Lithium Battery Always Fully Discharged vs Always Fully Charged Life Span?

[Xerden]

I would like to know what is your opinion and knowledge regarding the proper taking care of batteries. I know that lithium batteries aren't supposed to be fully discharged nor fully charged for optimal life span.

 

But what if you are to busy to always monitor you battery's charge level, should you let your battery drain or should you let it charge overnight?

[Bombastinator]

13 minutes ago, Xerden said:

I would like to know what is your opinion and knowledge regarding the proper taking care of batteries. I know that lithium batteries aren't supposed to be fully discharged nor fully charged for optimal life span.

 

But what if you are to busy to always monitor you battery's charge level, should you let your battery drain or should you let it charge overnight?

If you discharge a lithium battery below 2.5v it cannot be recharged again.  The closer one gets to maximum capacity the higher the voltage and the more time is required to get it there.  The farther one goes from fully discharged and fully charged the longer the lifespan of the battery.  Ecig people who want to get maximum life out of their lithium batteries recommend 80%/20%. That’s not laptops though.

[Xerden]

4 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

If you discharge a lithium battery below 2.5v it cannot be recharged again.  The closer one gets to maximum capacity the higher the voltage and the more time is required to get it there.  The farther one goes from fully discharged and fully charged the longer the lifespan of the battery.  Ecig people who want to get maximum life out of their lithium batteries recommend 80%/20%. That’s not laptops though.

Yes, I understand how to properly take care batteries but my question is if you have to choose between draining your phone's battery overnight or leave it charge overnight, to minimize degradation, what will it be?

[Kilrah]

Let it "drain", it's not going to fully empty anyway. Better to be down to 30% when getting up than all night at 100%.

 

It's not that important though.

[porina]

The draining overnight, I take it this is the slow natural drop from idle activities. That's fine. The only danger scenario is if the battery is indicated at 0% (which isn't anywhere near actual 0%), and it drops below the protection threshold where it no longer works normally. It can be difficult to recover from that condition.

 

Basically if you run the device powered all the time, and top up as needed, there's nothing to worry about. I also wouldn't overly worry about leaving it on charger. The management circuits can be pretty smart and will avoid degrading the battery by continuously charging it.

[Bombastinator]

One would assume that mere standby overnight stuff wouldn’t drain much battery.  If it does it means the battery isn’t holding charge and has become dangerous.