Best way to condition the battery for the galaxy S3 ??

[dubhe420]

Greetings All ** I am looking forward to my preorder arriving next week -- a 32 gb pebble blue galaxy s3 with 2gb of ram a big step up from my fascinate that was a great phone in its day, but is really showing its age now. After a ton of research I decided to get a seidio surface case to keep it protected but maintain the slick feel. Now just one more major issue to address: I want to make sure to take the proper steps to ensure maximum battery life over the next two years. What steps should I take immediately upon receiving the phone? And how should I maintain the battery in the future to keep its charge on the up n' up? Thanks for the input!

 

[Cyber Warrior]

The battery should come at half charged.. for the first 3-4 days, you want to let the phone fully discharge to around 5% and then let it charge fully back up to 100% before taking it off of the charger.

They're lithium batteries so there's no need to worry about them developing a memory effect but conditioning them every so often as mentioned above can't hurt.. especially when first receiving the phone.

I'll normally just condition the first few days.. and if you're into hacking, every time you switch ROMs or kernels, its good to wipe battery stats and re-condition.

 

[NIKSTORM]

firelightx
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All of the above are actually normal things for a battery to do.

The best way I can think of this is to have you think of your battery like a balloon. If you fill a balloon up to 100% (as in, one more puff of air and it pops) then it's going to be a very... fragile balloon. Not a very safe place to be. It's much better for the balloon to be at about 90% capacity, cause that gives it some wiggle room.

Batteries are in fact designed to work the same way. The charger will get them up to 100%, but it's not healthy for the battery to stay at a full 100% all the time. So the charger lets it drop to somewhere between 90-95% (depending on the manufacturer) and keeps it steady there.

Now, most people would see that, and think that their charger is broken. They'd go nuts, yell at sales clerks, etc. So.. the manufacturers have programmed the phones to report 100% at first and then steadily drop down until they've caught up with reality. It's.. a bit of a lie, but it keeps a vast majority of inattentive customers from complaining about something that is actually designed to prolong the life of your battery. This is why the first 10% always seems to go much faster than the rest.

So. Everyone in this thread, and all the varied reports, have nothing to worry about. That's all well within normal operating parameters for a battery. The variances are due to different manufacturers and their various beliefs in what's a comfortable level to stabilize a battery at.

To the OP: Charge your device every night, if that's what pleases you. It's designed to last longest that way (i.e. will last you years instead of months) and will ensure that when you start your day, your device is topped off and ready to keep up with you. Studies I've read claim that a battery that is never allowed to drop below 50% will last 3 times longer over the years than a battery that is regularly drained to 0. Obviously it's not -bad- to let it drop to 0. It's just better to keep it from doing so. (Note, this is only true of the newer Li-Ion batterys found in cell phones. Older Ni-Cad batterys had that memory problem that is so infamous. Cell phone batteries do not)
Last edited by firelightx; Today at 03:05 AM.

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This was a post I just found seems very logical.

 

[wowpaw]

I'll usually condition the battery once the way cyber warrior said just to ensure accuracy on the software meter but thats about it

 

[kjung7]

I though you didn't have to condition lithium ion batteries. I just use my
phone without worrying about that and all my phones have had great battery life (minus the verizon fascinate). And on the plus side you can buy another battery for te S3 if it goes bad.

 

[dillon24]

Yeah the battery in my old Fascinate is good for about 10 minutes LOL

 

[trivor]

When people talk about conditioning the battery it is really about calibrating the battery software. If the battery software doesn't know what 100% is or what 0% is then it won't be able to REPORT actual battery state very well. The only way you will actually know you are at ZERO is to let the phone discharge until it shuts itself off (if somehow you actually drained the battery this would be VERY BAD for the battery so the software never actually lets the phone go to zero). So what you actually want is more accurate reporting of your battery level (in other words if it reports you're at 10% and you actually have 25% then you think you are almost dead).