While waiting for a response from @Barry0892 or @Sofirn to that final question, I did a little test on my own for case 1 above, by using the following program on my MC3000:
This was obtained by feeding the data Sofirn already gave me (on the product page or in response to my questions above), and assuming that the discharge procedure should stop at once when 2.5V is reached (ie case 1 as described above).
The resulting measured capacity for the battery was only 4647 mAh, which is appreciably (353mAh or ~7.1%) less than the nominal 5000mAh this battery is rated at; this seems to indicate that case 1 is not how this battery should be discharged, and point towards case 2. Corroborating that, I have two more pieces of data:
- Right after discharge stopped at 2.5V and the procedure was paused, voltage shot up all tjhe way to 2.88V in less than 1 minute, and then to 3.02V at the end of the 30min pause I programmed between discharge and recharge. Voltage recovery is normal after interrupting a discharge, but the magnitude and speed I saw here seems to indicate the battery still had available capacity to be drained.
- At the end of the charge cycle that followed, total mAh supplied to the battery was just 4644mAh, which again falls quite short of the nominal 5000mAh even before discounting the charging (in)efficiency (some part of the energy supplied, around 5-10%, is always lost as heat). This seems to indicate the battery still had some charge in it when the discharge process finished.
Right now I’m discharging the battery to 3.73V for storage, let’s see whether and by how much the voltage shots up at the end of it; if it’s substantial, IMO this would also corroborate that the battery needs to be discharged according to case 2 pointed above in order to reach nominal capacity.