There. Believe Me Now?

“The memory effect: Will your battery lose capacity if you don’t let it go down to zero every once in a while? Not likely. The memory effect applies only to nickel-cadmium batteries, whereas most modern electronics use lithium-ion or the more advanced lithium-ion polymer. Not only are lithium batteries immune to the memory effect, they also don’t require you to do anything special the first time you use them (like charge them up for 24 hours, as some gadget manuals say). Nicad batteries are still found in cordless phones, electric toothbrushes, and other cheap gadgets, but they’re usually pretty inexpensive to replace.”

Farhad Manjoo’s my favorite tech writer, and commonsense posts like this are why. I’ve been trying to tell my friends, who are letting their phones drain to zero on purpose, that they’re not doing anything except borrowing my phone at the bar.  I’m totally going to pull out my fully-charged iPhone and pull up this article next time it happens, I swear.  (Also: I know, two cell-phone related posts in a row.  This will stop.)

Filed under: Farhad Manjoo  iPhone  tech