How long are you guys getting out of your cell phone batteries?

I got this phone in July, battery's been great up till last week. Seems it'll only keep a charge for a day and a half. Used to be 6 or 7 days. And no, I'm not using it any more than I used to. I let it die by itself, then charge it once the battery minder starts beeping.

I'm thinking it might have developed a memory, because I had it plugged into my wife's car last week, and with the on and off design of the stupid cigarette lighter it charged on and off about 5 or 6 times before I realized it's not like my truck that's on all the time.

My last phone was pretty good, I'd get the same 6 or 7 days out of it until it just got old. By then I was getting 2 or 3 days on a full charge.

So how do you clear a memory out of a relatively new battery?

 

They say that today's batteries do not develop memories. Not sure just how true that is.

It sounds like you are doing it right by letting it die and then recharging. Are you sending text messages or pictures? Are you inside a building that doesn't allow you to get a full signal? I know where I work, my cell will hunt for a signal and that will drain a battery quick. I work in a huge factory and our cell recption in the building really sucks,

 

I do the same thing with my cell phone and I can go days without charging.. Sooner if I use it more.. My phone is an LG..

My daughter has a Motorola Krazr and it does wht your claiming.. She was just beatching today that she just charged it last night and it was beeping this morning..

Another thing that effects battrey life is if the display is always on or youu have the vibrate feature always on..

 

All batteries will eventually succumb to the memory effect. The newer lithium-ion batteries are better about it but they will eventually lose it.

The biggest thing that effects the battery life isn't the battery but the device and the charger. A rechargeable battery needs to be fully discharged, then fully recharged, then stopped. Many devices will start warning of a low battery well before the battery is fully discharged. Even if you ignore the low battery warning, some devices will turn themselves off before the battery is fully discharged. Also many devices will over charge the battery, or continually charge the battery.

I don't really know that there is a lot you can do about it. You can discharge the battery as much as the device will let you, then when you charge it, try to remember to unplug it once it's fully charged. The device should do this for you, but like I said, many won't. Batteries that have developed a memory can be recovered, but it's a long process of fully discharging, then recharging, then discharging, etc. Most devices won't do this. There are high quality devices for things like AA rechargables, but they won't help you with a cell phone battery.

 

That's the one I got.

I guess the next time it beeps at me I'll just let it keep beeping till it shuts off, then turn it on again a few times to kill it some more.

Well, my phone's fully charged again, we'll see how long it lasts this time.

 

The battery in my LG enV would last for over a week, even with frequent texting.

The battery in my new Blackberry is good for 2-3, depending on use. It sees a lot of video and internet.

 

My enV did pretty good too. I am using a Dare now and it does so so. Lots of text, pics, internet and hunting for a signal at work though.

 

I don't send a lot of text messages. Maybe 10 a day on a good day, can go weeks without sending or receiving any at all.

The building I work in is pretty transparent. I get full signal at work and at home, and everywhere in between.

 

Memory effect aside, another consideration is how many charge/discharge cycles the battery sees. O.E. batteries are usually only good for appx 1000 cycles. every time the charger is used thats another cycle. Aftermarket batteries do not last as long, maybe half of an O.E. of the same rating. I use my phones constantly, talking, email and SMS and I am lucky to get 6-8 months out of them before they only last 3 or 4 hours. I have a LG Cu515, Crackberry Curve and a Tilt. The Tilt is by far the worst when it comes to battery life, lucky to get 6 hours of use on a new battery. The other 2 are fairly close to 8 hours depending which I end up using more that day.

 

Unfortunately, many factors work against you. There is no way to directly measure the charge in a battery. Instead, portable devices - cell phones, iPods, laptops, you name it - monitor the current leaving the battery and integrate it over short periods of time. This provides a way of monitoring the charge leaving the battery since charge is the time integral of current. What this means is the host device subtracts charge from the full charge amount, which is known for a fresh battery.

However, there are many factors that decrease the full charge capacity, such as memory effect, temperature (big time), number of charge cycles, and shelf time. Some batteries, such as NiMH, lose up to 30% of their charge each month just from sitting on the shelf. Unfortunately, battery monitoring systems can only make a "best guess" as to how to gauge your phone's full charage capacity. My point is, your cell phone has no way of knowing the battery's true capacity, but instead can only make a best estimate. This means that your battery might be able to last longer than the phone actually thinks.

Battery monitoring is a very complex field of study that's not yet entirely developed, and honestly, there is still quite a bit to be learned about rechargeable batteries. The industry term is called "gas gauging" if anyone is interested in reading more about it. My last cell phone battery was down to 7 minutes talk time on a full charge.

 

I was warned that car chargers will over charge the battery. Use your home charger when ever possible

 

the batt in my v750 (vzw) lasts about 3x longeer than the ext battery in my nextel ic902

 

This is a myth. The device you use to connect the phone to an external power source is not directly responsible for charging the battery. The voltage applied externally to the cell phone is isolated from the battery through a separate circuit that is responsible for charging the battery. The cell phone itself is responsible for applying the charge voltage to the battery. It must monitor the battery's current consumption very carefully, looking for peaks and valleys, to know when to stop charging the battery.

The car charger, home charger, etc do provide the power that charges the battery, but it's not like a car charger applies 12 volts directly to a lithium ion battery. Not at all. The voltage applied to the battery is regulated and is much lower than 12 volts. The car charger and the wall charger are just different devices that provide DC power to the phone. A wall charger is more complex in that it must have a transformer, rectifier and filter.

 

So, is it bad when you realize your battery is giving poor performance, so you pull it out to swap with a new one, and the old one has a bulge in the center?!?

I rarely get more than about 2 years acceptable use out of a battery (36 hours standby/talk is acceptable to me, because it means I can get through the next day if I forget to charge it one night). By the time a battery is unacceptable, I figure cell tech has moved along enough that I may as well go in for a new phone. I didn't do that this time because I already have a pretty decent phone (Nokia N80), and I'm not ready to splurge for the iPhone just yet, though I played with a demo model at BestBuy today--dang that is slick...

13+ years of cellphones, on my 5th (all Nokias).

Jason

 

My Boulder does great on batteries, but I never really use a cell phone that much. Most of my cell phone batteries outlast the phones themselves, and I usually get 2+ years out of a phone.
My current one is just under a year old, and gets charged when the indicator shows the battery is down to one bar or when it shuts off. Ring is vibrate only, since my last employer worked to discourage any cell phone use at work. I maybe use it 5-10 minutes a day at the most, no texting, and the backlight times out at 30seconds. It lasts over a week on an overnight charge.