Charging cell phone batteries makes them die faster, or so the story goes...

My new one does not work that way.
I just plug it in when I got to bed, don't see the issue.

Could be true... I've personally never had one die though, and I'm one of those people who keeps the phone for at least two years, until they give me another free one.

Older batteries had "memory" so letting die every now and then then charging them back up made them last longer.
This is no longer true.

Some things I have heard about phone batteries that may or may not still be true (if they ever were):
* partial charging creates a "high-water mark", beyond which the battery will not charge. For example, if the battery is at 30 % and you charge it to 80% then disconnect, after that it will not charge past 80% no matter how long it is on.
* This can be fixed by taking it to a professional battery maintenance service who will completely drain and completely recharge the battery, which is supposed to erase the high-water mark.
* You can do much the same at home, by completely draining the battery (just keep turning it on every time it goes off), then leave it in the freezer over night (I know, sounds like an urban myth and probably is) then completely charge it up again.

I repeat, I don't know if any of this was ever true or if it still is or if it applies to the batteries in your phone.

Good luck.

I'd be curious to test this.
Beest, Monster, please fully charge your batteries, then SWAP batteries in your phones. See if Beest's still runs flat quicker. Then you'll confirm that it is the searching for network that is doing this, and not some issue with the battery itself.
Just curious

As RK stated this is not usually true anymore as most technology has moved to the Ni-Mh(newer) vs Ni-Cd (older):

http://www.silverace.com/dottyspotty/issue10.html

There are some good points in the above link about general battery behavior.

Well Beest found that if his phone is upright in his pocket rather than flat across the bottom, it is more likely to get reception, so he tried keeping it upright and found that the battery lasted much longer. Of course, it could be just that the charge spills out of the battery when it's tipped over.... ;)

swapping batteries would actually mean we'll have to meet IRL which is a rarety these days, so you may have to wait a while for that experiment. :rolleyes:

It's funny that you bring this up Jeb:
I beat the hell out of my cell phone a couple of weeks ago. I even made sure it was dead, dead, dead......And the battery? I stomped on it, well jumped on it up an down- and when that did nothing to it, I took out my lighter. That felt really damb good, and although I am embarassed at my cell phone rage:

I will never be sorry for it. Ever.

I tell everyone that I "broke" it and lost their numbers...but really I killed it. I never usually break my things or act out like that.....but somehow I feel so much better. Really.....it was awesome. I now have the courage to discuss it after Mockingbird's photo of what he did to a computer.

I'm glad you're OK, but I'd like to humbly suggest that burning batteries is not particularly clever.

Cell phones are great except for one thing... People will call you... :cool:

Not if you don't give them the number :)

Do what I do... keep it off, turn it on, check voice mail, turn it off. Works for me. :D

Thank you HM....yes...it was like an epiphany. I realized (even in my rage) that I had to stop because I did care if I won a Darwin Award......
Maybe sometime I will be honored with it...but please..not now. I don't think anyone has an acceptance speech prepared for me yet....
:D

Too bad I don't have pictures of the other laptop... It was fucking up and I took it to a lot of people to try to fix it, finally I gave it to my friend who works at an IBM branch out here and he pronounced it dead.

SooooOOOOoooo, I talked to another friend of mine who is a gun nut, and we took his AK47 and laid into it. That felt even better than the baseball bat.