how long should I wait before recharging my battery?

[alysariah]

Should I let it drain completely? or top it off every night?

 

[Jennifer Stough]

I suggest never allowing the battery to drop below 20%. It will be fine charging every night.

Sent from my HTC6435LVW using AC Forums mobile app

 

[ClintRo]

Neither is bad.... But you should avoid running it down until it shuts off if you can

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

 

[PcNy]

charge it whenever you want. just don't fully drain it.

 

[Joe Joejoe]

without any full scientific basis, I would say never to allow the battery to completely drain.

I noticed that the lower I let a battery drain -- the quicker it loses power on the next full charge. for example, I noticed a somewhat significant difference in battery life from letting it drain only to 50% then charging, then letting it drain to 30% then charging. I noticed that between both at a final full charge, I would lose battery life quicker under the same usage scenario. but this quicker loss of power, can only degrade soo much before it settles into a norm. so if you want your battery life to be a bit above the norm, it's best to charge well before low battery. once you reach that low battery threshold even once, your battery life is forever reduced, to a noticeable degree, I would say as high as a 10% difference (i.e. you'll lose power 10% quicker)

the reason why draining a battery completely became popular is because there is some degradation over time. for example, an iphone 5 after 400 recharges, will only hold 80% of its original capacity. so obviously, you would want to charge as little as possible, hence why people would want to charge only as much as needed. but I doubt many people will be charging their N7 more than 1x a day on average, so you're looking at well over a year before you notice somewhere near a full ~20% reduction in full charge capacity.

I like to think of electricity as water, and the cells as water tanks -- if you empty those tanks, then try to refill them, there may be some 'air bubble' spaces where a charge isn't held so well, or at least as well as before.

 

[alysariah]

thanks for all your replies. I've already accidentally let it shut off once. I will be sure not to let that happen again. I was afraid of overcharging.

 

[hpilot]

Whenever you can, it should always be kept on the charger. These batteries have X number of full cycles in their lifetime, so the fewer cycles you use, the longer it will last. The charging logic in the N7 will prevent it from overcharging. If you want to leave the unit off for an extended period of time (several weeks or a few months), the best charge level is about 50%.