What is the most efficient method of charging a gadget?

Some time back I had asked my laptop's service engineer this very question, about how to prevent constant depletion of a battery as a laptop battery is horrendously expensive.

Here are some useful tips he told me:

1. I should not switch off the laptop and then only start charging it. I can charge it while it is on / in hibernation mode. He said that even the act of booting up the laptop all over again will take up a minuscule bit of power so best not to wait to shut it down and then only charge it.


2. I must ensure that I start charging the battery when it reaches 40% minimum. He said most people wait till it is jut 10% or 11%, which he did not approve of! On the maximum side, he said to stop charging once it reaches approximately 80% to 85% (max.90%) and not wait till it reaches 100%. He said one has a tendency to wait till it reaches 100% but what happens is that since one is very busy, one tends to forget, resulting in it remaining at that 100% point for quite a while. Subsequently, the battery gets heated up as does your laptop, which should definitely be avoided.


3. He said it is a good idea not to overload the laptop with too many games. He suggested that once a game is played through, why not uninstall it and if really something exciting, again download and play it. Also, if one is doing some work, then do not keep a running game open simultaneously. Similarly, do not load the laptop with needless software that you are never going to use!


4. If there is a battery save feature in your laptop, definitely use it.

In the case of a smartphone, the tips for charging are:

1. No need to switch off your smartphone while charging. However, for safety reasons, if the phone rings, unplug it and then talk. Do not ever talk when it is plugged into an outlet for charging.


2. As in the case of a laptop, uninstall all apps and software you are not going to use, as also videos and games.

In the case of both a smartphone and a laptop, the main tip is: Tune out of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS features when not using the gadget.

Well, there have been a number of discussions and suggestions on this topic. Apart from what has been said in the previous response, here are a couple of suggestions based on my experience to take care of your batteries.

1. Keep your batteries cool. Place your smartphone away from direct sunlight. In case of laptop or PC, make sure that cooling mechanism is working properly.

2. Make use of power saving feature on your gadget. Some of the recent devices have multiple power saving profiles. You can use them as per the needs.

3. Performing shallow charging helps you get more life out of your battery. Instead of discharging it to zero, make it a point to put It to charge at around 50%. It has been observed to give more charge cycles than charging it at 80% or 0.

4. Fully discharge your battery once In a month. Though I am contradicting my own statement above not to discharge your battery to zero, yet the feature that lets you know the level of battery gets a kind of "out of balance" after several shallow recharge cycles. Later on your battery may not be able to tell you the exact charge left. It would be advisable to recalibrate this mechanism by full discharge of your battery.

Here's how I try to recharge the battery.

1. I use airplane mode while charging. This improves the speed at which the battery is charged. Also reduces the feature bloat and quickly recharges itself.

2. I disable the background notification and the running program. This helps in less discharge and also recharging is lot quicker.

3. I use dark background on mobile which reduces my battery at lesser rate for AMOLED screens.

4. I disabled Wifi and 3G/2G/GPRS while charging or even when I don't need it. This also reduces the battery discharge and recharge speed.

I think though not all the tips work out on every smartphone out there but slowly it does help as well.