Quote:
Originally Posted by AnimalOfArt
The Voyage battery is a lithium-ion polymer battery. It's suggested to have short loading sequences to make its lifecycle last longer and over-discharging and over-charging should be avoided.
The amazon support told me I should start to load it when the battery symbol is almost empty and disconnect it from the energy source when the symbol is completely full.
That doesn't sound to me like a short loading sequence, nor does it seem to avoud over-charging and over-discharging.
Is the kindle battery immune to this? Do you regard general advices for loading a LiPoly battery or do you follow amazon's recommendations?
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First, even though Amazon support is about the best there is, no support people can be trusted on batteries. What you'll get from them, no matter what support people you're talking about, are rumors and old advice from earlier types of batteries that had totally different chemistry and problems.
The advice not to charge till nearly empty is a holdover from the NiCad battery days when not doing that might cause the battery to think that half charged was full, or something like that. That was no longer true with NiMH, which replaced NiCad but it's still given as advice for them and for lithium ion and lithium polymer batteries. It just ain't true!
If you want to learn about batteries read the articles linked here:
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/a..._ion_batteries
http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/a...ased_batteries
Battery University has been around for a couple of decades and is well known for accurate information.
It is still true that letting batteries die is bad for them. If you let them die and then sit idle long enough they die forever. They have to design that into them because lithium ion (or polymer) batteries which are totally dead can catch fire if you try to recharge them so they have to design them so that can't happen.
Letting it come close to dying doesn't hurt much. Letting it truly die does.
I like to balance longevity with convenience. I try pretty hard to keep my batteries above 70% as long as that's convenient. I won't let them go below 50% ever. 50% is perfectly safe but I'm forgetful and I'll end up killing it.
I fully charge them, strictly as a matter of convenience. Keeping them between about 65% and 80% is actually better for them.
The think about these batteries is that you can optimize them and you might help them a little but not a whole lot. They're pretty sturdy batteries and they aren't as affected by charging habits as older types of battery.
The aging factor, as HarryT says, is important but the thing is every battery is different. I have all 3 Paperwhites, bought about 1 year apart, and I've rotated them and used them all about equally. I've charged them all about the same way. The Paperwhite 2 battery is now showing signs of age, lasting a day of use instead of several days. The others are still fine. It's just the luck of the draw.
The odds are very good that you'll want a newer device long before the battery goes, but there's no guarantee. You do the best you can and you get what you get.
Again, the important lesson here is don't trust support people about batteries. Don't trust store clerks. Don't trust anyone, including me. We're all well meaning but the battery is going to do what it's going to do.
Barry