Battery Cycling ?

discharge and recharge it fully once a month. it would do it good.

Don't disconnect the charger immediately after it shows 100% full. The phone is still doing some maintenance charging for a couple of hours and thus the battery really isn't 100% full even though the indicator says so.

I usually let mine charge overnight and my battery ilfe is good. If however, for some reason it starts draining fast, I deep boot the whole thing (hold the Home button AND lock/sleep button depressed for a LONG time, until the apple boot logo appears).

when it goes 100% and there is a charging sign - it should not happen for too long. (it should become a plug sign)
however, sometimes it doesnt and it continues to charge even after 100%, try switching off and switching on ur handphone. overcharging will cause the battery to overheat and deteriorate.

thats why its better not to leave it charging overnight (cos it could overcharge, as stated above, but anyway it rarely does)
as for ur phone battery life, i have no idea, are u using an iphone 3gs?
i realised that the fetching/pushing diminishes my iphone battery life, so i set them all to manual.

and switching ur handphone on and off when its fully charged, jus improves the battery status for that charge. nothing else.
i dont think u can improve battery status. nor can u improve ur battery.
but u can improve prolonging the life of the battery.

such as:
dont charge and use ur phone at the sametime (overheating)
charging it in a cool place.
when u feel r phone is heating up, stop using it.
(jus try not to overheat the batteries)
and make sure u use the charges by depleting the battery once a month(jus to make sure the charges dont stay inactive.)

i jus wanted to add somemore,
before the lith. ion technology, we used nickel. and they have memory effects. however these dont affect lithium.
and hence we need not fully discharge and charge the batteries.

but we do it once a while, so we make sure the ions stay active.

some people may tell u that u should always deplete the batteries before charging (cause of the old ways), but this is actually bad for your lithium ions.
if u constantly do it, its deterimental for your batteries.

so just charge them whenever you want, u dont need to set time.

and another note, some devices (are designed to ) take a long time to charge the last few % of ions. notebook noteably about the last 10%.

its always best to avoid these areas, because it too would cause prolong charging.

Don MC said:

Don't disconnect the charger immediately after it shows 100% full. The phone is still doing some maintenance charging for a couple of hours and thus the battery really isn't 100% full even though the indicator says so.

I usually let mine charge overnight and my battery ilfe is good. If however, for some reason it starts draining fast, I deep boot the whole thing (hold the Home button AND lock/sleep button depressed for a LONG time, until the apple boot logo appears).

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Great tips, thanks!

I noticed this a few days ago when I got my new iPhone 4, the first day it went from 100% to dead in less than 6 hours but after a few full night charges it's chugging along just fine

LevMac said:

I think using the phone more and more and giving the battery a work out over time will give a better battery reading I would assume ?

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Yes. If the phone is brand new, it takes a few complete charge cycles to build up the battery's full capacity. It should give better battery life after a week or so.

Also, I'm under the impression that the battery indicator itself needs to be calibrated every now and then. This is done by a full charge cycle. It'll relearn the 0% and 100% points when the phone is allowed to drain completely and switch itself off, then followed by a full charge (overnight for instance).

EDIT: I'm also under the impression (so don't take my word for it) that the charging electronics are situated inside the battery itself. It controls how much current the battery will take during charging and when to stop. The battery percentage indicator, on the other hand, is software controlled within the phone. It indicates a percentage based on a predetermined voltage scheme. If the battery voltage differs from this scheme (especially new batteries may have higher voltages than the software thinks), the indicator may show 100% even if the battery still has some capacity left. This is also why I usually let the phone sit on charge even after the indicator hits 100%. The phone will set a new point for 100% when it receives the charge-stop signal from the battery.