From few years experience of owning multiple gadgets, I learnt couple of things in how to prolong your battery’s life. Here I share you some of them, which may help you to avoid those ‘batere gue drop‘ problems most commonly found on your notebook or handphones.

First of all, you may know that most gadgets today are powered by rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery. This type of battery, in theory, does not need to be recharged before it’s empty. But bear in mind, that the battery life of this type will decrease every time you charges. So, eventually it will find its dying day. However, through careful use of your battery, I found that we can expect our battery life (and its performance) to be dependable for at least 3 years.

Here are some tips to prolong your battery life:

1. Don’t wait until your battery empty to recharge. You may have this legacy from the Ni-Cad battery age. This myth is no longer true. In contrary, your Li-ion battery may be dead if you let them empty. Once you have only 30% of battery remaining, re-charge!
2. Avoid charging battery when your device is not used. This is mostly true on the case of notebook’s battery. Have you ever leave your notebook off, while it is still connected to power cable? There you go, your battery life will decrease significantly. It is totally ok to keep your gadgets is connected to electricity while you’re working on them, even if the battery is 100% recharged.
3. Once you charge your gadgets, let it is charged until its full. Try to avoid unplug your gadgets from charging when it’s battery is not full yet. From my experience, I found this can affect your battery life and performance, even though not as significant as 1 and 2.
4. On the first use, charge it to minimum of 12 hours. Your gadgets manual may state that it only needs 4 hours of first charge. But let me tell you, keep it charged all night. You will reach maximum battery performance with this way.

Keep those four behaviors right, and your gadget’s battery will treat you well. Have a try!

Oh, BTW, some of you may noticed from the above photo, that I reached the third milestone of my ‘Gadget Wishlist’ project. Yes, I bought myself a PSP. Well, not bad to help me go through Jakarta’s crazy traffic these days everyday. With a Treo, iPod and now, PSP, I have no idle times to worry. Hehehe….