# Recharging battery



## amyberta (Dec 14, 2009)

How often do you all recharge you battery for you iPad?


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## Stormy (May 24, 2010)

I don't have mine yet so can't answer this question. I do charge my iphone every night


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

There's no magic involved with the lithium ion batteries used in most electronic devices these days. Charge them whenever you like for as long as you like, the one thing that is not good for them is to be discharged all the way on a frequent basis. There's a lot of rubbish advice out on the internet about batteries these days, a lot of it being hangovers from the NiCad days. NiCads were pretty picky about charging.

I generally charge them with my bedside charger while I sleep, unless they've gotten a lot of use and need charging during the daytime.

My iPad gets charged about every three days, whether it needs it or not.


Mike

Edited to add "on a frequent basis".


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## hsuthard (Jan 6, 2010)

Mine gets charged every night along with my iPhone.


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## amyberta (Dec 14, 2009)

I usually charge it when it gets down to between 30-40  percent.


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

About every 2-3 nights.

Re: the full discharge, there's mixed reports on that.  I've seen apple support on their forums telling people to run it all the way down until it turns off (same for the iPhone) once every month or two as that recalibrates the battery meter so that 100% is actually 100% (since it measured a charge from 0 back up to 100%).

Yet others, including a post above, say it's bad to fully discharge them.  So I've never been sure who to believe.  I will say I get a tad longer battery life if I do the fully discharge and recharge periodically, so I think there probably is something to it calibrating the battery meter.  No idea on any effects on the battery itself, but I can't imagine Apple support would be suggesting something that could damage it.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

mooshie78 said:


> Yet others, including a post above, say it's bad to fully discharge them.


I edited my post to add "on a frequent basis".  

Mike


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## Greg Banks (May 2, 2009)

Running the iPad battery down once a month should be fine. But doing it every time as was needed with the old NiCad will shorten the battery's life. Also, I always charge a new device frequently the first two weeks. It builds the battery up so that you get maximum battery time between charges.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

Greg Banks said:


> Also, I always charge a new device frequently the first two weeks. It builds the battery up so that you get maximum battery time between charges.


Being an electronics/physics guy, I don't see the mechanism behind that. Do you have a source for that info?

Mike


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## Greg Banks (May 2, 2009)

Honestly I don't offhand, though I may have read it somewhere in the past. I have seen it work for me, however, on various devices. It may not be as applicable with iPads, however. I'm not positive on that.


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## luvmykindle3 (Dec 5, 2010)

Mine needs charging about every other day.


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## amyberta (Dec 14, 2009)

luvmykindle3 said:


> Mine needs charging about every other day.


So does mine


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## mooshie78 (Jul 15, 2010)

Can't speak to the new iPad, but for my iPad it generally loses about 10% of battery life during an hour of active use.  Doesn't matter if it's surfing the net, reading, watching video etc. the 10% drop is pretty consistent.  So pretty solid 10 hours of usage.

So that's the best way to estimate how often you'll recharge--as long as you have some sense of how much you'll use it per day.  As I said above, for me I recharge either every other day most of the time--sometimes an extra day or two if I'm not using it as much.  Occasionally more often if I'm really using it a ton.


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