Some do it every night. Some do it every couple of days. Then are those who do it every time they get into the office. I’m talking about charging your phone. How often do you do yours?

For me, I use my phone to get screen shots for posts on this blog as well as to test out new software. Thus it is inevitable that I charge my phone many times a da, thanks to the auto-charging that happens every time the device connects to my laptop. There used to be a registry tweak out there to prevent such charges from happening but alas, it no longer works, at least not on many of the Windows Mobile devices out there.

Killing it Softly?

So will this kill my battery faster? Since we’ve moved from Ni-Cad to Lithium Polymer, we’ve been told that save for the initial charge of 8-11 hours (again, this is hugely debated), we can charge our devices as many times as we want and there wouldn’t be a memory effect with this newer generation of batteries. And maybe they were right for I never thought my battery performed worse due to constant charging. While that is not to say that performance did not deteriorate, because it did after a while, I usually thought nothing of it, blaming it on age and electronics.

What Others Say

So I wanted to put this to the test and asked a few people what they thought of this memory effect and their answers ranged from the conservative to the liberal. There are those who still believe that our batteries do suffer from memory defects and only charge their devices when the battery does run out (something that is not recommended with the newer Lithium Polymer battery) and there are those who, like me, charge their device whenever it is possible. Who wants to get caught with a dead PDA right?

These schools of thought have all the negatives on why the other is wrong but and thus use such reasons to defend why they are right. It does sound weird if you think about the logic but well worth the consideration if you are going to make your decision.

The Verdict

While I cannot say for certain that this belief is for real or just urban legend, I believe that you can charge your battery anytime you want. It sure would be sad if, with all our technological advancement, we are still controlled by a small package that powers our most sacred of communication and information tool. And if you see performance going down over time, its not the memory effect kicking in, it just means it’s time to change that old battery for a spanking new one.

What do you think about this?

Tags: opinion