery faster.

This isn't entirely true. Charging a li-ion battery from empty to full is more stressful on the battery than charging it from half-full to full, and stress on the battery is a sort of conglomerate of many, many factors that contribute to the death of your battery. There's a lot of disagreement on the best ways to store lithium ion batteries, and much of it is pointless since li-ion batteries have a shelf life anyway, meaning they start dying as soon as they are manufactured, but most would say to keep them at about 40% capacity at room temperature.

The only bad part topping off a lithium ion battery daily is that the battery gauge will slowly lose accuracy. A full drain and charge will recalibrate the gauge.

wunderbar

Gihgehls said it well. Lithium ion batterys actually do *better* when kept charged, but you should still discharge it once in a while.