I read somewhere that I should always discharge my battery before charging it up again. This seems like a bit of a drag, is it really the case?

I heard this question the other day, and I had to go and research the topic, because I had heard this advice myself. It turns out that this WAS true, for a particular type of battery that was around a few years ago. They were batteries of a type called NiCad, short for Nickel-Cadium, the materials that made up the battery. One characteristic of this battery type was that they were very sensitive to the way they were charged. If you didn’t let them discharge before charging them up again, they had a “memory effect” that reduced the life of the battery.

New phones and laptops have a different type of battery, made from Lithium Ion (Li-Ion) which behave in a different manner. Here’s some technical reading:

Lithium-Ion battery‘s prefer incremental (top-up) charges rather than complete discharges preferred by other battery technologies. We recommend that you fully discharge the battery as little as possible. No more than one fast discharge / charge every year is recommended. For all other general use incremental charging should be applied with power levels not being allowed to fall below 20% of capacity.

Priming (Performing a slow charge, followed by several fast charge / discharge’s) Li cells after prolonged storage is not necessarily required. As Lithium-Ion best practice dictates you should not fully discharge Li cells regularly, repeated use of priming should be avoided.

So, if you’re firing up your netbook to check out some apidexin reviews, don’t worry too much if you put it back on charge; the battery will be just fine.