How to load the Voyage battery to increase its longeviety

[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?

[HarryT]

On a low-power device like a Kindle, the number of charge cycles is essentially irrelevant. The ageing effects completely dominate. Your battery will die of old age, not from being charged too often. It's not like a laptop battery.

tl;dr. Charge it how you like, as often as you like. It won't make the slightest practical difference.

[AnemicOak]

Do we know that "full" on a Voyage is actually a 100% charge? Many devices are set up to show full and stop charging before a battery is actually at capacity and to show empty before a battery is at 0.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Do we know that "full" on a Voyage is actually a 100% charge? Many devices are set up to show full and stop charging before a battery is actually at capacity and to show empty before a battery is at 0.

Yep. Just don't use it until you get the "battery low" warning, and then stick it in a drawer for a year. That will lead to a terminally dead battery. Other than that, it's hard to go wrong. The Kindle's charging circuitry protects you from screwing it up pretty much any other way.

There a many who scream that this or that is THE way to charge lithium batteries. But the thing is I've never had a lithium battery in any phone, tablet, Kindle, or any other device fail (go dead) before I replaced or retired said device. Even those I've used for 4+ years have never had a battery die. I think the important thing is to not routinely let it drain completely. Use common sense. Make a habit of charging the device before it gets too low. And don't leave a device always plugged in to a charger. Use common sense and the battery should outlive your interest in using said device.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by jswinden

There a many who scream that this or that is THE way to charge lithium batteries.

In a laptop, it can make a difference - it's all too easy to end up with a completely dead battery after 18 months if you treat it badly. That's not going to happen with a Kindle.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by jswinden

There a many who scream that this or that is THE way to charge lithium batteries. But the thing is I've never had a lithium battery in any phone, tablet, Kindle, or any other device fail (go dead) before I replaced or retired said device. Even those I've used for 4+ years have never had a battery die. I think the important thing is to not routinely let it drain completely. Use common sense. Make a habit of charging the device before it gets too low. And don't leave a device always plugged in to a charger. Use common sense and the battery should outlive your interest in using said device.

The only device I ever found that wouldn't hold a charge was an alturek ereader. I happen to know it had not been charged in over 2 years. But I did get it for under $5.
I was not surprised that the battery didn't hold a charge after that long.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Do we know that "full" on a Voyage is actually a 100% charge? Many devices are set up to show full and stop charging before a battery is actually at capacity and to show empty before a battery is at 0.

The Kindles have a fairly sophisticated battery management system. *

So go by what it is advising you to do -
If at or near 100% - stop charging **
If at or near 000% - start charging

The electronics has already taken 'best practice' into account when it computes the picture to show you.

(*) Not nearly as sophisticated as the one in your hybrid car, where batteries cost $10,000+ each. But still, a pretty good one for a consumer device.

(**) And if your still concerned about it overcharging, dump the messages by entering:
;dm
(the semi-colon is part of the command) in the search bar of the home screen.

And look through the system messages that appear on the Kindle as a result.
There you will find the charger is cycling on and off to avoid over-charging.
The messages usually include the actual battery capacity now, not when the label was printed on the outside.

Originally Posted by HarryT

In a laptop, it can make a difference - it's all too easy to end up with a completely dead battery after 18 months if you treat it badly. That's not going to happen with a Kindle.

First of all, you should notice that I used the term "device" and not "computer" or "laptop". Second, I leave my laptops plugged in 24x7x365 until I retire or replace them. I always have. I've had laptops on and off ever since the early 1990s, and not one of them ever had a battery die. Of course the earlier ones were not using lithium batteries. I agree it is more important today as many laptops come without easy access to replace batteries. But still, I use common sense and have never had a dead laptop battery issue. Not that it would matter that much in my case as I rarely take my laptops off of my desk. But whenever I have or do, the batteries are always up to the task. But of course I rarely keep a laptop more than 4 or 5 years. By that time I'm ready to upgrade to a newer, faster, hopefully better model.

[barryem]

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?

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

[Popup]

Apart from the great info given by barryem (don't discharge fully), there's only one more thing to add:

Batteries don't like heat. Especially when they are fully charged.

I'm not saying that you should keep the kindle in your freezer, but you shouldn't leave it plugged into a charger on the dash of a car for the entire summer.
(Leaving it in the sun for a couple of hours is not great, but it's not worth fussing about.)

(Read about it in the BatteryUniversity links above.)

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Popup

Apart from the great info given by barryem (don't discharge fully), there's only one more thing to add:

Batteries don't like heat. Especially when they are fully charged.

I'm not saying that you should keep the kindle in your freezer, but you shouldn't leave it plugged into a charger on the dash of a car for the entire summer.
(Leaving it in the sun for a couple of hours is not great, but it's not worth fussing about.)

(Read about it in the BatteryUniversity links above.)

You shouldn't leave a solar powered battery pack on the dash of your car in the spring in Texas either.