BGOL: Do you turn your cell phone OFF when you charge it?

[playahaitian]

Just read this article on laptop batteries and realized I tend to plug my cell in for a charge at night and unplug when I leave in the morning.

Should you turn your cell OFF or leave it ON during the charge???

Is this NOT a good thing to do???

Does it drain the battery more???​

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upgrade...s-laptop-batteries-last-longer-192456763.html

Revive a dying laptop battery​

Laptop battery wearing down? In this week's episode of Upgrade Your Life, Yahoo! News' Becky Worley shows us how to help batteries last longer ... and what to do when they run out!

First, the basics

Most laptops use batteries that can last for 3-5 years, or about 1000 charges. (A premium laptop's battery might last longer.) Every time you charge your battery, the total capacity of the battery is diminished. Originally it may have had a run time of 3.5 hours, but after a year it'll run out of juice at 3 hours, even on a full charge.

If your battery capacity has diminished, there are a few things you can do about it. First, you have to correctly gauge how much capacity has been lost. There are free downloads to do this job, like Battery Eater (for Windows PCs) or Coconut Battery (for Macs). These will compare your battery's current maximum capacity to how long it lasted when it was new.

Calibrating your Battery

You can't miraculously reconstitute your battery's capacity. It loses power over time due to chemical reactions taking place in the battery, as it chugs along powering your laptop. You can't undo those changes, but there is one common battery issue you can fix: In many laptops, the operating system's battery meter gets out of sync with how much juice the battery actually has.

Imagine if the gas gauge on your car dashboard was misreading how much gas you actually had in the tank. You'd either run out of gas when you thought you had a quarter of a tank left, or you'd be filling up too frequently. In your laptop, this can mean your laptop shuts down abruptly when the meter says you have 30 minutes left. Or else the meter might warn that you only have 2 minutes of battery life left and shut your laptop down, when it really has another 20 minutes remaining.

Recalibrating gets the battery meter to correctly read the current state of the battery, so you and the operating system know where you stand with existing battery life.

How to recalibrate

First, charge your laptop's battery to full, and leave it that way for at least two hours. Then unplug your laptop, and set its power management settings to never turn off or lower the monitor brightness. (HP has instructions for how do to this on Windows 7 and Vista, as well as Windows XP, while Apple has instructions for Mac laptops on their site.)

You want to drain the battery completely, then let your laptop sit for at least five hours this way -- like, say, overnight. (Just be careful and mute the volume, since some laptops make a warning sound when they're about to run out.) Afterwards, charge it up again, and you should notice a more accurate portrayal of your battery capacity. In some cases, you may even get more life out of it.

Best practices to maintain battery life

You'd think that the best way to keep your laptop's battery from wearing out is to not use it. Right?

As it turns out, batteries are like muscles; they need to be worked out regularly to stay healthy. Ideally, you'd use your laptop unplugged at least once a day, like on a train or bus commute or on the couch in front of the TV. If you're not going to use it, constantly charging your battery is a bad idea; HP recommends on their website that if you're going to leave your laptop plugged in or put up in storage for more than two weeks, you should take the battery out of your laptop.

Past the expiration date

So when is it time to throw out that old battery? The answer, surprisingly, is "never." Laptop batteries contain lots of toxic chemicals, and should never end up in landfills. Fortunately, e-stewards.org has a list of environmentally responsible recyclers that will take your old battery with no fuss.

When is it time to replace your battery, then? Use the free utility apps Becky mentioned, and when they say that your battery can only hold around 25% of its original capacity it's probably time for a new one. You can buy a replacement battery from the original laptop manufacturer, and there are plenty of places online that sell discounted PC laptop batteries, like Laptops for Less and Batteries.com. Owners of newer Mac laptops can get their laptop's non-removable battery swapped out at any Apple store, with a scheduled appointment.

 

[stickyfingerz]

i almost never turn it off to charge it.... this is a good question....if the batt dies or is about too.... especially in the car.... i plug it up... but ive found that charging it in the car vs the house is different..... the charge in the house or via a electrical outlet is stronger & charges the batt quicker than the connection in the car....my shit only last 5 hrs....all phone / batt makers need to get with the people that make the iphone / ipod batt asap....or find a way to make the apps/ programs on ya phone use less power....

@ 1 piont i had 2 batt's for the same phone... one died... popped the other one in & kept it movein... i HATE when the phone / batt gets hot..... that shit gives me the willies..... i think some sort of EXTRA radiation / cancer shit is popping off....

 

[Digital Angel]

Good to know

 

[tuckdog]

I know my phone charges a helluva lot faster when its off.

 

[playahaitian]

Making your smartphone battery last longer

Yahoo editors have selected this article as a favorite of 2013. It first ran on Yahoo Shopping on July 17th and was one of the most popular stories of the year. The story offers simple tips on how to prolong your smartphone's battery.

We're a smartphone society now -- people do everything on their phones, from checking e-mail and Facebook posts to watching video and surfing the Web. All that comes at a price, though: bear attacks and woefully short battery life.


While there's little I can do about the bears, I can offer a near-dozen practical tips for extending the battery life of your phone, which reduces the frequency of charges (and hopefully let's you make it home at the end of the day before the juice runs dry).

Adjust the screen brightness. The default setting for your screen is probably brighter than it needs to be, and the display is the single largest consumer of battery power on your phone. Turn it down to the lowest level that still comfortable to see.

Sleep sooner. Your phone lets you specify how quickly to turn off the display and put the phone to sleep. You can extend the life of your phone significantly by ensuring the phone turns itself off quickly rather than staying on for several minutes every time you check the time.

Turn off notifications. Many apps enable display notifications. Most of the time, these are pointless and a waste of battery power since they force your screen to light up briefly many times throughout the day. Disable apps' notifications to extend battery power.

Disable any antennas not in use. Never (or only rarely) use Bluetooth. Make sure it's turned off in your settings. The same is true of Wi-Fi, though if you're like most people, you probably use that quite a bit. If your battery is near death, though, and you need to keep it alive as long as possible, you can enter Airplane Mode (which turns off all the radios, including voice).

Minimize the gadgets your phone syncs with. The new Pebble smartwatch is great, but it imposes a battery penalty on your phone to the tune of about 10 percent of battery life per day. There are also Bluetooth headsets, your car and other high-tech conveniences that consume power. If you want to maximize battery life, minimize the number of gadgets you connect to.

Say no to location requests. Many apps ask permission to detect your location so they can provide more targeted information. That might be useful, but every time an app has to ping your GPS chip, it uses power. Unless you really need that location function, just say no.

Sync less frequently. Most smartphones are designed to check for e-mail and apps data every 15 or 30 minutes. If you can live with less frequent updates, extend those minutes to a full hour. This will have a noticeable effect on battery life.

Lower the volume. Turn down your phone's overall volume, including the ringer.

Turn off vibrate. You might need this feature -- especially if you leave your phone in your pocket all the time -- but making a mechanical vibrator jiggle takes a lot of juice. Turn it off for more runtime.

Keep it cool. A hot battery drains faster than a cool one -- so if your phone is hot to the touch, it's running inefficiently. That can happen when you leave it in your car, in your pocket or on top of another hot gadget, like a laptop. Running the phone continuously can also make it heat up.

Turn it off completely. If you know you won't use your phone for a while -- like in a meeting or at the movie theater -- shut it off rather than just quieting the ringer.

 

[ugk]

I don't keep my phone long enough for this question to be relevant.

 

[playahaitian]

....

 

[JamesATL]

no

 

[Osca Lee]

I turn off everything when I charge...laptop and phone

Mfs on darkweb was telling people that is how they get into mfs computers and phones...

 

[jagu]

I put it on airplane mode when I want it to charge faster.

 

[CGN_Spec]

I put it on airplane mode when I want it to charge faster.

Same here

 

[JamesATL]

 

[lukas james]

Man, it's 2016. Unless you're in court, or sitting next to a landline, the cellphone needs to be on at all times.
Everybody knows the one time you turn that bitch off is the one time you needed to be reachable.
My phone could be dry as fuck for a week, but if it dies because I'm out and about without a charger, I'll have 20 voicemails and 10 text messages drop during the 5 minutes it takes for me to find power.
The closest my phone gets to "off" is a voluntary restart once every 2-3 days.
Luckily, my Note Edge has rapid charge, so 0-100% in less than 40 minutes while its on.