Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Precisely. The battery on a 10-year-old Kindle is going to be completely dead. The life-span of a lithium battery is a clock that starts ticking as soon as the battery is first charged, and nothing can stop it. The average lifetime of a battery is around 5 years.
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The lifetime does depend on the device, though.
Let's say that for each year a battery loses 25% of the capacity it has remaining. (I'm just making these numbers up, but it illustrates the point.) Then you will get this use out of it:
Year 1: 100%;
Year 2: 100 * 0.75 = 75%
Year 3: 75 * 0.75 = 56%
Year 4: 56 * 0.75 = 42%
Year 5: 42 * 0.75 = 31%
A laptop battery that starts out with 6 hours of usage will have declined to a maximum of two hours of use after 5 years. While still usable, it can be a pain in the neck.
A Kindle on the other hand, starting out with 6 weeks, will drop down to 2 weeks of usage. That's a huge drop, but an e-reader which lasts for two weeks is still perfectly usable.
I've noticed that, after three years, I'm starting to see the "Your Kindle is almost empty"-warning. Previously, I never saw it; I've always connected the reader to the computer to upload books before it appeared, keeping the Kindle charged perpetually. Now I don't seem to be able to manage this anymore. (I'm not reading slower or more books between charges AFAICT.)