Does leaving a lithium-ion batter in a charger shorten its life?
Unfortunately, I’ve found conflicting information relating to charging, with some advice seemingly a holdover from NiCad. People will tell you never using the battery shortens its life, heavy use shortens its life, leaving it always plugged in shortens its life, deep discharge shortens its life, storing it charged more than 50% shortens its life. The only thing everyone agrees on is that over time the battery will become less and less capable and lithium, in particular, has a fairly short lifespan. A laptop battery, as an example, that still held a useful charge at four years is the exception. It seems like most users get one to three years out of them, before time is measured in tens of minutes instead of hours. What is especially lame, though, is the general lack of studies given the prevalence of lithium batteries. Or at least I’ve not been able to find hard numbers associated with how a battery is charged and used. My advice: use the device how you want to use it and accept that ev
