HTC Desire deep cycle charge

catflea

Hi Guys, I've had a quick google and a poke round some android forums but I cant seem to find an answer.

My 6 month old HTC desire now has a stupidly short battery life (3-4 hours in my pocket) and I've done everything that I've seen recommended to improve the life, such as dim screen, remove unused apps etc

what I was wondering is if theres any way to "reset" the battery by giving it a deep cycle charge or similar?

Cheers

Techhead_2

Never deeply discharge a lithium based battery, it will seriously shorten the life.

They are best charged sparingly and often.

Superbiatch

My OH recently did a bit of research and found a way to extend the battery life by 50%, and it really works - something along the lines of charge for 8 hours, discharge for 1 then charge again for an amount of time. He's away working for this week but I'll email and ask him where he found the info, but I'd assume it would be some geeky nerdy site as thats where he usually finds out about these things

I'd be interested to know if it works on my Desire S too.

gjchester

Superbiatch wrote: »

My OH recently did a bit of research and found a way to extend the battery life by 50%, and it really works - something along the lines of charge for 8 hours, discharge for 1 then charge again for an amount of time. He's away working for this week but I'll email and ask him where he found the info, but I'd assume it would be some geeky nerdy site as thats where he usually finds out about these things

I'd be interested to know if it works on my Desire S too.

Not on a Lithium battery. The phone charges it till it's full then shuts off, if it needs 1 hour to do this and you leave it charging for another 7 your just wasting power. It may charge for a few moments as it drops below what the phone conisders fully charged, but you can;t trickle charge a Lipo, it's dangerous to do so and the phone won't let you.

suited-aces

I can't remember the exact link, but I've seen that method mentioned too, backed up by a htc engineer

jbainbridge

3-4 hrs in your pocket - with the screen off?

Perhaps consider a factory reset and try running it without any extra apps for a few days. See if that makes a difference. Mine's setup for 2 push email accounts, Facebook and Twitter ... and if I didn't play with it I'd expect it would run for 36-48hrs.

If its only 6 months old I'd be contacting HTC.

gjchester

Interestingly Mororola think on similar lines, and reckon 70% of returns are due to badly coded apps crashing the phone or flattening the battery.


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/06/android_motorola/

butterbeanmash

You could give this a go;

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=755903

Or this if you're phone is rooted;

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.nema.batterycalibration&feature=search_result

T_T_2

Lots of tips and tricks out there for improving the life of your Lithium Battery... in reality most of these tricks are a load of old...washing.

The reality is that lithium batteries (in your case lithium-ion) do not suffer from the battery 'memory-effect' like nickel ones do. Fully discharging a lithium battery is not a good idea, it will cause permanent damage to the cell and reduce the life expectency.

Apart from energy hungry apps there are other factors which affect the performance of your battery including: operating temperature (both too hot and sub-zero temperatures), frequency of use (not using it enough), deep discharging, faulty chargers etc.

A lithium battery has a life expectency measures in cycles rather than hours. Completely discharging and fully recharging a lithium battery can only be done around 500-1000 times before it will fail altogether.

Techhead_2

T_T wrote: »

Lots of tips and tricks out there for improving the life of your Lithium Battery... in reality most of these tricks are a load of old...washing.

The reality is that lithium batteries (in your case lithium-ion) do not suffer from the battery 'memory-effect' like nickel ones do. Fully discharging a lithium battery is not a good idea, it will cause permanent damage to the cell and reduce the life expectency.

Apart from energy hungry apps there are other factors which affect the performance of your battery including: operating temperature (both too hot and sub-zero temperatures), frequency of use (not using it enough), deep discharging, faulty chargers etc.

A lithium battery has a life expectency measures in cycles rather than hours. Completely discharging and fully recharging a lithium battery can only be done around 500-1000 times before it will fail altogether.

Actually that last bit is the the wrong way around. Lifespans of lithium based batteries are quoted in hours at a specific temperature. Raising the temperature reduces the lifespan.

Charging the battery for a long period raises the temperature reducing the lifespan. This is why phones stop charging when the battery is full making long overnight charging pointless and a waste of electricity.

In addition other things effect the chemistry of the battery and reduce life, for example discharging too much, charge cycling and leaving too long between charges.

The best approach is to charge sparingly and often. With a modern phone, charge once or twice daily depending on use. When the handset says its charged then disconnect.

gjchester

T_T wrote: »

A lithium battery has a life expectency measures in cycles rather than hours. Completely discharging and fully recharging a lithium battery can only be done around 500-1000 times before it will fail altogether.

Rubbish. Lithium cells can be dropped to 2.6/2.7V per cell as a limit. If you try and discharge it futher and you'll never get it to take a charge again.

In fact that advice is downright dangerous. Attempting to fully discharge a Lithium cell can cause it to rapidly heat up and create a build up of hydrogen in the cell, the cell can puff up, in this state a spark can ignite the gas and the lithium metal react with any water and burn fiercely. Remember the laptop batteries that caused fires a few years ago that was through over discharging and shorting.


Phones cut off at the 2.8/2.9 level and say the battery flat, and they will be fine as long as you charge it soon. Flatten a lithium battery leave it a month or so to self discharge a bit lower, and then try to charge it and you may find the cell is deal.