Is it really necessary ?

I've always read many different opinons over the years saying that you should always charge a battery X amount of times and let it fully drain each time to properly "condition" to get it's maximum lifespan.

The reason i'm curious is that i've just picked up a new battery for my mum's old Motorola V8 phone and I'm just wondering if i need to tell her it needs conditioning or i can just put it in the phone, charge it up and let her get on with it.

Would it at least be worth giving it a good 6-12 hour initial charge ?

See this article......HERE

My standard advise for new mobile batteries:

Half charges do wonders for battery life i.e. charge to full from 40-50%
Full discharges are bad, (i.e. old conditioning techniques destroy new li-ion batteries.)

The battery app I use on the iPhone says you should start charging when the battery falls to 20% and do a full charge up to 100% whenever possible.

A deep discharge is not good.

The old advice about draining the battery dead & fully recharging it is utter rubbish, doing that on any lithium-ion battery will just decrease it's lifespan & cause issues further down the line.

Which one do you use?

Battery Doctor by KS Mobile for iOS.

Cheers.

Decent advice that. Ideally we would keep our phones charged between 20% & 80%, never fully discharge them and if we are going to put them away for any length of time do it on a half charge. I do try and ensure my phones don't drop below 30%.

Thanks for that information, very interesting and useful. My mum generally doesn't let her phone fully discharge anyway, so it sounds like her way of doing things will probably ultimately be the best way after the initial charge.

It will likely come half charged and wont need any specific initial charge.

New Phones rarely deep discharge as they kill the phone when the battery gets to a certain level, there is still juice left in the battery.
Apple only ask you to do a "empty" to 100% charge to calibrate the battery meter as sometimes it gets a bit confused and kills the phone with upto 1/3 battery power still left!

Last year I had two iPhone 5S's for 6 or so months. One that get run down to zero nearly every day (my personal phone) and another which had to be kept charged to tether (company phone) rarely ever switched off due to not being charged. There was no difference in how long the batteries lasted, so it is just a fallacy. If you are charging a phone from 20-40% to full it's no different to letting it die and charging it or even leaving the charger in all the time with modern phones. Dropping your phone, moisture or heat is more likely to reduce your battery life than anything.

The 12 hour charge recommendation is a hangover from the past with older type batteries and controllers, it is also rather pointless as most batteries come pre-charged to set level.

I can't fathom it.

There is a BMS in the phone. Charging to 100%, and leaving charged for a couple of hours should really be all the BMS needs.

I don't bother.

I charge my battery from whatever it is when i go to bed every night and have never had any issues with batteries on any phone.

Thanks again for the replies. This is an old Motorola V8 flip phone that's not actually used that heavily so I suspect a full charge would likely last a few days at least.

You don't need to "condition" a lithium-ion battery. These batteries do not calibrate - they just work.

Sticking my LG G2 on 2G, data off I can squeeze out near a weeks battery use.

It is a shame there is nothing available to stop the charge at a more battery safe 80%.
I simply do not need a damaging 100% to get through the day.

Interestingly the specs say that the G2 has a maximum 37.5 days standby life.
That is more than 5 weeks.

Interestingly, on battery stats I just checked the competing iPhone 6.
That quotes just under 11 days, less than one 3rd of the G2.

That tells us there must be some governing law requirement to give us battery stats.
I'm well surprised to still see them for Apple.

The G2's battery life is phenomenal. It's been out for way over a year and I still haven't found a better phone for battery life.

Shame the skin sucks

If you asked me to describe the skin, or its differences I would not have a clue how to.
I just use it.

Strangely the Galaxy S5 standby sucks, and the G3 is only OK.
It is almost as if the motto is 'if you can't beat them, go downhill like them' !

I might just get 20 years out of my G2. The conversation has reminded me to start using a clockwork mains plug timer adapter so that I can more easily guess charge to a safe 80%

Modern Lithium based batteries tend to work better on shorter but frequent charging, the only time it may need "calibrating" is when the OS system incorrectly reads the charge level. Occasional "calibrating" shouldn't be detrimental the battery, eventually as its worn over time, it will need to be run down so to speak, allowing it to be read more accurately by the OS.

Some say you should never charge to 100% other say you should never let it run down. Frankly all of it is bollox, batteries in phones are very well designed to take into account the daily requirements of users. Most people will leave their phone on charge overnight, this won't kill the battery as they all have a shut off and allow power to discharge and to a certain level and then recharge again.

There is plenty of scientific real data around.

Charge to 60 or 65% and you are guaranteed 2000+++ full charge cycles.
And those super fast charges only charge to about 60% for the very reason that fast charging above 60% totally destroys the battery !

But the good news is that if you leave your charger on overnight, you still likely get about 300 charges total, assuming your battery was A1 to begin with and has never been ultra fast charged.

Only if the charge controller prevents the battery from damage by running it too low. If you didn't charge it and ran to down to empty and didn't use it for a while it would probably damage the battery. One thing you never want to happen is for the battery to go outside of it's comfort levels as it causes damage.

I have been a subscriber to Martin Lorton's Youtube for a long time and the EEVBlog too as I have a big interest in electronics engineering. Martin tests batteries by doing loads of duty cycles and deliberately trying to see what damages them. There's some good lead acid videos which are often used in solar power storage situations. Lithium polymer videos is something I have looked at with several electronics tests.

Usually the charge controller prevents any damage, but running them flat (and I mean flat) as in leaving them empty is definitely bad and as he explains in depth if you have a big enough interest to sit and watch all his battery videos which I do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZyY1dpka7c

Entertainment indeed.
Yet you could write most of the useful real data on the back of a fag packet.

Has it concluded yet that LifePo4 with its 3000 to 10000 full cycles is the only battery to use for home storage?

True, the testing is fun though, no idea on LifePo4 I'm afraid!

The lead crystal vs lead acid is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cawNUyLAnP8 He has spreadsheets with all the tests!