What are your battery performance/longevity tips?
Many of you have probably received advice over the years about how to make sure your battery is performing at it's peak and continues to do so for the longest period of time. Due to changes in battery technology, that advice may have changed or is no longer relevant.
Here's my list of battery performance/longevity tips that I use which seems to work for my devices:
1) Before turning it on for the first time, charge your gadget to full capacity
While your gadget will generally come with enough battery capacity to use it until you get home, I always find it best to charge the device to full capacity before turning it on for the first time. With older batteries it may have been suggested to let it charge overnight however I don't feel it is necessary to do so anymore.
2) Let the battery achieve full discharge on the first run before recharging
It's important to clarify a couple of things here. First, I define a full discharge as letting the battery get below 20% capacity. Second, modern day batteries may get damaged if you do a full discharge too often. As such, this is one of the few times I will actually discharge a battery completely.
3) Batteries won't start performing at optimal levels until after the 3-5th charge cycle
Battery life of your new gadget not quite what you were expecting? Don't worry yet. I find that most batteries have a break in period of between 3 - 5 charge cycles before they start to achieve maximum longevity.
4) Try and keep your batteries at 40-80% capacity
I only heard this one recently but it makes a lot of sense to me. While letting a battery get too low in capacity often may damage cells and reduce it's lifespan, keeping a battery charged at full/near full capacity too often can also have the same effect. If you keep a laptop plugged in the majority of the time and suddenly put it on battery power, you will find the charge will not last as long as when you first got the device.
5) If battery performance starts to decrease prematurely, perform a full discharge and a trickle recharge
This is the other situation where I will perform a full discharge. If a battery seems like it's not holding it's charge for as long as it should it might be worth doing a full discharge and a trickle recharge.
A trickle recharge is charging the battery at a slower rate than normal to let the cells develop a charge without the risk of overheating them. If your gadget can charge via a computers USB port this is ideal as a USB port can only produce 500 mAh of power, which is generally less that what a gadgets AC power adapter would generate.
6) If you plan to store a battery without using it for a long period of time (over 30 days), only charge it to 50-60% capacity
Again, advice I have only come across recently and something many of you won't need to think about. However if you do need to keep a battery in storage for more than 30 days, try and only charge it to 50-60% capacity.
That's my rules for keeping batteries performing at their peak and maintaining their lifespan for as long as possible. Anything you disagree with or any other rules you use to get the best out of your batteries?
iPhone 5: what it means to the general public
The new iPhone 5 was announced this morning and you can already read the backlash by many in the tech media. They see it as a disappointment and a sign Apple are losing their touch. As I alluded to in my analysis of Nokia, I think its harder to differentiate your product in a mature market where there are so many other great options available. Even Apple are going to have a hard time with this.
But what about those existing iPhone users and people looking to move to iOS, what does the iPhone 5 offer for them?
Well despite the disappointment for tech heads, the iPhone 5 is a nice refinement to an already quality smartphone. It is thinner than the 4S while also having a bigger 4 inch wide screen display. The back is aluminium, not glass like the 4 & 4S, so it is automatically more durable.
They haven’t gone for a higher resolution camera, sticking with 8 megapixels but improving its low light capability and introducing a panorama mode. The iPhone 4/4S cameras were already stellar anyway.
One really important thing about the iPhone 5 that many are glossing over is that its the same width as the existing iPhones. Many buyers would consider competitors such as the Galaxy SIII and the HTC One X/XL too wide to use comfortably with one hand. This continues to be an advantage for the iPhone over its rivals.
And let’s not forget LTE/4G capability. It would have been silly to release a flagship phone without it. It will be interesting to see what Apple can do to negate the battery performance issues that every other 4G phone encounters.
In the end, my recommendation for the iPhone 5 is almost identical to the 4S - a nice upgrade for existing users and a tempting package for new customers. Evolutionary not revolutionary.