It is believed that after buying a new smartphone before charging, you must first completely discharge the battery. Moreover, this procedure must be repeated several times. In fact, over the past decade, much has changed and technology is not at all the same as before. Therefore, it is important to find out whether you need to completely discharge a new battery.
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Do I need to discharge a new smartphone battery
Now all phones are equipped lithium ion or lithium polymer batteries. These batteries do not have a memory effect and do not need a buildup in order to achieve maximum capacity. Therefore, acquiring a new smartphone is not necessarily his completely discharge, you can immediately safely put it on charge and use it at your discretion.
New phones no longer available with nickel metal hydride or nickel cadmium batteries, but this does not mean that you can’t order a new battery for your old favorite phone. In this case, it is recommended to completely discharge it before use, since Ni-Mh and Ni-Cd batteries have a memory effect and, if this is not done, they may not reach their maximum capacity.
Do I need to completely discharge the battery before charging
In this case, everything is a little more complicated. Li-Ion and Li-Pol batteries have a limited number of discharge charge cycles. Approximately 500 full charge discharge cycles. These cycles mean the number of times the battery can be discharged to 0% and then charged to 100%.
The whole difficulty lies in the fact that if you put the battery on charge at 10-20% and charge it to the same 100%, then the number of cycles increases to 1000. A full charge does not reduce efficiency either.
Ideally, the Li-Ion and Li-Pol batteries should be charged at 20% and charged to 80%. This will be the most sparing mode for the battery. It’s almost impossible to track this yourself, so you can install a special application, for example AccuBattery.
Nevertheless, once every 3 months it is worthwhile to produce a full discharge charge cycle.
With Ni-Mh and Ni-Cd batteries, everything is completely different. That would not decrease the capacity it is better to completely discharge them, and then fully charge them.
Why before you had to discharge the batteries of the phones
In the 2000s, many just got mobile devices and they were far from light and not as flat as they are now. And all due to the design using Ni-Mh battery. The features of such a battery were the so-called "memory effect."
If you charge such a battery for example up to 90%, then it will remember this level and the next time when charging up to 100% it will replenish the capacity only up to 90%, since the system will consider that it is already 100%.
Of course, if these are not systematic violations in the charging rules, then nothing bad will happen.
Therefore, it was important for users of such devices during the first operation to completely discharge and charge the gadget. Older devices required a full discharge and charge cycle.
Such manipulations must be carried out if there is a need and a desire to operate the devices for a long time. The process of fully charging and discharging allows the device to always remember its maximum capacity.
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