[Laptop] Prolong Life Span and Capacity of your Battery

Have you ever wondered why the rechargeable battery in your laptop is covered by a shorter warranty period than the rest of your laptop? The reason is very simple. The life span of a laptop battery is much shorter. After only one year many batteries provide half the capacity they had in the beginning.

What is the reason?

The reason is fairly simple. When having been turned off, the laptop wastes a little bit of energy of the battery. Almost for nothing. When turning on your laptop the battery gets recharged again. But even if it’s only 1% or 2% that needed to be recharged, this reloading process is counted as a whole recharging cycle. Thus after having turned on and off your laptop twice a day for a period of 365 days, the battery has undergone most likely more than 700 recharging cycles. And the more recharging cycles it has undergone the worse its capacity becomes.

What can I do about it?

Althought the performance will become worse after some time, there are certainly some things to try:

  • If you use the laptop as a desktop PC substrate: you can remove the battery
  • Reduce the amount of reloading cycles: have your battery used until it’s almost empty, then recharge

Some more hints

Remember, that Li-Ion batteries lose capacity even if they are not used at all. Some people reported losses in capacity of up to 50% in two years. So the impact of using or not using may be big or just little in your case. Anyway, it’s worth a try.

One thought on “[Laptop] Prolong Life Span and Capacity of your Battery

  1. lazarus

    The information given above is very misleading. Follow it and you will 1) ruin your battery and 2) Miss out on further info, there is more to this topic than the above.

    Try googling around on lithium ion batteries and specifically on how to maintain them properly, also check wiki pages on lithium battery technology and follow up on some external links.

    As a note. I am not 100% certain but on the laptops which I use (IBM & Lenovo Thinkpads) battery charge cycles are counted as full discharge followed by full recharge. Also based on more professional info found at other locations: It is best to not discharge a Li-On (Lithium Ion) battery bellow 20% capacity since this will induce faster aging. Battery aging kicks in the moment the unit leaves the factory. Keep battery upper charge limit at 80%, also reduces aging. etc.

    Hope everyone takes note and does further reading. Cheers.

    Thanks for your comment. What exactly is misleading in the information provided by us? Can you provide some links for your hypothesis? In the meantime: if you speak german: you may have a look into this german video by the Heise c’t TV. They almost say the same like we do. Enjoy & Kd rgds to Sweden, metapapa

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