Quote:
Originally Posted by drofgnal
I recently pulled a kindle 4 NT out of a drawer. I hadn't used it since last summer at the beach (wrapped in a quart freezer bag for water proofing). It was totally dead, charged fine and works fine with no apparent drop in battery capacity. Li ion batteries are pretty robust. I have alot of them in the garage with power tools. Edger, weed wacker, blower. They don't get used all winter. They are ready to go after charging in the spring.
But I'd excercise caution and try to keep some charge in them. with Li batteries copper can shunt from inside the cell and short the battery when fully discharged.
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First, you probably just got lucky. That's not something you want to depend on. Last year I found several MP3 players I'd forgotten I had, stuck in the bottom of a drawer. They'd been there at least a year, possibly 2 or 3 years. I just don't know when I charged them last. I tried charging them. One did recover just fine. The other 4 wouldn't charge. No real loss since I have no need for them anymore, but I hate to see good devices go to waste.
The other thing in your post, that they were totally dead, means they didn't have enough life to turn on. But the battery wasn't dead yet or they wouldn't have been allowed to charge.
Batteries are variable things. One might last a lot longer than another even though they're used the same way. I have a number of older devices, speakers, etc. that use AA batteries and I use NiMH rechargeable batteries in them which I charge in a good quality charger. I used to write the date on the batteries when I got them so i have some idea how long they lasted. Typical is 2 to 3 years. Some are gone in a few months. A few last twice or three times the norm. You just never know. They all rotate through the same 6 or 7 devices, which themselves are pretty similar, so I'm pretty sure it's just variations in the individual batteries that account for this.
Presumably lithium ion batteries are as variable as NiMH batteries.
Barry