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Proper method to recalibrate battery?

Kadin

Kadin

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 16, 2009
597
2
I have a 3GS that I just bought used and I believe it's around 1.5yrs old. I've been having some pretty poor battery life and the first thing I want to do is recalibrate the battery. Should I simply fully charge it tonight and then continue to use it until it shuts itself off? I figured I'd run some movies or something towards the end of the night to accomplish this.

Is there anything else to do besides that? And is just one night all that's needed? From there forward, I'll simply charge it every night regardless of the battery left...

Oh and I'm on 4.2.1 if it matters.
 
Yup, charge it up full and then keep using it until the phone shuts itself off. afterwards, recharge completely and hope your battery is running proper.
 
Is it true that the battery is rated at 500 charges before it will diminish? The owner had this phone since launch apparently and if she charged it everyday, that time should have passed now. But the 500 is complete cycles, not partial, correct?
 
Do you know in what manner she charged it? Weird question, I know. But basically, was she the type of person who charged the phone only/usually when the battery was low or almost empty. OR, was she the type of person who always plugged her phone in whenever she could?

From previous experience, usually the latter is more troublesome than the first. There will always be some degradation of a battery depending on how many times and how often it was charged. If she only charged it whenever it was close to empty then I think you should be okay. If she charged it every time she sat down for more than 10 minutes then I think that might be a problem.

I think you'll know the real status of the battery once you recalibrate it. If it's working fine or draining in an acceptable time frame, you should be okay. If it starts draining quickly even after the recal, might need to replace the battery.
 
She told me she charged it basically every night when she went to bed. The batter life isn't horrible right now but compared to my prior 3GS, it seems definitely worse. I've done all things like turning off my 3G service in my home (as signal here is pretty crappy) and disable Location Services, enable Auto Brightness and turned off Push and Notifications.

Pretty much killing a chunk of the 'features' of the phone but if it works better with that all off, I'll be a happy guy...
 
Personally I think you should at least leave the push notifications on. That's a pretty big feature to be missing out on. If that battery life is that much of an issue for you, you ever think about getting one of those slim battery pack cases? A couple people I know have them and seem to like the a lot. Then again, they're heavy users so they NEED to have it. Might be something to look into.
 
Yeah that was another possible consideration. I was looking at maybe the Mophie Juice Pack...
 
I hear good things about that one. Think there's a couple threads on that over in the Accessories section.
 
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