

Your Smartphone’s Battery Gauge is Lying to You (and it’s not such a bad thing) - soamv
http://phandroid.com/2010/12/25/your-smartphones-battery-gauge-is-lying-to-you-and-its-not-such-a-bad-thing/

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smokinn
People will only cease trying to get the maximum out of their batteries once
we have wireless power and the phone starts charging itself as soon as you
step into your home or office.

The technology has been demonstrated to work but it seems to be taking quite a
long time to make it into consumer devices.

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bobds
I don't think widespread use of "wireless" charging is likely at all. Better
batteries are the obvious solution.

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yason
Indeed, and additionally designing to extract out the maximum perf-per-watt
off the hardware.

If I can waste the charge of my new Android phone in a day or, alternatively,
optimize my usage and phone configuration and get two days of batterly life,
that means I'm still part of the power equation. If, instead, I have to choose
between usage patterns that give 8 or 9 days of power, respectively, I will
certainly not give a damn.

Battery life is a perfect example of "good enough". Would it hurt so much to
equip the phones with larger batteries instead of, say, 1500mAh that seems
typical now. As for the latest smartphones, it can certainly _not_ be because
of the physical size.

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david2777
Contrary to this article, my Galaxy S (Captivate) stays at 100% for quite a
while before dropping down rapidly. I wonder if they programed the phone to do
that and "trick" the user into thinking it's fully charged when it is really
not; or if it really is at 100% and they have a different battery system.

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algorias
That phone might be doing what I think is a much more obvious solution:
Upscaling the actual measurement (clipping at 100% of course)

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brown9-2
_"Several partial discharges with frequent recharges are better for lithium-
ion than one deep one. Recharging a partially charged lithium-ion does not
cause harm because there is no memory.”_

I just purchased an iPhone a few days ago and I feel like I received and read
the complete opposite advice from somewhere bcan someone more knowledgeable
than me set me straight?

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jakevoytko
You are referring to two different memories.

The "Memory effect" [0] is a problem with nickel-cadmium batteries that
results in lost capacity when they have been partially discharged and
recharged. You won't see that in modern cell phone batteries; as far as I know
they all use lithium ion batteries.

On the other hand, the Apple batteries have circuitry that gives charge
information. Supposedly, a complete charge cycle refines its estimates. I
couldn't find a mention of this in the online iPhone user manual [1], so I'm
not sure how true this is.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_effect>

[1] <http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/iphone_user_guide.pdf>

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ohashi
TIL about bump charging. Neat hack if you're traveling to get an extra 5-15%
battery life.

