Will It Harm the Battery?

I have several Compact Power Banks; Xiaomi, Mophie, RAVPower, and several DIY.

I also have several Kindle Fire Tablets, and an iPad Air.

The tablet folks recommend that periodically you deplete the battery completely so that the software can give the correct status of the battery.
I have the impression from this forum that to completely deplete a LiOn battery may damage it.
SO what tis the answer. I am sure many of you here own tablets, so how do you handle the problem?

Thanks,
Jerry

You will never discharge the battery completely, the electronic will shut down before that happens.
Some modern fuel gauge chips do not need a depleted battery to calibrate.

Thanks, that eases my small mind.
Regards, Jerry :smiley:

I almost never let the battery get below 50%. If I am reading I do not want to have to stop and recharge the battery. Actually I use two most of the time; a 7ā€ and an 8ā€.

Even when not treated with ideal charging/storage conditions, a high quality lithium cell should perform decently up to ~300 cycles. For a powerbank with regular use that should translate to about 2 years and in my experience, after that much usage other components should have worn down more than the battery itself, such as the charging port, output port, or even the electronics inside.

My recommendation is to drain the battery as you need to and donā€™t worry about harming the battery. Just keep in mind that you shouldnā€™t leave it fully charged all the time or fully discharged for extended periods.

Thanks, Will. :slight_smile:

I've been cycling my smartphone battery consistently between 0 and ā‰ˆ60% fuel gauge values (measuring generally below or at ā‰ˆ4V with minimum load after unplugging from the power supply unit; device charges battery to 4.3+V) for the last 2+ years, with some full battery charges (a few actually) from time to time.

The result has been unnoticeable to minimum battery performance loss.

even a good one will end up with some other failure mode before the batteries reach wearout.
micro usb jacks are fragile.
i can easily replace those but the average user cannot and it its not worthwhile to send it to someone who can.
short answer is dont worry about it.

I ā€™m wondering if with laptop batteries and power tool packs, where there are several cells in series if itā€™s not better to fully charge em. Iā€™m guessing that thereā€™s a balance board inside, so if you never charge em completely they will never get balanced and go out of balance more and more. Giving less capacity and ultimately one or more cells getting too much stress and die.
Thatā€™s just me thinking out loud maybe someone more knowledgeable could chime in.

Jerm delete the dupe or have a moderator merge the 2.
having the answers spread to 2 identical threads is no good.

A few months ago I restored a Vaio laptop pack for my nephew, dekozn. Found no balancing circuitry I could discern in the pack's board, just some sort of microcontroller and a couple of unusual p-channel Toshiba MOSFETs (the pack was high side switched, of course).

Maybe thatā€™s why you had to restore it? :confounded:
But yeah, they might get away with that in laptops as it doesnā€™t pull too many amps. It seems that packs get out of balance when discharged very low and when pulling lots of amps.
Although I have opened up some packs where there was definitely some circuitry inside between the cells. I am not savvy enough to know whether it was a balancing thing. I still have one unopened pack, when I dismantle it I take some pictures.
But I doubt that there is no balancing going in on in high end power tool packs, either in the pack itself or in the charger.

I read that as if dekozn is your nephew, haha. :smiley:

LOL, didnā€™t notice it at first

This thread made me download Battery info view , gives a nice overview of your battery stats.
Iā€™ve got an asus X205TA. Battery had originally a capacity of 38WH, according to this tool it has 365 charge/discharge cycles and still 32.5 WH of capacity. Not too bad I think.

Hi Sir, I found that you are really active in the power bank topics in the forum. Currently, I have a pretty awesome USB Voltage meter and tester with QC trigger and Power Delivery functions to give away for reviewing and suggestion. If you are interested by any chance, please PM me or email to: geek1108@hotmail.com
Look forward to your reply.
Thanks.