How to Maintain The Durability of your Laptop Battery

Most times you wish your laptop battery remain as it is when you just bought in term of backup hours,  but it do turn out the other way round.
Why? Is their any way out?

Lets look at some factors that could help to save the lifespan of your Laptop Battery.
Firstly, Lets talk about Batteries generally

Batteries:

• Batteries are Electrical energy storage made with chemicals.
• It has specific number of Discharging and Charging cycle(times) expected before getting fully damaged 

One major thing that do affect Durability of a battery is the level at which a battery get discharged before recharging it. For instance a battery of 3.7v 1200mA could be drain to 2.0v before recharging which is not so good for the battery life span, especially if its a Lead acid or Calcium Battery which has 50% Discharge rate  (Batteries has max charging cycle specified by the manufacturer). This factor has more effect on batteries, which will determine its life span/durability

The typical estimated life of a Lithium-Ion battery is about two to three years or 300 to 500 charge cycles depends on its manufacturer Standard, whichever occurs first. One charge cycle is a period of use from fully charged, to fully discharged, and fully recharged again.

• Another factor is Charging rate either Slow charging, Normal charging or Trickle charging  i.e the value voltage and current that is charging the battery at a particular time, which determines how fast the battery will get fully charge.
• All batteries are subjected to gradual reduction in capacity it is been discharged and recharged

Laptop Batteries

So, with this basic knowledge about battery lets talk about laptop batteries and its usage:

Whats inside:

• Laptop batteries are made up of lithium battery cells, which are strong batteries, and have good discharging rate and could last very longer if well maintained.
• It has a small circuit inside that is meant for monitoring battery voltage level, and to help controlling its charging manner.

Laptop Battery Circuit:

Laptop battery as said above contains connections of about 6 Li battery cells and some 4 cells and a small circuit connected to it to monitor and control its voltage level and charging rate.
The function of this circuit does not goes beyond the above two major actions which is meant to give full protection to your battery.

• The circuit has a specific IC that is called charge controller IC which its work is to monitor how the battery get charged. as its called 'Controller' it acts that function of control whereby it stops power(voltage and current) from getting into the battery further as soon as the battery reached its 100%. Which means even if your charger is still kept plugged-in its not affecting your battery nor your laptop, as soon as the battery started discharging bellow 100% like 99% the charge controller switches on the power to the battery and it start charging again, then repeat the same process when fully charged
• This IC also check the charging voltage from your battery if its compatible to charge your battery, and if not your laptop display incompatible charger/power source.  

Note: When your battery is fully charged the controllers turns your Laptop to be running on A/C i.e your charger which the process of the switching occurs under micro seconds that you would not notice it to the extent that if you remove your battery while your laptop is still running and your charger is plugged in it will not switch off.

Maintenance Tips:

Laptop Batteries are best maintained when they are not often discharged to 10% of their capacity. As programmed to operating system, your laptop will indicate low battery at 10% to tell you to find another power source or hibernate and again at 7% and then critical battery LOW then Hibernate automatically.

• Don't change your battery settings to be lower than the default battery level
• Charge as far as you an alternative power source i.e for charging 
• Keeping your charger plugged-in after your battery is fully charged is healthy for your battery and does not have side effect.
• Do not let you battery get so low before hibernating or shut-down if their is no available power source to recharge at the moment.
• Its best if you can ensure your laptop battery never get lower than 30% or at least most time its not lower that that.

Following this Simple tips can be help you to keep your Laptop Battery backup hour for as long as 3 to 5years with little decrease in its values.

The more your battery fully discharged the more it wears out.