Laptop (Li-ion) Battery guide

How to properly CALIBRATE a Lithium-Ion (Laptop) Battery

Here’s how you properly calibrate a new laptop battery to get the absolute longest runtime and life from it:

1. Disconnect your laptop from the mains (AC)
2. Insert the battery into your laptop
3. Switch on your laptop but boot into the BIOS (this is usually done by repeating tapping F2 during the boot process)! DO NOT BOOT WINDOWS/LINUX/MAC as the ACPI Power Management software will incorrectly condition your battery! (It will detect the battery as being depleted long before it actually is.
4. CRITICAL: Set the BRIGHTNESS of your laptop’s screen to MINIMUM (virtually all laptops allow you to do this via the keyboard)… If you don’t do this, your battery will be calibrated incorrectly.
5. Allow the laptop to run (remaining in the BIOS and disconnected from the mains) until the battery dies. Don’t be alarmed when the laptop turns off suddenly and without warning, this is exactly what we want.
6. Now connect your laptop to the mains (AC) and leave it switched off. You should have an indicator light SOMEWHERE on your laptop to inform you that it is charging, and one would hope that light would change its state to indicate a full battery.

Repeat the above steps about 3 or 4 times (as I said, not a quick process)…

Assuming you’ve done exactly what I suggested above, your battery should now give you its absolute maximum runtime capacity!

IMPORTANT: It is worth trying this process with your existing laptop battery, even if you don’t suspect any degradation in its runtime capacity… you may be surprised to gain as much as 35% extra runtime between recharges!

How to properly MAINTAIN a Lithium-Ion (Laptop) Battery

Now that you know how to PROPERLY condition a Lithium-Ion (Laptop) battery, how should you maintain it to ensure you don’t end up buying replacement batteries year after year? Well, here’s how I do it (and I’ve only ever had to  replace 1 laptop battery… that includes laptops I’ve had now for more than 5 years)

1. NEVER (and I mean NEVER) store a laptop battery with less than 50% of its charge (in fact, 50% charge is ideal for storage… so try to ensure your battery is as close to 50% as possible, though slightly over isn’t so bad)
2. NEVER store your laptop battery within the laptop itself for more than a few days! If you do, the battery will be slowly drained… this will (if left for too long, or done to frequently) de-condition your battery… perhaps drain it to the point where it can no longer be recharged (as I witnessed with a friend who stored his laptop battery inside the laptop, unused for 3 months)
3. NEVER store a laptop battery in cold conditions (if the temperature is uncomfortably cold for you, it’s generally too cold for a laptop battery)… this will actually damage the Lithium-Ion battery irreparably, and the longer you leave it in such conditions, the less capacity the battery will hold… eventually holding nothing!
4. NEVER short-circuit a battery (any battery)…. you’d be an idiot to do so, but it’s worth saying it again!
5. NEVER disassemble a battery (any battery) unless you are certified to do so. REMEMBER, Lithium-Ion batteries are potentially explosive. They contain alkalies which are hazardous to the human body (ESPECIALLY if inhaled). A ruptured Lithium-Ion cell could potentially (spontaneously) catch fire! Don’t think that, just because you can work a soldering iron on a piece of stripboard, it makes you qualified or savvy enough to safely disassemble a battery pack! PEOPLE HAVE DIED TRYING TO DO SO!
6. NEVER submerge a laptop battery in any liquid (goes without saying)
7. AVOID shock of any kind… in-particular electric-shock, over-vaulting, under-vaulting, charging with an incorrect power block, power-surges… but also physical shock (dropping it)
8. ALWAYS fully discharge your laptop battery at least once per month (run the laptop, under normal conditions, without being connected to the mains [AC])… immediately recharge the laptop at least to 50% when your laptop battery has died. The most common cause of battery depletion is that the laptop has been connected to the mains for weeks (sometimes months, even years) without being run on the battery. Keep in mind that your battery is not being charged when the Smart Chip (within the battery) believes it is charged. This means that a “fully charged” laptop battery being run inside a laptop connected to the mains is actually slowly discharging; because the mains is providing a sufficient current to the laptop, it never bothers to re-test the battery to see if it is in need of charging…. the end result is your battery becomes flat (0% charged) and will not accept much (if any) charge in the future.
9. ALWAYS ensure that you recharge your laptop battery ASAP after running it on the battery beyond 50% of its available capacity.
10. ALWAYS recondition your battery at least once per year (see the section above for steps on how to do that)

If you follow all of this advice, there’s no reason you should be replacing any Lithium-Ion battery within the first 2 or 3 years (perhaps even longer) of owning it.