How to boost your smartphone battery, charge it correctly and extend its service life. Putting the dots on Li: Is training for lithium batteries necessary?

Modern smartphones operate on battery power for approximately 1-2 days at medium intensity use. If you run gaming applications on them, watch movies and turn on other resource-intensive applications, the operating time will be offline mode will decrease to a day, and sometimes even less. Therefore, the issue of increasing the mobility of smartphones is quite acute. To get a small increase in battery capacity, it is often used to pump it up and periodically calibrate it. Let's figure out what this means.

Battery boost controversy modern gadgets don't subside. Swinging refers to several cycles of complete discharge and subsequent charging of the battery to 100%. The need for this procedure arose at a time when batteries were widely used in electronics. These types of batteries had a pronounced “memory effect”.

If they are not discharged, then during the next charge-discharge cycle they give up less capacity, and so on with incomplete discharge. For them, the buildup was necessary. Nowadays, lithium batteries are widely used in smartphones:

• Lithium-ion (Li-Ion);
• Lithium polymer (Li-Pol).

They do not have a “memory effect” as pronounced as alkaline batteries. Therefore, the question arises: why should they do the buildup? But practice shows that pumping up and periodically calibrating lithium smartphones allows you to slightly increase the capacity they use.

The pumping itself is very simple and is done on a new battery. After purchasing a new gadget or smartphone, you need to do 3-4 cycles of complete discharge and subsequent charging. There is no need to specifically discharge your smartphone, but simply use it until it turns off and then put it on charge.

After this, during use, put the phone on charge when the battery charge level drops to 15-20%. After the capacity is fully charged, try not to keep the phone on charge. This will be the optimal use of your smartphone battery. Periodically (every 1-2 months) calibrate the battery as described below. In parallel with this, you can check real capacity batteries. This is written about in the link.

Calibrating a smartphone battery is a useful procedure that allows you to make the most of its capacity. What steps do you need to follow to calibrate the battery of your phone or other gadget?

• First you need to discharge the battery “to zero” so that it turns itself off;
• After that, charge it in the off state;
• Pull out battery for 1-2 minutes and insert it back again. Do not turn on the smartphone;
• Place your phone on charge again without turning it on. It is quite possible that it will show a charge level of less than 100%;
• Charge again to the end and repeat until the difference disappears.

This calibration allows the smartphone to access the entire battery capacity. Statistics show that the increase in capacity can range from 10 to 30 percent. It goes without saying that this procedure is not suitable for smartphone models with built-in batteries. You can also read information about and.

How to increase the battery life of your smartphone?

Now some tips on how to extend the battery life of your smartphone. After all, if the charge is not used rationally, then all efforts to calibrate and build up will be reduced to zero.

• Reduce the brightness of your smartphone's display slightly. After all, the main drain of battery energy is the display. Of course, you don't want to turn the brightness down so much that it becomes uncomfortable for your eyes;
• Kill processes that are constantly running on your smartphone in background. If you understand what you are doing, you can do it manually. If not, then there is special utilities for Android, which allow you to disable unnecessary applications,interfaces. As a result, the system will be unloaded, and there will be fewer calls to the CPU and memory. As a result, battery energy will be consumed less intensively;
• Try not to stay for a long time in places where there is no connection. Otherwise, the phone will constantly search for the network, and before you know it, the battery will run out. If you have to be in such a place for a long time, then just turn off your phone. After all, no one will get through to you there anyway;
• Remove the battery from the smartphone and clean the contacts. Dirt, dust, and oxides often accumulate on them. Because of this, the battery resistance increases and the charging time increases;
• It is best to keep your smartphone at room temperature. Under the influence of low and high temperatures electrochemical processes in the lithium battery are disrupted. This leads to loss of capacity and battery discharge. Heating is simply dangerous for this type of battery;
• To increase the mobility of your gadget, you can buy external battery for smartphone. There are many different capacities and sizes available for all smartphones.

If your phone's battery has completely become unusable, try studying it and trying the recommendations from this article.

On some smartphones you can still find non-removable batteries. An example is the Nexus 5 by LG. With such devices, the calibration procedure is more problematic. And yet, ? The answer to this question is in the material at the link.

But in most cases, “non-removable” only means that it cannot be easily removed. If you use a screwdriver and other tools, the built-in battery can be removed in a few minutes. This may be required if the battery wears out and needs to be replaced with a new one.

Smartphones and tablets running Android OS have the same problem for many users. After a short period of time after purchasing the device, owners begin to notice a fairly significant decrease in battery life devices. As a rule, the first thing that comes to mind is to purchase new battery, but before you decide to take this step, first try to carry out a simple procedure to calibrate your battery, and after that, if this does not give results, you can safely go for a new battery.

If you began to notice that your smartphone began to discharge faster or turn off completely when the charge indicator did not have time to fall below 70%, then the so-called “Memory Effect” has occurred in your smartphone’s battery. Its essence lies in the fact that if the battery is not fully charged, its capacity decreases over time. The battery seems to remember to what limit it needs to be charged. You can “retrain” it using calibration.
Calibration in general means bringing something to an optimal state. In the case of smartphones, it means improving battery consumption in order to increase its operating time.

When should you calibrate your battery?

Before you begin the calibration process, you first need to make sure that you really need it. When is battery calibration necessary?
As already written above, there is a noticeable decrease in the operating time of the device. For example, if after purchase your smartphone worked for 3 days in a row; in the second month - after charging it began to withstand 2 days, and so on. This all indicates that your device’s battery is not working properly and needs calibration.

The second case is more rare, but also occurs. Automatic shutdown of your smartphone or tablet even after fully charged. This problem is extremely rare, but can raise quite a few questions for a novice user.
So, if you are sure that you need to calibrate, then let's get started.

This method does not involve installing any applications; all you need is a phone and a charger.
The first thing you will need to do is charge the battery until the screen of your device shows that the charge is 100%. After this, unplug the charger and turn off the phone. Connect the charging cable to the switched off phone and plug it into the network again until a signal appears on the screen of the switched off phone indicating that the battery is fully charged.

The next step is to turn on the phone and disable the ability to turn off the screen backlight in the settings (usually in Android, this is: display settings - sleep mode). When your phone stops going into sleep mode, start charging the battery again to 100%.
Disabling sleep mode is necessary to allow your smartphone's battery to drain faster, thereby causing your battery to drain faster. So, after the smartphone is charged, leave it to discharge with the display on.
When the smartphone is discharged, charge it again. This should be enough for your smartphone to start using energy correctly again.
This is where the “manual” calibration method ends. Don't forget to turn Sleep Mode back on.

There are a huge number of applications aimed at improving the battery life of your smartphone. Today we will focus on one of them, the most popular -.
The sequence of actions for this calibration method will be as follows:
First, you will need to launch this program and connect the device to the charger.
After the phone is charged to 100%, you will hear a characteristic squeak, but do not rush to remove the charger, you will need to wait another 1 hour from this point.

After another hour of charging, in the application menu you will need to press the “Calibrate” button and wait for the procedure to complete.
After everything is completed, you can remove the charger from the network and reboot your device.
This completes the calibration process using the application. If you did everything correctly, then the memory of your battery controller has been reset. This method The good thing is that it does not require any extraneous actions from you, the program does everything itself.

Before you begin the process of calibrating your device using this method, you will need to know the capacity of your battery. This can be done quite simply by looking under the cover of your device, at the battery itself, or by searching for information on the Internet. Battery capacity is determined in mAh.
Once you know exactly the capacity of your battery, you can begin installing the program. Its essence is that it will show you in real time the amount of charge in your battery. All you have to do is bring this indicator to the level to which your battery is designed.
When the charge reaches its maximum, you will need to unplug the device and reboot it, thereby letting the device understand what the real capacity limit actually is.

If after the first such procedure you do not feel any special results, then try 5 full cycles of charging and discharging the battery. After such actions, the device with 100% confidence will take this indicator for granted and will not discharge ahead of time, and you will get what you needed - battery calibration.

Advice: After purchasing a new device, be sure to perform 5 complete charge and discharge cycles of the device’s battery. This will significantly extend the life of your battery.

Battery calibration on Android with ROOT rights

This method is used extremely rarely by users, but also has a right to exist.
In order to calibrate the battery in this way, you need to:
The first thing to do is bring the phone to Recovery Mode and go to the Additional section. In it, you will need to press the “wipe battery stats” button. This press will clear any calibrations ever made by you or your device's system.

The second step is to completely drain your device's battery. After your device is discharged, charge the device until it is fully charged without turning it on.

These two manipulations should be enough to make your device understand what you require from it. If you want to consolidate the result, then after fully charging the device, without disconnecting it from the network, perform additional calibration in the program. This way, your device's battery will be calibrated at its best.

Advice: Try to charge your device via USB as little as possible. This can only be done if you do not have access to a regular outlet.

Almost every modern laptop model comes with lithium-ion batteries different capacities depending on the specific equipment...

Over time, Android devices begin to run out of battery much faster than they used to. In some cases, you can fix this problem yourself, and sometimes the only way out of the situation is to buy a new battery.

There may be several reasons why a tablet or phone stops holding a charge:

Battery boost

This item should only be considered if you are using an old phone or tablet.

This method of eliminating the problem of rapid battery drain is suitable for a nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) battery, which, as a rule, can be installed on older models of phones and tablets. On modern devices install lithium-ion (Li-Ion) batteries that do not require pumping.

To find out what technology your battery is made of, you need to determine the device model or study the information written on the battery itself.

Swinging is a repetition of the cycle of completely discharging and then fully charging the phone several times in a row. Please note that this technology should only be used on nickel batteries; on others it will not only not be beneficial, but will also cause harm.

To boost the battery:

1. When the battery is completely discharged, turn off the device and charge it completely.
2. Remove the battery from the device, keep it in this state for two minutes, and then reinsert it back into place. If the battery is not working properly, a notification will appear on the screen that the phone is not fully charged, for example, 95%. Without turning on the device, repeat the charging process until 100%.
3. Discharge the device completely. Repeat these steps until the battery, after you have removed it and inserted it back, begins to show a full charge. The charge level should not drop or change after handling the battery.

Battery calibration

Unlike swinging, calibration is recommended for all batteries if they have been identified as having problems holding a charge. If the device quickly runs out, turns off when the displayed charge level is not zero, or does not charge completely, then it must be calibrated. Thanks to this procedure, the device will understand what the maximum capacity of the battery actually is, and in the future it will allow it to be completely filled.

Via a third party application

Since Android does not have a battery calibration application by default, you will have to download it from the Play Market:

Video: calibrating the battery using the Battery Calibration program

No third party programs

To calibrate the device without using third party programs, follow these steps sequentially:

What to do if calibration and buildup did not help

If the methods described above did not help you return the previous charge retention time, then there is only one thing left to do - replace the battery. Batteries are sold separately and can be purchased at most stores that sell phones and tablets. When purchasing, be guided by the model and battery capacity. Before you pay, check whether the battery fits your device model and whether it works with it.

Battery care

Try to adhere to the following rules to ensure that the battery of any device lasts as long as possible.

Taking care of your battery is very important. This may not extend its service life, but it will definitely prevent it from breaking before the end. warranty period. Follow the above guidelines and remember that lithium and nickel batteries need to be cared for differently.

Jokes about Android users, which do not leave the outlet, are no longer relevant. Modern smartphones have finally learned to work at least the whole day. But we still remember the era of Nokia 3310, which could work these very days on the last division! How to get acceptable battery life from your smartphone?

One of obvious ways– “boost” the battery so that it works on one charge for as long as possible.

Is it necessary to boost the battery?

The world of technology has as many myths as any other. Real wisdom becomes a myth, losing its basis. Thus, modern ideas about batteries and chargers developed in the era of NiCd and NiMH batteries. They were indeed subject to the “memory effect”: if during the last charge-discharge cycle only part of the capacity was used, in the next the battery releases only that part that was used last time. Therefore, they really needed to be “rocked” in full cycles, discharging to zero and charging to one hundred percent.

But modern batteries are usually lithium polymer and lithium ion. They do not have the “memory effect” of nickel-cadmium ones. Is it worth applying to modern batteries the same measures as to their ancestors?

If you need to pump up the battery

Pre-building

By and large, this is done “just in case.” It is carried out in the same way as the owners of the first Ericksons and Siemens taught us. In the first days of use, try to discharge the device until it is completely empty, then charge it until it is fully charged. And so three or four times.

Calibration

It's much more useful tool, with calibration you achieve the most full use charge. To calibrate the battery, you must perform the following procedure:

• Discharge your smartphone to zero.
• Charge it to one hundred percent without turning it on. After that, leave the phone on charge for about the same time.
• Remove the battery.
• After a while, insert the battery back and connect the charger without turning on the smartphone. There is a possibility that the charge indicator will not show 100%, but a lower value (say, 95% or lower).
• Recharge to 100%.
• Repeat the procedure until the difference in level is reduced to zero.

This way, you can use its entire capacity. On average, the increase in autonomy can reach 10-30%. Of course, this only applies to devices with removable batteries. Owners of smartphones with unibody bodies, popular in lately, can try to do the same without disassembling the device. But effectiveness is, of course, not guaranteed.

Alternatives to swinging

Before you do anything, remember why you are doing it. The author of these lines was once planning to buy the newest Sony model PlayStation. Then I thought: why? I realized that it was more for watching movies than for playing games. I began to consider buying a Blu-ray player instead of a set-top box (HDD media players were not yet in use at that time). And then he realized that his TV was already next to his computer, and achieved the same goal by buying an HDMI cable and wireless mouse. And in the end I was able to watch movies on TV in high quality just sitting on the couch.

What is this example for? Perhaps your goal is not to drain your smartphone’s battery, but to extend its battery life. There are other means for this:

• Buy an external battery. There are a huge number of batteries available today different sizes and capacities compatible with absolutely all smartphones.
• Install an optimizer that kills unnecessary processes, disables interfaces and unloads the system. The usefulness of such applications is periodically discussed. We recommend GO Battery Saver from the highly acclaimed GO Dev Team.
• Take advantage automatic tuning brightness
• Buy a smart watch that will perform the alert function. All you need from your smartphone is Bluetooth turned on, but it consumes little energy.
• After all, buy a smartphone with powerful battery– like Lenovo S660!

Enough time has passed since the days when Ni-Cd and Ni-MH batteries reigned supreme in mobile devices, but from the very beginning of the era of Li-ion and Li-pol, there have been ongoing debates about whether these batteries need to be “trained” immediately after purchase.
It’s getting ridiculous, in the ZP100 discussion thread on china-iphone, all newcomers were recommended in an orderly tone to go through 10 charge-discharge cycles, and only then come with questions about batteries.

Let's try to figure out whether such a recommendation has the right to life, or whether these are reflexes of the spinal cord (in the absence of the brain, probably) of some individuals who have them left over from the times of nickel batteries.

The text can and most likely contains spelling, punctuation, grammatical and other types of errors, including semantic ones. The author will be grateful for information about them (of course, in private, and even better with the help of this wonderful extension), but does not guarantee their elimination.

About terminology

About reading datasheets

About charging

About testing technology

About the results

Shows that the greater the discharge current, the less energy can be obtained from the battery. Although, here's a joke, even at the smallest current of 100 mA, the battery capacity does not correspond to the datasheet. Everyone lies.

Although no, a battery test from Mugen Power at 1900mAh for Zopo ZP100 showed quite honest almost-two-amps:

But the Chinese 5000mAh battery only scored 3000:

About the conclusions

1. Training single cell lithium batteries is pointless. Not harmful, but wastes battery life cycles. In mobile devices, training cannot even be justified by the operation of the controller - the battery parameters are the same and do not change depending on the model and time. The only thing that an insufficient discharge can affect is the accuracy of the charge indicator readings (but not the operating time), but for this one complete discharge once every six months.
   Again. If you have a player, phone, walkie-talkie, PDA, tablet, dosimeter, multimeter, watch or any other mobile device, using Li-Ion battery or Li-Pol (if it is removable, it will be written on it, if it is not removable, then 99% is lithium) - “training” longer than one cycle is useless. One cycle is also most likely useless.
   If you have a battery for controlled models, then the first few cycles must be discharged with low currents (small, hehe. For them, small is 3-5C. This is actually one and a half amperes at 11 volts. And the operating currents there are up to 20C). Well, anyone who uses these batteries knows. But for everyone else, this will not be useful, except for general development.
2. In some cases, when using batteries with multiple banks, a full discharge-charge can increase capacity. In laptop batteries, if the manufacturer skimped on smart controller batteries that does not balance the banks in serial connection With each charge, a full cycle can increase the capacity for the next couple of cycles. This happens by equalizing the voltage on all banks, which leads to their full charge. Several years ago I came across laptops with such controllers. I don't know now.
3. Don't trust what's on the labels. Especially Chinese. In the previous topic, I provided a link in which a huge test of Chinese batteries did not reveal a single one whose capacity corresponded to the inscription. NOT ONE! They always overestimate. And if they don’t overestimate it, they guarantee the capacity only in greenhouse conditions and when discharging with low current.
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